Persevering Under Difficult Conditions: The Effects of Conscientiousness and Goal Orientation Under Conditions of Time Pressure and Distractions

This research examines the influence of two well-studied individual differences within the industrial-organizational psychology literature—conscientiousness and goal orientation (learning and performance). Specifically, this study focuses on the relationship between these individual differences and task performance under conditions of time pressure and distractions. Past research on conscientiousness has shown conscientiousness to be positively related to task performance. Similarly, learning goal-orientation has also been shown to be positively related to performance while performance goal-orientation shows a negative relationship with task performance (Colquitt & Simmering, 1998). We expect to see these effects even under conditions of time pressure and frequent distractions. Therefore, we hypothesize a positive relationship between task performance and both conscientiousness and learning goal-orientation. That is, individuals who are highly conscientious and learning goal-oriented will have higher performance because their disciplined and learning-focused nature will encourage them to persevere under difficult situations. On the contrary, we expect a negative relationship between performance and performance orientation. That is, individuals who are very performance-oriented will not perform well on the task. The results and implications of the study will be discussed in detail on the poster.https://via.library.depaul.edu/psychologynight/1052/thumbnail.jp