The Effects of Proximal and Distal Goals on Strategy Development and Group Performance

I hypothesized that team members working toward proximal and distal goals would perform better than teams working towards distal goals alone, because team members would invest more time and energy in efforts to develop effective task strategies. As expected, team members in the proximal-plus-distal goal condition performed better than those in the distal-goal condition, and strategy development mediated this effect. Results also showed that goal level was an important mediator. Group members in the proximal-plus-distal goal condition set more difficult goals, which led to better performance, compared to those who set distal goals alone.