I Promise to Work Hard: The Impact of a Non-Binding Commitment Pledge on Academic Performance

Nicholas Wright (), Puneet Arora and Jesse Wright
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Puneet Arora: Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India
Jesse Wright: Florida Gulf Coast University

No 2411, Working Papers from Florida International University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Students often start a course with high expectations and an ambitious plan of action. Some instructors use goal-inducing non-binding commitment pledges to nudge students to follow through on their intended course of action. Using a field experiment, we asked treated students to set a goal grade, identify the actions they will take to achieve it, and sign a commitment pledge to work towards this grade. We find that while treated students pledged a greater time commitment and targeted a higher grade, their overall test scores decrease by 0.23 standard deviations and they were 15 percentage points less likely to pass the course.

Keywords: Commitment Pledge; Goal-setting; Academic Performance; Overconfidence; Grade Expectations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A2 C93 D8 I2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2024-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-exp and nep-nud
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