This research used Bandura's social cognitive framework of self-regulation to examine functional group leadership. Antecedents and outcomes of leader goals and leadership selfefficacy (LSE) were central to this investigation. Leaders were 96 college students who led three-person teams on either a more simple or complex production task. Results indicated that LSE predicted leader goal levels, and together LSE and leader goals predicted task strategies communicated by leaders to group members. Most effects of LSE and leader goals on group outcomes were mediated by leader strategies. In addition, LSE was instrumental to the leader's maintenance of challenging goals when leaders confronted a complex task. Findings offered general support for extending Bandura's self-regulation model to group leadership task settings.

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Goal theory (Locke & Latham, 1990) and social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986) converged on a single model describing the relationships among prior performance, self-efficacy, personal goals, and individual performance. The model, portraying self-regulatory processes, guided an investigation of the performance of 216 wrestlers competing at a wrestling camp. Two hypotheses were tested. First, general support was expected for the self-regulatory model. Second, self-efficacy was predicted to be especially relevant for performance under extremely competitive conditions (i.e., overtime match performance). Both hypotheses were supported. Analyses using LISREL VI supported the relationships posited by the self-regulatory model. Also, self-efficacy was found to be the only significant predictor of wrestlers’ performance in overtime matches.

This study examines personal vision and its role in human motivation. It examines the concept of personal vision within goal hierarchies, describes the elements that constitute goal hierarchies, and examines the effect of students' compelling personal vision on the quality of proximal goals. Asking participants to describe their expected or compelling personal vision did not influence the difficulty and vividness of such vision. Instead, individual differences overrode the manipulations with some students conceptualizing a more challenging and vivid personal vision compared with others. Students who naturally set a challenging and vivid personal vision also set more difficult and specific college goals. Students who conceptualized a vivid personal vision were more committed to their semester goals.

This research examined free-set goals (FS goals) reported by wrestling camp participants. FS goals are goals as stated by those who are simply asked to report personal goals within a defined context. Because goal content is free to vary and is defined by the athletes themselves, it is argued that FS goals underlie self-regulation in sport. Preseason, season, and long-term FS goals reported by wrestlers were coded for difficulty and specificity. Predictors and outcomes drawn from goal theory research were related to FS goals set for the upcoming season. Prior performance experiences predicted FS season goals, and FS season goals predicted performance outcomes collected after the wrestling season. Unique to goal theory, FS goal specificity was as strongly related to performance as was FS goal difficulty. Findings are discussed in relation to athletes’ self-regulation.