Effect of need achievement and task difficulty on competitive and noncompetitive motor performance

Atkinson's theory of achievement motivation was tested on a stabliometer task of either low, moderate, or high task difficulty. Ss (N=120) were either assigned to a condition with competition for a monetary reward or to a noncompetitive no-reward condition. In the high task-difficulty condition Ss competing for a reward performed better on initial trails than did Ss in the noncompetitive condition. Although no performance differences were found between Ss who tended to achieve success and Ss who tended to avoid failure, the latter Ss had poorer consistency of performance (intravariance scores) on initial learning trials.