Aristotle's form of final causality. Aristotle speculated that purpose can cause action; thus, Locke began researching the impact goals have on human activity. Locke developed and refined his goal-setting theory in the 1960s, publishing his first article on the subject, "Toward a Theory of Task Motivation and Incentives", in 1968. This article established the positive relationship between clearly identified goals and performance. Theory building by induction Goal setting theory was developed over 25 years based on accumulated evidence from approximately 400 studies encompassing field and laboratory settings. This inductive approach to theory building avoids over-formalizing ideas at the early stage of theory development. In this sense, inductive theory building should be seen as going from the particular to the general in contrast with deductive theory building which goes from the general to the particular. With specific regards to goal setting theory, this also has the further advantage of allowing negative results to be framed as an opportunity for further exploration around the theory and the development of goal setting has many examples of this process being used to develop the theory further. Recent work on benefits from domain general goals suggest both that the theory should be modified further to include this beneficial domain general effect of superordinate goals and that this inductive process of further adjustments and improvements to goal setting theory itself is ongoing. This specific example is discussed in more detail in the in academia section below. Main idea After controlling for ability, goals that are difficult to achieve and specific tend to increase performance far more than easy goals, no goals or telling people to do their best. It therefore follows that the simplest motivational explanation of why some individuals outperform others is that they have different goals. A goal can be made more specific by: Setting goals can affect outcomes in four ways: Secondary ideas Goal commitment People perform better when they are committed to achieving certain goals. Through an understanding of the effect of goal setting on individual performance, organizations are able to use goal setting to benefit organizational performance. In addition, another aspect that goes with goal commitment is also goal acceptance. This is an individual's willingness to pursue their specific goal. Locke and Latham (2002) have indicated three moderators that indicate goal setting success: Expanding the three from above, the level of commitment is influenced by external factors. Such as the person