Gary Latham, PhD: Goal Setting, Prompts, Priming, and Skepticism

Gary Latham, PhD is the Secretary of State Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Rotman School of Management in the University of Toronto. His research in the field of organizational psychology has yielded over 200 peer-reviewed publications and he has written several books on the topic of goal setting. He and his lifelong research partner, Ed Locke PhD, are responsible for Goal Setting Theory, prized by both the scientific community and sales leaders around the world.

He is the only recipient of both the Distinguished Contributions to Science award and the Practice award from SIOP. Top it off, he is only the second researcher we’ve talked to on Behavioral Grooves that was cited in Kurt’s dissertation.

In our discussion with Professor Latham, we reviewed Goal Setting Theory, specific goals, participatory goals and talked about the relative importance of inductive and deductive reasoning. More importantly, we covered some of our favorite research on priming and were able to have a discussion about Kurt’s socks: are they prompts or primes? (You’ll have to listen to find out.)

If you like what you hear, please feel free to give us a quick review or sign up for cool rewards on our Patreon site (link below). Thanks for your support.

NOTE: We encountered some technical challenges while recording our conversation with Professor Latham and it’s audio quality is slightly below our standards. We considered a re-do, but we decided to stick with our original conversation, which is what we present in this episode. We hope you enjoy it.

© 2020 Behavioral Grooves

 

Links

Gary Latham, PhD: https://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/FacultyAndResearch/Faculty/FacultyBios/Latham

Ed Locke, PhD: https://edwinlocke.com/

“Effects of goal setting and supervision on worker behavior in an industrial situation” (pulpwood industry study): https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1974-28825-001

“The effect of priming goals on organizational‑related behavior: My transition from skeptic to believer”: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-56606-020

Amanda Shantz, PhD: https://www.tcd.ie/business/people/amanda-shantz.php

John Bargh, PhD: https://psychology.yale.edu/people/john-bargh

Scott Jeffrey, PhD: https://www.monmouth.edu/directory/profiles/scott-a-jeffrey/

Ron Piccolo, PhD: https://business.ucf.edu/person/ron-piccolo/

Farrah Fawcett Poster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farrah_Fawcett

Jana Gallus, PhD and Bruno Frey, PhD: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0001839218777229

Victoria Shaffer, PhD: https://psychology.missouri.edu/people/shaffer

“The Influence of In-Store Music on Wine Selections”: https://mindhacks.com/2006/02/06/music-wine-and-will/

Kurt Nelson, PhD: @whatmotivates

Tim Houlihan: @THoulihan

Patreon Site for Behavioral Grooves: https://www.patreon.com/behavioralgrooves