Page 142 - Psychological Management of Individual Performance

124 appraisal: an individual psychological perspective
A more recent stream of literature relating to motivation and which bears some relation
to need for achievement is that dealing with the concept of Goal Orientation, which
may be defined as an orientation towards developing or demonstrating one’s ability
(VandeWalle & Cummings, 1997). Dweck and Leggett (1988) and other writers have
described two general groups of underlying goals that individuals pursue in achievement
situations; one is usually referred to as Learning Goal Orientation (LGO) and the other as
Performance Goal Orientation (PGO). The former is an orientation towards developing
competence by acquiring new skills and mastering new problems and tasks while the
latter is concerned with an orientation to demonstrate and prove the adequacy of one’s
competence by seeking favourable assessments and avoiding criticism. VandeWalle and
Cummings (1997) found that LGO was positively related to feedback seeking but PGO
was negatively related to feedback seeking. In the context of appraisal, one would expect
that individuals characterised by LGO would be much more positive in attitude to genuine
feedback, development suggestions and challenging goals; individuals demonstrating
PGO might show less tolerance of anything but positive feedback and might tend to focus
their efforts on maintaining their performance in areas in which they had already proved
their effectiveness. Phillips and Gully (1997) have demonstrated that goal orientation is
related to self-efficacy (see below).

Self-awareness, self-esteem, and self-efficacy
An individual’s level of self-objectivity is likely to exert some effect on his/her reaction
to PA. If the individual is able to stand back from his/her own feelings and needs, and to
assess his/her performance in an unbiased manner, it will perhaps make the task of the
appraiser somewhat easier when it comes to conveying an assessment (assuming that
the assessment is itself a fair one). The extent to which self-assessments are congruent
with assessments made by others has been termed ‘self-awareness’ and has been the sub-
ject of a growing body of research (London & Smither, 1995; Fletcher & Baldry, 1999).
The evidence, from a variety of settings, suggests that those higher in self-awareness
are found on independent measures to be higher performers (Fletcher, 1997c). Self-
awareness is, as was noted above, also recognised as a component of emotional intel-
ligence. It thus seems very likely that the more self-aware an individual is, the more
positive is his/her reaction likely to be in the PA situation. In part, this is because any
assessment made in PA should not come as a surprise to the person appraised, will tend to
be consistent with his/her self-picture and may be positive—or, at least, not less positive
than the appraisee’s self-assessment. Though there are a number of studies in relation
to 360 degree feedback that have examined self-awareness (e.g. Furnham & Stringfield,
1994), so far none has related it directly to reactions to PA more generally. Some find-
ings show a gender difference on self-awareness and self-assessment, suggesting that
women may be more modest in their self-assessment and more congruent with others’
assessments of them (Fletcher, 1999) which may in turn imply a greater likelihood of a
positive appraisal response on their part.
More generally, however, self-assessment is likely to be influenced by self-esteem.
Fahr and Dobbins (1989) investigated the relationship between self-esteem and self-
assessments and found that individuals with high self-esteem evaluated themselves
more favourably than people with low self-esteem. There is a substantial literature on
self-esteem levels and responses to feedback (Swann, 1987), offering two alternative