Effects of intrinsic vs. extrinsic job orientation and reported anxiety under different task conditions.

Abstract

Out of 428 male first year university students, 96 intrinsically oriented (10) and 96 extrinsically oriented (EO) were identified. Each group was divided into four comparable subgroups. Two of the subgroups attempted to solve 40 simple anagrams, one alone and one observed, while the other two worked on 30 difficult anagrams under the same two conditions. Each of the 8 subgroups was further dichotomized into 12 low anxious and 12 high anxious Ss. The experiment involved a 2 (io vs. EO) X 2 (low vs. high anxiety) X 2 (alone vs. observed) X 2 (simple vs. difficult problems) analysis of variance design. The results showed that low anxious EO SS performed better than high anxious so Ss in all conditions, while the low anxious io Ss performed better than the high anxious io Ss only in the alone simple task condition. No significant differences were found with regard to satisfaction.