Effects of Task- and Ego-Achievement Goals on Information Seeking During Task Engagement

Two studies tested the proposal that information seeking is affected by achievement goals and by stages of skill acquisition (D. N. Ruble & K. S. Frey, 1991). College students (N = 188) worked on problems in a task- or an ego-goal condition and could request task (best solutions), objective, normative, or no information after each. As expected, task-goal Ss requested more task information, which predicted subsequent performance, and requested normative information mainly for later problems. Ego-goal Ss made more normative requests also for early problems, and information requests were modified by skill level. These indications that self-assessment is accompanied by self-improvement concerns under task goals and by self-enhancing concerns under ego goals have implications for the debate between self-assessment and self-evaluation theories of information seeking and for research on help seeking and feedback effects.