Effects of goal-setting and locus of control were studied in 188 undergraduate men in a laboratory setting using a card-sorting task. Two trials were employed with one of three goals assigned on Trial 2 (easy, moderately difficult, or hard goals representing, respectively, a 10%, 20%, or 50% increase over Trial 1 card sort). A curvilinear relationship moderated the relationship between goal-setting and card sorting when differences in locus of control were examined. However, when these individual differences were partialled out, a linear relation between goal-setting and card sorting typical of the goal-setting literature was obtained.
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