Tough Performance Goals leads to cheating

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In this HBR article an experiment was conducted with 2 groups of people. Both groups were given the same Anagram task.

However, Group 1 was given a specific performance goal of forming atleast 9 words whereas Group 2 was only told to do their best.

It was found that Group 1 were more likely to overstate their performance than Group 2 who were only told to do their best.

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