1 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Azteca University, Mexico.
2 School of Business and Entrepreneurship, Regent College London, United Kingdom.
3 Department of Human Resource Management, Faculty of Management Sciences, EagleVersity Royal Professional University, United States of America.
4 Department of science, Institut Universitaire La Grace, Cotonou, Benin Republic.
International Journal of Science and Research Archive, 2025, 17(03), 797-801
Article DOI: 10.30574/ijsra.2025.17.3.3246
Received 11 November 2025; revised on 20 December 2025; accepted on 22 December 2025
Background: While motivational communication is hailed as a key to performance, its direct effect on task accuracy remains unclear. This study investigates the differential effects of mastery-oriented and autonomy-supportive communication frames on employee engagement and task performance, testing for the presence of an "effort-performance gap."
Methods: In a between-subjects online experiment, 198 working professionals were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: mastery-oriented frame, autonomy-supportive frame, or neutral control frame. Participants completed a cognitive task (Remote Associates Problems) while we measured self-reported motivation, behavioral engagement (time-on-task, persistence), and objective performance (accuracy).
Results: The mastery-oriented frame significantly increased all measures of engagement (self-report, time-on-task, persistence) compared to control. The autonomy-supportive frame significantly increased time-on-task but not self-reported motivation. Critically, despite these strong effects on engagement, neither motivational frame produced a statistically significant improvement in task accuracy compared to the control condition.
Conclusion: The findings reveal a clear effort-performance gap: strategically framed language effectively boosts motivation and effort but does not automatically translate into higher quality performance on a cognitive task. This underscores the need for managers to pair motivational communication with investments in employee skill and task design to reliably convert increased effort into improved outcomes.
Motivational Communication; Effort-Performance Gap; Self-Determination Theory; Autonomy Support; Mastery Orientation; Task Performance; Natural Language Processing
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Tim Itua Atimoe, Kohol Iornem, Praise R. Akogwu and Michael A. Senkoya. The Effort-Performance Gap in Motivational Communication: An Experimental Test of Linguistic Framing on Engagement and Task Accuracy. International Journal of Science and Research Archive, 2025, 17(03), 797-801. Article DOI: https://doi.org/10.30574/ijsra.2025.17.3.3246.
Copyright © 2025 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article. This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Liscense 4.0
