Relationship of task and ego orientation to performance: cognitive content, affect, and attributions in bowling

The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship of individual differences in goal orientation to mid-activity cognitive content and affect and post-performance attributions across three games of bowling. Forty-seven undergraduate students enrolled in bowling activity classes were recruited as subjects and asked to play a standard 10-frame bowling game in a learning focused environment on three different days. The subjects' dispositional proneness toward task and ego involvement was measured by the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire. Cognitive content, affect, and performance attributions were assessed by a self-report questionnaire. The results suggested that the students' cognitive and affective patterns during and following performance tended to vary as a function of the goal perspective. Task orientation negatively correlated with performance worry (Game 2) and positively related to enjoyment (Game 3). Ego orientation correlated negatively with strategy formulation (Game 3). For Game 1, task orientation positively correlated with the perception that effort most impacted performance, while ego orientation correlated positively with the belief that ability most influenced performance. Future research directions and the practical significance of the results are discussed.