Effect of an Incentive upon Intelligence Test Performance

Abstract
Previous research has indicated that the manipulation of motivating conditions through explicit examiner's expectancy of good performance can significantly improve performance on intelligence tests. In the present study, the manipulation of incentive was used to improve performance. College women were told that the five best scorers would receive monetary rewards. The group receiving incentive-instructions scored significantly higher than the control group on the WAIS Performance Scale and on the Object Assembly subtest. No difference between the groups was obtained for the Advanced Progressive Matrices.