Using Goals to Motivate College Students: Theory and Evidence From Field Experiments
通过两个涉及四千名大学生的实地实验，研究了设定目标对大学生学习努力程度和成绩的影响，发现任务型目标能显著提高任务完成率，对课程成绩有边际显著正向影响，而绩效型目标效果较小且不显著。
Will college students who set goals work harder and perform better? We report two field experiments that involved four thousand college students. One experiment asked treated students to set goals for performance in the course; the other asked treated students to set goals for a particular task (completing online practice exams). Task-based goals had robust positive effects on the level of task completion and marginally significant positive effects on course performance. Performance-based goals had positive but small and statistically insignificant effects on course performance. A theoretical framework that builds on present bias and loss aversion helps to interpret our results.