Citation in APA format: Fishbach, A. (2025). Goals and motivation. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, E. J. Finkel, & W. B. Mendes (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (6th ed.). Situational Press. https://doi.org/10.70400/YBHK1018

Goals and Motivation  

Ayelet Fishbach, University of Chicago  

Why do people pursue the goals they pursue the way they pursue them? Why does one person adopt the goal to earn a graduate degree while another drops out of college? Why do some people dedicate their lives to fighting a social cause while others don’t bother to vote in a democratic election?  

Goals are mental representations of desired states. They are our idea of how we would like things to be (Austin & Vancouver, 1996; Higgins & Kruglanski, 2000). These desired states can be clearly defined (e.g., becoming an Olympic medalist), or they can be abstract and represent a state that is never fully achieved (e.g., being wise). A goal can satisfy an innate need such as social connection, safety, growth, and significance (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Maslow, 1970; Murray, 1938; Kruglanski et al., 2022), or it can satisfy a need that was acquired through learning such as earning money or becoming a lawyer. Some goals are open-ended (“read more books”), whereas others have a target: a number that specifies how much and how soon, for example, “reading 20 books this year.” For all-or-nothing goals, reaching the target is critical for achieving the benefits of the goal. A student will not earn a college degree before all requirements are completed. Yet, for many goals, the target is aspirational: even partial progress is a success.  

Regardless of the desired state, it is a goal only if we wish to act on it. So, if a person wishes for a cooler world but does not desire to fight climate change, they do not hold a goal. What they have instead is a positive attitude toward a cooler planet and toward the people who fight for it. Similarly, a person might think positively of running but having a goal requires that they further wish to run. Motivation is the psychological driving force that enables action to pursue a goal (Lewin, 1935). Whereas a goal marks a destination, our motivation gets us there.  

Goals and motivation have been central to experimental psychological research from its origins. In the USA, Norman Triplett observed in 1898 that the presence of an audience motivates bikers to ride faster, a phenomenon later termed social facilitation. In France, an engineer named Max Ringelmann (1913) observed that helpers (unlike observers) undermine people’s motivation. The more men were pulling a rope, the less effort each invested. This was later termed social loafing. In Germany, Kurt Lewin (1926) laid the foundation of goal theory. In what became known as Field Theory, he explored the interplay between the individual and their environment in determining motivation. He also made the distinction between setting and striving toward a goal. Meanwhile, his student Bluma Zeigarnik (1927), discovered that when a goal has been interrupted and left incomplete, it is hard to take it off the mind—the so-called Zeigarnik effect. 

Moving to more recent history, goal research has flourished, with theories exploring the types of goals people hold (e.g., Higgins, 1997; Ryan & Deci, 2000) and the processes of self-regulation (e.g., Bandura, 1997; Baumeister et al., 1994; Carver & Scheier, 1998; Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Gollwitzer & Bargh, 1996; Gross, 2001; Mischel et al.,1989). Research in social cognition revealed that goals are knowledge structures that follow the principles of human cognition (Ferguson & Bargh, 2004; Custers & Aarts, 2010). These knowledge structures are organized in the mind in hierarchical goal systems (Kruglanski et al., 2002). In a goal system, each goal is connected to a set of subordinate means (subgoals) that help achieve it and further connected to a set of superordinate goals. A person’s goal to travel to space may be connected to a subgoal of applying for a job at NASA and to superordinate goals, such as becoming a modern-times explorer. A person’s superordinate goal to achieve financial independence may be connected to the goal of getting an academic degree, which in turn will be connected to the subgoal of finishing their homework. 

Parallel goals, such as developing a career and exploring the world, are connected in either inhibitory or facilitatory links. A career goal will facilitate the explorer’s goal if it offers much traveling. On the other hand, these goals can inhibit each other if the person’s career requires staying put with few vacation days. Further, a person can perceive a professional goal as supporting or conflicting with familial duties. The specific goals and how people perceive that they interact with each other are as unique as snowflakes. Yet, the principles governing goal systems are universal. 

Principles in Goal Systems  

Two principles govern the preference for means in goal systems. First, people prefer means that maximize goal attainment. They seek actions, objects, and even relationships that help them achieve more goals, which allows for saving resources such as time, energy, and money. For example, it is hard to pursue more than one career at a time. Therefore, working people seek a job that supports their interests, ethics, and financial goals. Further, as resources become more constrained—for example, aging individuals may have limited physical resources, and low socioeconomic (SES) individuals have less money—identifying means that maximize goal attainment becomes more critical.  

Yet, people can be wary of means that achieve multiple goals (Kruglanski et al., 2002). They might believe that healthy food cannot be truly delicious or that an ethical career can only pay a little. As a result, they sometimes neglect to choose the means that maximize goal attainment. For example, one study found that people prefer to write with a pen that is just a pen over a pen that could also be used as a laser pointer; they picked a means that satisfies just one goal (Zhang et al., 2007). Other times, people choose means that not only fail to serve but further undermine additional goals, because they believe these means must be more instrumental to the single goal they serve. For example, teenagers choose risky activities (e.g., substance abuse) to promote their social status because (rather than despite the fact that) such a risky behavior undermines their physical health (Kopetz et al., 2019).  

The second principle explains these deviations: People prefer means that are strongly associated with a goal. Yet, the number of goals a given means serves and the number of means connected to a given goal is negatively related to the strength of a means-goals association. This is also known as the dilution principle, by which more connections weaken the association between a given activity and a goal. For example, if biking serves both commuting and exercising, it will appear less instrumental for either commuting or exercising. Because of dilution, a person may use a stationary exercise bike at the gym and commute to work by car.  

The two principles explain how the configuration of a goal system—the number of means that serve a goal and the number of goals served by a means—influences motivation to pursue a goal. There are four basic configurations in a goal system:  

A. Equifinality. Equifinal means all serve the same goal and can therefore substitute each other. This structure is best captured in the idiom “all roads lead to Rome.” Equifinal means often seem redundant. Why would a traveler need more than one way to get to Rome? Yet, equifinal means form a backup plan. When people are presented with several equifinal means, they feel more confident that they can reach the goal. Hence, the mere presence of these means increases goal commitment (Etkin & Ratner, 2013; Huang & Zhang, 2013). On the downside, the presence of equifinal means dilutes the cognitive association between the activity and the goal that it serves, resulting in lower motivation to engage in any of these activities. 

B. Multifinality. Multifinal means achieve more than one goal. This is best captured in the (less famous) idiom, “feeding two birds with one scone.” Multifinal means maximize attainment, and therefore they should be superior. In principle, getting more for the same unit of effort should always be the dominant choice. Even if a person does not care for the additional benefits (e.g., they only wanted to feed one bird), they should not oppose it either. For example, if a person learns that a food is kosher, they should either see it as a benefit (i.e., if they observe Jewish tradition) or not, but this information should not undermine their interest in that food. And yet, Simonson et al. (1993) found that advertising an ice cream as kosher reduced consumers’ interest in it. Ice cream lovers seem to believe that if cream and sugar meet religious restrictions, they make less flavorful ice cream.  

C. Unifinality. Unifinal means achieve only one goal. If only a single road led to Rome, it would have been unifinal. Unifinal means are strongly associated with the single goal they help achieve. People cannot think of any other way. As a result, people are often highly motivated to pursue unifinal means. The disadvantage of equifinal means is the advantage of unifinal means.  

D. Counterfinality. Counterfinal means achieve some goals while undermining others. For example, a homemade lunch may be healthier than dining out, but it undermines a person’s goal to socialize with colleagues over lunch at a restaurant. Counterfinal means are often nonoptimal. Instead of maximizing attainment across goals, they minimize it. They are the opposite of multifinal means. Yet counterfinal means may seem more instrumental for the goal they facilitate exactly because they inhibit another goal. When a Canadian pharmaceutical advertised their cough syrup as “it tastes awful, and it works,” the message was that because this cough medicine undermined the taste goal, it was more instrumental for the health goal. This message helped Buckley's syrup grow its business and demonstrated that people often prefer counterfinal means (especially under high need for cognitive closure; Kramer et al., 2012).   

The Processes of Goal Pursuit  

Pursuing a goal starts with marking a destination. Whether a person wishes to find a job, play an instrument, or pursue a mundane goal such as planning their weekend, they begin by setting goals. Goal setting usually involves some degree of deliberation and considering alternatives (should it be the flute or the clarinet? Stay home with a book or go to a party?). At this stage, people consider their options, often creating a mental list of pros and cons that is relatively unbiased compared with what comes next. This mindset changes when striving toward a goal. Deliberation turns into implementation, and people focus on directing cognition and action toward reaching a goal with minimal distraction. This stage is often more biased. Motivated cognitions will support goal commitment and ignoring alternatives (see the Rubicon model of action phases, Gollwitzer, 1990; Heckhausen & Gollwitzer, 1987. See also Dunnings’ chapter, this volume). In Julius Kuhl’s (1984) terms, the motivation to choose among action alternatives (“choice motivation”) has been replaced with the motivation to accomplish the selected goal (“control motivation”).  

Some people are comfortable being in the mindset of setting a goal. Because they like to assess potential goals and their means of attainment, they are called “assessors.” Other people prefer to strive toward a goal. They seek to move away from the current state and towards a desired goal state and are called “locomotors” (Kruglanski et al., 2000). Assessors agree with statements such as “I am a critical person,” “I spend a great deal of time taking inventory of my positive and negative characteristics,” and “I like evaluating other people's plans.” Locomotors agree with statements such as “I am a doer,” I am a go-getter,” and “When I decide to do something, I can’t wait to get started.” Notably, it is also possible for an individual to be both an assessor and a locomotor, or to disagree with both.  

Part I of this chapter addresses goal setting, and Part II addresses goal striving. Beyond these stages, humans devote much energy and time to managing the interaction between goals. They never want just one thing, and their various coexisting goals often pull in opposite directions. Goal juggling requires managing these multiple goals, setting priorities, and finding the right balance. It further relies on patience and self-control. Part III addresses goal juggling. 

Finally, much of the research in motivation science explores the social context in which people pursue these goals. Recall that goal research originated in the study of social facilitation and social loafing. Given that important goals require help from others, working with others, and soliciting their support as observers, these are central topics for goal research. Part IV addresses the social context. Table 1 summarizes the topics covered in each section.   

Table 1: Roadmap for Goal Research 

PART I: GOAL SETTING 

In identifying the types of goals people hold, motivation scientists distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic goals, approach and avoidance goals, promotion and prevention goals, and abstract and concrete goals. Research on goal setting also addresses the role of numerical targets and why deciding on the target—that is, how much and how soon—critically determines motivation. Further, research on goal setting addresses the role of incentives and when (and how) they increase motivation.   

The Types of Goals People Hold  

Intrinsic Versus Extrinsic Goals  

People are said to be intrinsically motivated when they derive value from pursuing (rather than achieving) a goal. They see pursuing that goal as its own end (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, Deci & Ryan, 1985, Vallerand, 2007). For intrinsic goals, there is an overlap—or perceptual fusion—between an activity and the goal it serves (Fishbach & Woolley, 2022; Kruglanski et al., 2018). These are inseparable parts of the same entity, thus forming a unified Gestalt (Campbell 1958; Wertheimer 1938). The result is that pursuing the goal is gratifying. The person is fully immersed and experiences a state of psychological flow (Melnikoff et al., 2022). Flying a kite on a spring day or having sex with a romantic partner are examples of intrinsically motivated activities. It will seem strange to ask why someone engages in these activities because the answer is that they want to. The activity and its goal collide and there is no ulterior motive.  

In contrast, when the goal is only weakly associated with an activity, as in working now toward a goal that will materialize in the far future (e.g., saving at age 30 for retirement at age 70), or when many other goals are achieved by pursuing this activity (a multifinal structure), that goal is said to be extrinsic.[1] Unifinal activities tend to be intrinsic, while multifinal activities are more extrinsic (Kruglanski et al., 2018). 

Specific goal contents, such as satisfying curiosity, tend to be intrinsically motivated. The act of exploration is often rewarding on its own. According to Ryan and Deci’s self-determination theory (2000), intrinsic goals tend to involve affiliation, autonomy, and growth, while extrinsic goals tend to involve status and financial outcomes (see also Greco & Kraimer, 2020; Vansteenkiste et al., 2006). Beyond these typical intrinsic contents, the status of the goal as intrinsic is often a matter of subjective perception. Flying a kite might be a babysitter’s job requirement, and sex can be a carefully timed activity for the couple trying to conceive, making pursuit of these activities multifinal and hence, less intrinsic. On the other hand, extrinsic goals such as pursuing wealth and alleviating pain can become intrinsic, as in the case of addiction to gambling or pain medication. The addict can no longer separate the activity from its goal (e.g., win money or relieve pain); the action is its own end.  

Goals lie on a continuum from weak to strong intrinsicality. Consider employment and the goal of doing well at work. An employee who is immersed in their tasks, wishing they could stay for a bit longer by the end of a workday or enthusiastically bringing their work home, is more intrinsically motivated than the employee who cannot wait for the clock to hit 5 pm. Yet even the former employee is not solely intrinsically motivated—they work in part to receive a paycheck, and their monthly salary is clearly separated in their mind from the work they complete now.  

When people are intrinsically motivated, the experience of goal attainment mentally transfers to pursuing the goal (Custers & Aarts 2005; Fishbach et al. 2004). Accordingly, a common approach to measuring intrinsic motivation involves asking people about their positive experiences while pursuing the activity. If they report being interested, excited, relieved, curious, elated, or relaxed, they are intrinsically motivated (Amabile et al., 1994; Csikszentmihályi 1990; Grant, 2008; Vallerand et al., 1992; Woolley & Fishbach, 2018).  

The extent to which people are intrinsically motivated predicts persistence and performance in the workplace, academics, health behaviors, and more (Cerasoli et al. 2014; Grant & Berry 2011; Judge et al. 2001; Ng et al. 2012; Papaioannou et al. 2006; Vallerand 2007; van Egmond et al. 2017). Because motivation is significantly stronger for intrinsic goals, research on behavioral interventions to increase engagement is often directed toward increasing intrinsic motivation: making the activity its own end. These strategies may involve bringing immediate benefits to pursuing an activity. For example, research on temptation-bundling found that teaching gym-goers to listen to an audiobook only when exercising increased their intrinsic motivation (Kirgios et al., 2020; Milkman et al., 2014). While exercising for long-term benefits is extrinsic, reading a book is its own end and hence, intrinsic. This new, compound activity (exercising + reading) is more intrinsically motivating.  

People hold several biases and misconceptions about intrinsic motivation, which prevent them from fully harnessing it to succeed in their goals. People underestimate the importance of intrinsicality for others (Heath, 1999) as well as for their future selves (Woolley & Fishbach, 2015). As a result, people often report that others care about doing something exciting and interesting at work less than they do. They also report that having strong intrinsic motivation at work is more essential for their current job than for a future job they might have. Correcting these biases allows for better communication with others and smarter career (and other) choices.  

Approach Versus Avoidance Goals 

When grocery shopping, our goal can be to “buy healthy food” or “avoid buying unhealthy food.” When playing a sport, we can play to win or play not to lose. Approach goals identify a desirable state and pull the person toward it. Avoidance goals identify an undesirable state or an “anti-goal” and push the person away from it. 

Approach motivation involves seeking positive outcomes or maintaining a positive state. The person decreases the discrepancy between the present state and the state of goal attainment. Avoidance motivation involves staying away from adverse outcomes or moving away from a negative state. The person increases the discrepancy between the present state and the state of anti-goal (Elliot et al., 1997; Elliot, 2006; Elliot & Fryer, 2008). As the examples above demonstrate, sometimes the only difference is in the framing.  

To study avoidance goals, in the 1940s, behaviorists introduced the concept of negative reinforcement, which refers to the motivation to take actions that remove negative outcomes. B. F. Skinner (1965) created a “Skinner Box” with a floor covered in an electric grid administering electric shocks to rats. The rats learned to push a lever to shut the grid down. Negative reinforcement created a new behavior. Indeed, unlike punishments, which are meant to weaken a behavior, negative reinforcement strengthens behavior.  

In humans, this kind of learning happens when people are reinforced to apply sunscreen to avoid sunburns. Even if a person had never experienced a negative outcome, fearing the experience might be a sufficient motivator. Most people use seatbelts even though they have not been personally involved in accidents. The reward for taking this safety measure is the sense of safety it creates. Indeed, avoidance goals are common in the domains of preventing harm and escaping danger. Most people choose to frame their goal as avoiding sunburn rather than approaching healthy skin, even though the resulting actions are the same. 

Individual differences exist in the tendency to set and respond to approach and avoidance goals. Some people have a strong Behavioral Approach System (BAS). These “approachers” respond strongly to approach goals, so when they play a game, they hope to win. Further, some people have a strong Behavioral Inhibition (or avoidance) System (BIS). These “avoiders” tend to respond strongly to avoidance goals. When they play a game, they hope not to lose. According to Carver and White (1994), approachers agree with statements such as “When I want something, I usually go all-out to get it” and “When I see an opportunity for something I like, I get excited right away” and avoiders agree that “I worry about making mistakes” and “Criticism or scolding hurts me quite a bit.”[2] Yet, beyond personality, the situation also matters. For example, when feeling empowered, people have a stronger approach tendency (Keltner et al., 2003). The sense of power leads people to focus on achieving rewards and be less concerned with avoiding punishment. 

There are different emotional consequences for pursuing (or failing on) approach versus avoidance goals (Carver & White, 1994). Successfully pursuing an approach goal is associated with feeling happy, proud, and eager. Failing to pursue that goal will result in feeling sad and depressed. In contrast, successfully pursuing an avoidance goal is associated with feeling relieved, calm, and relaxed, whereas failing to follow an avoidance goal will result in anxiety, fear, and guilt. For example, a pianist who wins a competition will feel proud, while a patient who gets negative results from a diabetes screening will feel relieved. These emotional consequences serve as an extra motivator or an incentive to pursue the goal. When a pianist wins a competition, not only is their musical resume boosted, but also their ego. And when a patient learns they do not have diabetes, not only does their health benefit but also their mood. 

The Downside of Avoidance Goals 

Avoidance goals are often low on intrinsic motivation. For example, learners reported feeling less intrinsically motivated and more concerned with failure when learning was geared toward avoiding punishment rather than earning rewards (Elliot & Church, 1997; Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996). The reason? Pursuing an avoidance goal is less likely to be seen as an end in itself. The psychological fusion between the activity and the goal is lower for these goals.  

Avoidance goals can be less effective when they bring to mind the thing (e.g., thought or object) the person is trying to avoid. For example, when people set to avoid certain foods and monitor their success by asking themselves whether they have eaten these foods recently, the mere act of monitoring consumption activates thoughts of the forbidden food. Wegner (1994) documented this effect in studying thought suppression. When he asked people “to not think about white bears,” they could not stop thinking about them. This ironic mental control phenomenon could explain why when people set a goal to not think about their ex after a painful breakup, they end up thinking about this person more.  

When setting avoidance goals for others, the risk is evoking psychological reactance (Brehm, 1966). When people see a goal as a threat to their freedom of choice, they react by wanting to do exactly what they were asked not to do. Adolescents might want to eat (or smoke) what adults tell them they should not. Indeed, when asked about their ideal intervention, adolescents preferred interventions that promote healthy eating over those that discourage unhealthy eating. They rated approach interventions such as having rules at home about eating fruits and vegetables, as acceptable, and rated avoidance interventions such as prohibiting the advertising of snacks and soft drinks to young people, as unacceptable (Stok et al., 2015). To encourage healthy eating, it might even be better to tell adolescents that adults want them to eat (rather than avoid) unhealthy foods. This is what Bryan et al. (2016) did when they presented teenagers with messages emphasizing that big companies want people to eat unhealthy food, and so they formulate foods specifically to maximize their addictiveness. The result was a reduction in unhealthy food consumption.  

But although avoidance goals have their downsides, there are times when they increase motivation more than approach goals (Scholer et al., 2019). One upside of avoidance goals is that they might seem more urgent. According to research on loss aversion, humans are generally more concerned with losses than the absence of gains (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). That tendency can lead them to respond more quickly to avoidance goals. They might believe that preventing disease is more urgent than promoting health and that not losing a job is more urgent than getting a job.  

Want-to and Have-to Goals 

In his regulatory-focus theory, Tory Higgins distinguished between two regulatory systems: promotion and prevention (Higgins, 1997). Promotion focus involves the pursuit of “ideals goals,” which are hopes and aspirations. When people are in a promotion focus, they are concerned with nurturance, accomplishment, and advancement. Prevention focus involves the pursuit of “ought goals,” which are duties and obligations. People in a prevention focus are concerned with safety, security, and meeting their responsibilities.  

A related distinction is between want-to and have-to goals. Want-to goals are more intrinsically motivating and generally require less effortful self-regulation than have-to goals (Converse et al., 2019). Indeed, a study that texted participants at random times throughout the week found that those who were pursuing a want-to goal (e.g., eating healthily because it was how they chose to live their life) experienced weaker and fewer temptations throughout the week than those who were pursuing a have-to goal (e.g., eating healthily because they felt pressured to be thin). Pursuing want-to goals was also more pleasurable than pursuing have-to goals (Milyavskaya et al., 2015).  

The distinction between promotion and prevention goals (and want-to versus have-to goals), is theoretically orthogonal to that between approach and avoidance goals (Higgins, 1997). For example, a person can approach a professional achievement or avoid not getting it, yet both are promotion goals. Further, they can approach safety or avoid danger, yet both are prevention goals. However, it is common for promotion (and want-to goals) to involve approaching some state and for prevention (and have-to goals) to involve avoiding some state (Freitas et al., 2002). 

Higgins’ regulatory focus theory further proposes different preferred means for each system: these means fit either a promotion or prevention focus (Avnet & Higgins, 2003; Higgins, 2005). When people are in a promotion focus, they prefer to use eager means. Eager means ensure the presence of positive outcomes (or avoiding the absence of positive outcomes). People prefer to use vigilant means when they are in a prevention focus. Vigilant means ensure the absence of negative outcomes (or avoiding the presence of negative outcomes). For example, Avnet and Higgins (2006) argued that deciding based on reason fits a prevention focus (meeting an ought or a duty), whereas deciding based on feelings fits a promotion focus (meeting an ideal or an aspiration). They accordingly found that when the manner of deciding (i.e., based on emotion or reason) fits the goal orientation, participants were more motivated to follow through on the decision.   

Abstract Versus Concrete Goals 

Goals can be identified concretely, in terms of how an action is performed, or abstractly, in terms of why the action is performed. For example, when applying for a job, an abstract goal could be “exploring career opportunities,” whereas a concrete goal could be “reading job postings and submitting applications” (Trope & Liberman, 2010; Vallacher & Wegner, 1987). As this example demonstrates, sometimes these are two framings—or construals—of the same goal.  

All-or-nothing goals, for which the benefits are conditional on reaching the goal (e.g., completing a degree or loyalty program), tend to be concrete. In contrast, open-ended goals (e.g., learning about the world) tend to be more abstract. Further, subgoals tend to be more concrete than their overarching goal.    

Abstract goals capture the purpose behind an action, describing what people wish to achieve; therefore, they appear more desirable. When people consider the forest over the trees, they can better navigate their lives. Yet, concrete goals capture the “how” and, therefore, provide clear guidance on implementation (Freund & Hennecke, 2015). After all, it is easier to plan actions to “get a job” than to “be successful.” Indeed, when people encounter an obstacle, they intuitively adopt a more concrete description of their goal (Vallacher & Wegner, 1987). In one experiment, coffee drinkers who were given an unwieldy heavy cup were more likely to describe drinking from it as “lifting a cup to my lips” and “swallowing” compared with “getting energized” (a description that was favored by those drinking coffee from a regular cup). The coffee drinkers chose concrete descriptions when drinking was made difficult (Wegner et al., 1984).  

Fantasies are extremely abstract goals. They are images of how life will look once a goal is achieved. A person might envision themselves in a graduation gown or wearing a medal. Fantasies, unlike long-term plans, tend to substitute action planning and can undermine motivation (Oettingen et al., 2018). For example, in one study, weight watchers rated their expectations (how likely they were to lose weight) and how much they fantasized about weight loss at the beginning of a weight loss program. One year later, only expectations predicted weight loss, while fantasies predicted weight gain (Oettingen & Wadden, 1991). The lesson is that abstract goals motivate, but only if they are connected to action.  

Beyond the construal of the goal, an abstract mindset increases motivation and facilitates self-control (Fujita & Han, 2009; Fujita et al., 2006; Trope & Liberman, 2010). When people’s mindset leads them to think more abstractly, they focus on a goal’s core, essential features. They also more quickly recognize temptations as interrupting the overriding goals (vs. attractive opportunities) and are willing to work harder to achieve a goal.  

To demonstrate this effect, Fujita and his colleagues (2006) assigned people to an abstract or concrete mindset by having them answer a series of “why” (abstract) or “how” (concrete) questions. These participants answered, for example, “Why do you maintain good physical health?” or “How do you maintain good physical health?” After answering several such questions, the participants started to think about their goals either more abstractly or more concretely, depending on the questions they had answered. In turn, those who answered a series of “why” questions worked harder to achieve their health goals. They exercised more physical effort when holding a handgrip—an activity that was said to improve their health. 

Recent research on meta-motivation (i.e., people’s knowledge of how motivation functions) suggests that people are somewhat aware of the effects of goal construal on motivation (Scholer & Miele, 2016). They understand which construal level (abstract vs. concrete) is best for a given task and how to instantiate this state. For example, most study participants intuitively knew they should ask themselves “how” (concrete mindset) when preparing to check text for misspellings and that they should ask themselves “why” (abstract mindset) when preparing to receive negative feedback (Nguyen et al., 2019). They were following the research advice without ever reading the research.  

Numerical Targets 

When analyzing the race times of almost ten million marathon runners, Allen et al. (2017) noticed that many more people finish the race in 3:59 hours compared with 4:01 hours. Similar effects were observed around every round hour and the half-hour marks. The reason? Round hours are popular targets for marathon runners, and targets increase motivation. Another demonstration of the power of numbers comes from the popular target of walking 10,000 steps daily. There is little medical research that backs up this number. It originated in Japan and served to market the first pedometer invented there. Yet, it is a popular goal target that many have attempted to reach.  

Goals often come with numerical targets: how much and how soon (e.g., save $10,000 by the end of the year). Targets are so popular that people often use them to describe their goals. They might say that their goal is to save $10,000, even though their goal is to save money, and $10,000 is merely the target. Numerical targets often change the nature of the goal from open-ended to all-or-nothing. Instead of striving to become a better runner or a supportive partner, a person can set their goal at completing a marathon in under 4 hours or cooking a meal for their partner three times a week.  

One reason goal targets increase motivation is that people see anything below them as a loss, which they care deeply to avoid. According to the principle of loss aversion (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979), a person who sets their target at saving $10,000 will be disappointed if they “only” saved $9,900. On the other hand, saving $10,100 will not make them much happier than saving exactly $10,000. Anything above the set target is a gain, which is nice but unnecessary. 

Another reason targets increase motivation is that they help people calculate their progress. An early model of goal pursuit, developed by George Miller (Miller et al., 1960), described pursuing a goal as closing a discrepancy toward a numerical target. His cybernetic model offered a feedback loop consisting of four steps and captured in the acronym “TOTE” (Test, Operate, Test, Exit). Specifically, goal pursuit starts with calculating the distance and effort needed to reach a goal’s end state (Test), which leads to investing a certain amount of effort toward the goal (Operate). Another assessment of the distance and effort required to reach the goal (Test) follows this effort investment, and the process cycles around recursively until the end state is reached, at which point the process ends (Exit). According to this model, once a person sets a target, they can determine how far they are from achieving it and mobilize efforts to eliminate the gap. This cybernetic model inspired much of the research on how target setting motivates action.  

Principles of Target Setting 

The study of setting goal targets originated in management research. Doran et al.’s (1981) classic S.M.A.R.T acronym suggested that goal targets need to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. Locke and Latham (1990; 2020) found evidence for a different set of partially overlapping five principles: Clarity, Challenge, Commitment, Feedback, and Task complexity, although only clarity and challenge directly address target setting, whereas the other principles refer to pursuing goals in general. In the years that followed, much of the research on target setting explored the effects of four principles: setting challenging, measurable, actionable, and self-set targets. 

Challenging targets

Goal targets motivate when they are challenging. Research on achievement motivation (Atkinson, 1957; Atkinson & Feather, 1966) and energization (Brehm et al., 1983; Wright, 1996) find that difficult, but not impossible, targets lead to mental and physical preparation (e.g., an increase in heart rate), which results in maximum effort investment. For example, Wright et al. (1986) found the greatest systolic blood pressure reactivity when preparing for a moderately difficult memory task compared with an easy or extremely difficult task. Targets pose a challenge. Finishing a project by the end of the week is more challenging and hence, motivating, than finishing this project by the end of the month.  

People intuitively set optimistic deadlines to motivate themselves. The planning fallacy is the tendency to underestimate the time and money required to complete a task. The desire to motivate oneself and others partially explains this fallacy.[3] In one study, students chose to set earlier than necessary deadlines for submitting coursework to motivate themselves (Ariely & Wertenbroch, 2002). In another study, students set earlier than necessary deadlines only when they expected their homework to be difficult (vs. easy). Expecting they will need to motivate themselves to do the work, students committed to finishing it sooner (Zhang & Fishbach, 2010).  

Measurable targets

Targets are motivating when they use simple metrics. Getting eight hours of sleep is more straightforward to monitor than getting enough sleep, so the former is more motivating. Locke and Latham (1990) found that in work settings, specific difficult targets always lead to improved performance compared with telling workers to “do their best,” which allows a wide range of satisfactory performances. Further, some metrics are easier to apply than others. It is easier to monitor the number of pages one reads than the number of words.  

Even specific, measurable targets are only effective if they can be easily translated into action. Dieters sometimes set the goal of eating at most 1,500 calories daily. For many, this is an optimistic goal with a precise target. Yet a calorie is hard to measure. It is not directly observable, and it is hard to translate calories into action (e.g., know how many calories one burns in a day). This led researchers to develop metrics of food intake in terms of the percentage of the suggested daily allowance. Or marking cafeteria items with green (healthy), yellow (less healthy), or red (unhealthy) “traffic light” labels. Indeed, such labels reduced the consumption of red items and increased the consumption of green items over two years (Thorndike et al., 2014). 

Self-set targets

Effective targets are often self-set. As mentioned above, people tend to motivate themselves with challenging targets when left to their devices. On the other hand, targets set by others often evoke psychological reactance. The person abandons the goal because pursuing it feels like a threat to their sense of freedom. To increase commitment, managers often set the target together with their employees or invite the employees to self-set their targets (Locke & Latham, 2002).  

Recognizing Malicious Goal Targets 

Between 2011 and 2015, Wells Fargo opened an estimated 3.5 million fraudulent accounts for unwitting customers, allowing the bank to make more money in fees and meet internal sales targets (Srinivasan & Goldberg, 2020). The reason? Back then, Wells Fargo set a target for bank employees to sell at least eight financial products per customer, called the “GR-eight initiative.” The intention was to increase productivity; the result was increasing unethical behavior.  

This is one example of how setting malicious targets can undermine the motivation to behave ethically and apply oneself to the task (Ordóñez et al., 2009). Other times, setting an overly ambitious target can result in an unhealthy diet, sports injuries, and generally not getting the positive outcomes of pursuing a goal. Because malicious targets are unrealistic, they often lead people to give up on the goal. Cochran and Tesser (1996) coined the what-the-hell effect to describe situations where people abandon a goal because the target seems unrealistic. So, only because a person cannot realistically lose 20 pounds, they might give up on healthy eating altogether. Similarly, the false-hope syndrome (Polivy & Herman, 2000) occurs whenever people set unrealistic weight-loss targets due to overconfidence or extreme optimism. Such aspiring dieters set themselves up for failure and ultimately give up.  

Other malicious targets are too narrow and leave out essential aspects of the task. When one’s target is to walk 30 minutes a day, one might leave important muscle groups out of a fitness routine. Further, goal targets with short-term horizons can lead people to neglect their long-term interests. A classic study with cab drivers in New York City (Camerer et al., 1997) found that drivers intuitively set a daily target. As a result, they stop working as soon as they hit their daily target and miss out on opportunities to make more money when the demand temporarily increases (e.g., on rainy days).  

Incentives as Mini Goals 

In the early 1900s, when French colonists created a bounty system that offered the people of Hanoi 1 cent per dead rat, those people started breeding rats as their source of income. Notably, while the incentive system failed at its intended outcome—reducing the rat population—it was clearly influential in modifying behavior.  

More recent programs documented more desirable behavior change in response to incentives: when people were offered a few cents per gym visit, their behavior changed as intended; they started exercising more (Milkman et al., 2021), and when children were offered tokens for eating fruits and vegetables, they ate more fruits and vegetables in school (Loewenstein et al., 2016). Yet some incentive programs have null or disappointing effects on changing behavior. For example, when Fryer (2011) analyzed the impact of financial incentives in 200 urban schools in Dallas, Chicago, and New York, he found no evidence that incentives increased student achievement.  

The study of incentives has a long history in psychology. Understanding when and how rewards and punishments work originated in psychology by the behaviorism movement. Behaviorists were initially interested in classical conditioning. Recall Pavlov’s (1928) research on salivating dogs at the sound of a bell that announced an upcoming meal. Yet, by the mid-twentieth century, behaviorism has mostly shifted toward studying operant conditioning, that is, how schedules of reinforcement influence behavior (Skinner, 1965). Since then, psychologists have been interested in a broad range of incentives beyond the food at the end of a rat’s maze, including, for example, social acceptance, money, and the removal of pain. In addition, work in behavioral economics explored when monetary incentives fail to produce the desired outcome as a key to understanding how these incentives work (Gneezy et al., 2011; Kamenica, 2012). 

Sometimes, incentives make a goal. The only reason for breeding rats was getting the bounty. Other times, incentives are an added benefit for pursuing a goal a person already has. They serve as a mini goal. A person may wish to exercise or eat healthily for the health benefits but be more inclined to do so if short-term financial incentives are added. Indeed, gymgoers rarely just show up at the gym, swipe in to cash the reward, and then go home. They stay and exercise. Further, the same activity—e.g., obeying traffic laws or paying taxes—might be motivated purely by the negative incentive of paying fines for some but also by pursuing personal safety and social responsibility for others. Either way, incentives can change the meaning of actions. In turn, the way people interpret incentives—their understanding of why they are compensated—is the key to predicting the impact of incentives on behavior.  

Reward the Right Thing 

One of the earliest lessons from research on incentives alluded to in Hanoi’s rat massacre is that incentive programs often reward the wrong thing. The majority of Israel’s top police officers hold academic degrees from unaccredited universities. The reason? Police officers get a salary raise for completing an academic degree, not for getting a high-quality education. The incentive is to study just to get the certificate with no regard to the content and level of education (Briener, 2021). 

 Finding the right thing to reward is also challenging when rewarding teamwork at school or work. The academic system, for example, is designed to reward individual achievements through grades and awards. When students work on a group project, they are still graded as individuals rather than as a group, which is one reason why strong students are often too hesitant to delegate the work and let other team members shine. Further, rewarding the quality of work is more complicated than rewarding quantity. Creativity is especially hard to measure and hence, to reward. This leads teachers to reward students based on the length of their work rather than its depth or originality (Hennessey & Amabile, 2010). 

Rewarding success on avoidance goals is especially tricky, as it often involves rewarding the discovery of mistakes or receiving bad news. To avoid sickness, for example, a person needs to reward their physician for searching and discovering early symptoms, and to minimize ethical violations, an organization needs to reward a whistleblower for reporting unethical or fraudulent behaviors.   

Too Many Incentives  

In the early 1970s, Mark Lepper et al. (1973) discovered that rewarding nursery school children with a gold star and bright red bow for drawing decreased their interest in drawing once the reward had been removed. Making the activity multifinal such that it allowed for self-expression and provided a prize decreased, instead of increasing engagement. The reason? Adding the award shifted the goal of drawing from self-expression only to self-expression plus a prize, and once the prize was removed, the children felt they were getting less for their efforts; they rejected the unfinal activity that served only self-expression. According to the overjustification effect, having too many incentives can backfire.[4]

Moreover, even when incentives are not removed, added incentives can sometimes negatively affect motivation. So, for example, in one study, paying women to donate blood decreased their willingness to donate by almost half[5] (Mellström & Johannesson, 2008). And when nursery school children learned that carrots and crackers would make them strong or smart (e.g., help them learn to count to 100), they were less interested in eating these foods. They inferred that the foods were less tasty (Maimaran & Fishbach, 2014). A similar effect was documented with adults in campus cafeterias across several US colleges. Food labels that emphasized health benefits (e.g., “Healthy Choice Turnips,” “Nutritious Green Beans”) decreased consumption by almost 30 percent compared with food labels that emphasized taste (e.g., “Herb ’n’ Honey Balsamic Glazed Turnips,” “Sizzlin’ Szechuan Green Beans with Toasted Garlic”; Turnwald et al., 2019).  

Having too many incentives can backfire whenever, once the incentive is removed, there is insufficient justification to act (i.e., the person is disappointed by the loss of the incentive) and when the incentive dilutes the association between the action and the original goal. Recall that according to the dilution principle, the more goals, including incentives (i.e., mini goals), a single activity serves, the weaker the association between the activity and the focal goal and the less instrumental the activity seems for this goal. When justification becomes overjustification, it is often because the added benefits dilute the perceived relationship between pursuing an activity and achieving the original goal (and the additional benefits are not sufficiently attractive to compensate for this).  

Incentives can further obscure the impact of actions. When Gneezy and Rustichini (2000) introduced a fine for parents who were late to pick up their children from daycare, more rather than fewer parents were late for pickup. The penalty changed the social contract between parents and daycare teachers. While arriving late was considered unethical before the fine, it was perceived as paying for childcare services once the fine was introduced. Punishing substance abuse can similarly obscure its impact on one’s health. When Americans turn 21, they might feel it is safer to drink alcoholic beverages because they construed the risk of drinking in terms of getting caught rather than getting sick or making bad decisions.  

Whether incentives provide a justification or an overjustification may also depend on the person’s experience with the activity. Unlike the children in Lepper’s study, paid artists produce more, not less, art than unpaid artists. And raises boost rather than suck out employees’ motivation. When people are familiar with pursuing an activity and are aware of their goal, adding incentives might not undermine their motivation. There is no dilution, only extra justification.  

Uncertain Incentives 

In behaviorism, intermittent reinforcement refers to the delivery of a reward only in some instances of performing a desirable behavior. This reward schedule tends to yield greater effort than a fixed reinforcement schedule, in which the reward always follows the behavior. Why? Because it is unpredictable. When animals get food in some successful instances but not others, the behavior persists because the lack of rewards does not signal its complete absence, only that it is temporarily unavailable.  

Research on achievement motivation similarly advocated using uncertain incentives (Atkinson, 1957). When incentives are unpredictable, people are challenged and work harder. Athletes stay motivated because of, rather than despite, the fact that victory is never a sure thing.  

Uncertain incentives are also more exciting. The lure of lotteries is that winning is never guaranteed. People are motivated to find out whether and how much they have won. Resolving curiosity is a motivational state (Loewenstein, 1994; Marvin & Shohamy, 2016). For example, Shen et al. (2015) had participants complete a challenging task (drinking 1.4 liters of water in one setting) in return for a monetary prize. Those who were offered an uncertain reward, either $2 or $1, to be determined by a coin toss, were more motivated than those who were offered a guaranteed payment of $2. As a result, more people in the uncertain reward condition completed the task. Notably, people prefer certain rewards when they have a choice (consistent with Kahneman & Tversky, 1979’s prospect theory), but they often work harder toward uncertain rewards.  

PART II:  SUSTAINING MOTIVATION 

After setting a goal, the next challenge is pursuing it. People often start with what Peter Gollwitzer and colleagues referred to as implementation intention: spelling out the when, where, and how to pursue the goal. These intentions often follow the format of “If situation X is encountered, then I will initiate goal‐directed behavior Y.” When people set implementation intentions, they are better able to identify and act on opportunities to pursue their goals (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006; Gollwitzer, 1999). For example, when a job seeker forms the intention “if it is Monday morning, then I will review new job postings and apply to several jobs,” they are more likely to follow through with their goal (Gollwitzer & Brandstätter, 1997).  

This section addresses the processes involved in sustaining motivation as people carry out their plans. First, it describes the natural fluctuations in motivation over the course of pursuing a goal. People’s enthusiasm and resource investment change over time and with progress. These fluctuations can inform interventions to increase motivation. Second, people seek and respond to feedback on their progress, which in turn influences their motivation. This section describes the psychology of feedback on goal pursuit and interventions that facilitate learning from it.   

The Course of Motivation 

Motivation can continually increase or decrease over the course of pursuing a goal. Other times, motivation might follow a u-shape pattern, initially decreasing and then increasing, an inverted u-shape pattern, or it might fluctuate such that any increase will be followed by a decrease in motivation (Lu et al., 2022). 

Motivation Increases 

When, in the 1930s, the behaviorist Clark Hull put rats in a straight alley, he observed they were progressively increasing their running speed from the beginning of the alley toward the food at the end. It was the first demonstration of the goal gradient effect—the increase in motivation with proximity to the reward—and likely the first study into the course of motivation, that is, how motivation changes over time (Hull, 1934).  

More recently, the goal gradient effect was documented with humans. Café patrons returned more frequently the closer they were to completing a loyalty card for a free cup of coffee. Participants who rated songs online increased their efforts as they approached the reward for completing the task (Kivetz et al., 2006). Other studies found that borrowers accelerate debt repayment when they are close to paying off a loan (Brown & Lahey, 2015), and donors accelerate giving when they are close to hitting a funding target (Dai & Zhang, 2019). 

One reason progress increases motivation is that with progress, each action covers a greater proportion of the remaining distance to completing the goal. Finishing freshman year in college completes 25% of a 4-year college degree. But finishing senior year completes 100% of what is left to achieve a college degree. For the person pursuing an academic degree, the motivation to complete the last year is, therefore, stronger than any year before—they get more in return for one year of studying. Moreover, Gestalt psychology identified that the desire for closure increases with progress. People are highly motivated to finish what they start (Zeigarnik, 1927). A third account of the increase in motivation with proximity to goal completion conceives that a goal’s end state is a reference point on prospect theory’s value function (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). According to prospect theory, the value function is S-shaped: concave in the region of gains (i.e., above the goal end state) and convex in the region of losses (i.e., below the goal end state). This value function is steepest closest to achieving the goal, making the last few steps in achieving a goal the most psychologically rewarding (Heath et al., 1999).  

The goal gradient effect refers to all-or-nothing goals such as completing a college degree and reaching food at the end of a maze. In contrast, there is no clear end point for open-ended goals such as adhering to a weekly workout regimen or reading academic papers, and there is generally diminishing utility for continuous effort. Each action contributes less than the one that came before it. For example, this week’s first workout contributes more to one’s health than the 10th workout. Yet, with progress, motivation often increases. The reason is that pursuing the goal increases commitment.  

Commitment is a function of value and expectancy. When we pursue a goal, we infer we value it more; otherwise, why did we do it? Indeed, self-perception (Bem, 1972) and dissonance (Festinger, 1957) theories argue that people learn about their goal commitment from their past actions. Further, pursuing a goal increases the expectancy of success or self-efficacy: the belief that achieving the goal is feasible (Bandura, 1997; Bandura & Cervone, 1983). The result is that with progress, motivation increases. For example, according to research on the sunk cost effect after investing in a goal, people will be more committed to keep investing even if it no longer makes sense to do so (Arkes & Blumer, 1985).We might finish a beverage that does not taste good only because it was expensive. 

Mere attention to progress further increases motivation above and beyond actual progress. For example, when people stand in line, they are more excited about the product they are waiting for when they look back at the people behind them than when they look forward at those ahead. So, when amusement park visitors looked back while standing in line, they were more excited about the upcoming ride (Koo & Fishbach, 2010).  

Motivation Decreases 

Yet, while motivation often increases with progress, other times, progress decreases motivation. The cues that activated the goal (e.g., the meeting in which a work project was assigned or an advertisement for healthy eating) may have a short-term impact. As the goal becomes less accessible, motivation declines (Bargh et al., 2001). In addition, pursuing goals often requires the completion of effortful tasks that can drain the individual’s resources over time. Depletion of both mental energy (Inzlicht & Schmeichel, 2012) and physical energy (Baumeister et al., 2018) can reduce motivation.[6]

According to discrepancy theories (Carver & Scheier, 1998; Higgins, 1987), people’s sense of falling behind motivates action, whereas successfully making progress decreases motivation. The cybernetic model mentioned above (TOTE) states that people calculate the magnitude of the discrepancy between the present state and the desired end state. Greater discrepancy guides action toward closing that gap, whereas fast progress turns off this need-to-progress alarm (Miller et al., 1960; Powers, 1973).  

Goal research distinguishes the motivation to complete a goal from doing it right (Touré-Tillery & Fishbach, 2014). These motivations—do it and do it right—often overlap such that doing something quickly or doing a lot of it is doing it right. For example, for a runner in a race, running quickly is, by definition, doing it right. Yet other times, these motivations diverge. A person who lies at a job interview is eager to get the job, and a student who rushes through a final paper is eager to graduate the class, yet they both compromise their personal standards, that is, their motivation to “do it right”.  

Research on licensing effects found that beyond the motivation to do more (or do it faster), the motivation to adhere to higher performance standards can also decline over time. People relax their efforts after recent pursuits of virtuous goals such as improving health and being egalitarian or altruistic (Khan & Dhar, 2006; Mullen & Monin, 2016; Strahilevitz & Myers, 1998). Licensing effects emerge when prior virtuous actions or merely expressing virtuous attitudes lead to the inference that sufficient progress has been made toward the goal. This inference, in turn, licenses individuals to relax their efforts and attend to other, often less virtuous, goals. For example, Monin and Miller (2001) found that expressing egalitarian attitudes in one context boosts the perception of having high moral credentials and increases the likelihood that individuals will subsequently relax their egalitarian goals and exhibit prejudiced behaviors in another context. 

To combat the decrease in motivation, some researchers suggested using temporal marks to signal beginnings (e.g., the start of the year, month, or week). According to the fresh start effect (Dai et al., 2014; 2015), to the extent that people think of their ongoing goals as temporally bounded (e.g., a weekly exercise goal), reminding them of a temporal mark (e.g., today is Sunday) creates a sense of beginning and in turn, boosts motivation.  

Work on the dynamics of goal motivation identifies when completed versus missing actions are more motivating and hence, when we should expect motivation to increase versus decrease (Fishbach et al., 2014). It distinguishes between two dynamics: commitment-promotes-consistency and progress-promotes-balancing. When goal pursuit signals commitment, it increases motivation, as people wish to behave consistently. For example, after a successful midterm, a student is more likely to continue working hard to excel in the final exam. Alternatively, when goal pursuit signals sufficient progress has been made, it decreases motivation. After doing well on the midterm, the student may conclude she is ahead and balance her progress with more time devoted to social media (Dunbar et al., 2018; Fishbach & Dhar, 2005). In this dynamic, motivation decreases post-action but increases if the person considers their lack of progress. A student may be motivated to work hard for the final because they did not do well on the midterm.   

The cognitive framing of goal pursuit matters. Thinking of past achievements as a signal of commitment and construing the absence of achievements as a signal of lack of progress will both increase motivation. So, for example, when students were unsure about their commitment, they were more motivated to study when they considered the materials they had already covered (vs. were yet to cover), which signaled they were committed. In contrast, when students were sure about their commitment, they were motivated to study when they considered the materials they had not covered (vs. covered materials), which signals their insufficient progress (Koo & Fishbach, 2008). 

U-Shape Motivation and the Middle Problem 

For all-or-nothing goals, motivation often follows a U-shape function. People are enthusiastic at the beginning. At the end of pursuing a goal, their motivation picks up again. In the middle, they often lose steam and feel stuck (Bonezzi et al., 2011, Touré-Tillery & Fishbach, 2012, 2015).  

One reason is that in the middle, actions seem to have the most negligible impact on pursuing a goal. For a student who needs to complete several classes to earn a degree, the second class will double the progress to date, while the last class will cover 100% of the remaining distance to complete the goal. In contrast, the middle class will have less impact on the progress to date or the remaining progress. It would seem less critical, and motivation will be low. It follows that to sustain motivation, it is beneficial to ask which is smaller in size—progress-to-date or remaining progress. For example, when a sushi restaurant that ran a loyalty program emphasized the progress to date for beginners and the remaining progress for those who purchased many meals, they were able to attract more diners overall (Koo & Fishbach, 2012) 

Further, actions in the middle have less impact on a person’s identity and self-esteem. It is easier to hide things from others and oneself in the middle (Oyserman et al., 2006). For example, Maya Bar-Hillel (2015) found that naïve test makers hide the correct answer in the middle of the answer set. So, if there are four possible answers, they are more likely to put the correct one as B or C than A or D. Because it seems easier to hide from oneself and others in the middle, people not only do less but also relax their performance standards in the middle (i.e., their motivation to get it right). For example, they might be more likely to cheat or cut corners when in the middle of the task. In one study, participants were asked to cut five identical shapes using scissors. Their first and last shapes were neat, but in cutting their middle shapes, participants (quite literally) cut corners (Touré-Tillery & Fishbach, 2012).  

Given that people experience fast progress at the beginning and end but feel stuck in the middle, one solution is to keep middles short. Instead of an annual saving goal, people often set monthly saving goals. Instead of a monthly exercise goal, they set weekly ones.  

Feedback  

 Feedback is critical for goal pursuit. Knowing how far one has come and how much one still needs to do allows people to monitor their progress in pursuing a goal. Further, positive feedback informs people of their correct and successful actions, which they should repeat. Negative feedback informs them of mistakes and actions they should avoid. The valence of feedback is orthogonal to how informative it is. In an environment with only one route to success, positive feedback on successful actions is more informative than feedback on one of the many ways to fail. Yet, negative feedback could be more informative if there are many ways to succeed and few ways to fail. Nonetheless, there are emotional and cognitive barriers that prevent people from learning from negative feedback.  

Emotional Barriers to Learning from Feedback 

It is generally easier to learn from positive than negative feedback. Positive feedback is emotionally rewarding. Negative feedback, in contrast, is emotionally costly and threatens peoples’ sense of self-worth. Although people may want to learn from it, they often hold a competing goal to feel good about themselves, which leads them to disengage from negative feedback (Baumeister, 1998; Grundmann et al., 2021; Sedikides & Strube, 1997).  

So, for example, when participants in one study received positive feedback that they guessed correctly the answer to a question with two possible answers (e.g., whether a symbol in an unfamiliar language means an animal or an object), they learned. They were able to report the correct answer on a subsequent test. But when they initially guessed the wrong answer and received negative feedback, even though they could easily infer the right answer—it was the one they did not choose—many of them did not learn (Eskreis-Winkler & Fishbach, 2019). Unless people have strong reasons to learn from failure, they tune out to protect their egos.  

When people learn from negative feedback and failure experiences, it is often through regret, which is a counterfactual emotion that leads people to consider what they did wrong and how they could have done things differently (Epstude & Roese, 2008; Zeelenberg & Pieters, 2007). When participants were prompted to engage in counterfactual thinking after working through an anagram task—that is, consider how they might have done better—their performance improved on a subsequent trial (Reichert & Slate, 1999). Also, when children become developmentally old enough to experience regret, they are better able to learn from failure (O’Connor et al., 2014).  

To promote learning, researchers often design interventions that remove the ego from the feedback. For example, people might learn from someone else’s mishaps instead of their own. The downward social comparison to a struggling other might boost the observer’s self-esteem, which allows them to learn (Suls et al., 2002). In addition to learning from others’ mishaps, people also learn from others’ attitudes toward feedback. For example, children are more likely to have adaptive beliefs toward challenges when their parents view mistakes as enhancing rather than debilitating (Haimovitz & Dweck, 2016, 2017).  

Carol Dweck’s mindset theory explores how to increase learning from negative feedback in education contexts. The key is recasting setbacks as an opportunity to learn (Dweck, 2006; Dweck & Leggett, 1988). People with a growth mindset believe their intelligence can develop with practice, while those with a fixed mindset think it cannot. These lay theories, in turn, guide the lessons learned from negative feedback. People who believe they can grow and develop do not view negative feedback as a diagnostic of fixed capacity. This buoys their confidence, allowing them to attend to and learn from feedback. Studies that taught students a growth mindset generally observed increased academic achievement and confidence (e.g., Yeager et al., 2019), yet the effects are not universal (Burnette et al., 2023). Students who benefited from learning a growth mindset tended to be those facing difficulties in school and who had teachers who supported challenge-seeking (Muenks et al., 2020; Porter et al., 2022; Yeager & Dweck, 2020). 

Moreover, a growth mindset is associated with lower depletion of mental resources (Job et al., 2015a). For example, students who believed willpower is abundant and grows with practice invested more in academic goals, consequently getting higher grades than students who thought willpower was limited (Job et al., 2015b). In another study, framing discomfort as a sign of goal achievement, emphasizing that it enables learning and growth, increased motivation to engage in improvisation training (Woolley & Fishbach, 2022).   

Other strategies that increase learning from negative feedback involve cognitive distancing—for example, speaking about oneself in the third person. When people adopt a neutral, third-party perspective, they distance the ego and learn (e.g., asking “why did Ethan fail?” instead of “Why did I fail”; Kross et al., 2014). Another approach is to shore up the ego, for example, by encouraging those who experienced failure to advise others on what they have learned (Eskreis-Winkler et al., 2018). In one study, high school students who gave advice to younger students improved their grades over the next academic quarter (Eskreis-Winkler et al., 2019).  

Notably, committed individuals and experts can learn from negative feedback better than uncommitted individuals and novices. Goal commitment protects people from the ego-threatening effects of negative feedback (Finkelstein & Fishbach, 2012; Louro et al., 2007). Indeed, 7th graders were more likely to revise their work post negative feedback if the teacher accompanied the negative feedback with an encouraging note that reaffirmed the student of their ability (Yeager et al., 2014).  

Cognitive Barriers to Learning from Feedback 

Negative feedback often carries unique information for goal pursuit. The spread of successful instances of anything—their statistical variance—is smaller than that of unsuccessful instances of that same thing (Unkelbach et al., 2021). At the opening of his novel Anna Karenina, Tolstoy writes, “All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” (Tolstoy, 1878). Modern psychological research agrees. This makes negative feedback often superior for learning. Because successful paths to a goal are more similar to each other than unsuccessful paths, learning about the wrong path carries unique information. Further, negative feedback is often more elaborated and nuanced because it describes performance that defies expectations. If it is noticed (despite being unexpected), it evokes deeper information processing (Hastie, 1984).  

Yet, people usually do not expect negative feedback, making learning from it more cognitively difficult than learning from expected positive feedback. According to the confirmation bias (Nickerson, 1998, Wason, 1968), people selectively attend to confirmatory evidence. If failure is not the intended consequence, it is cognitively harder to notice, realize what caused it, and eventually learn from it. Instead, people might ignore the experience.   

Further, people might “learn” the wrong lesson from negative feedback. Research on learned helplessness reveals that in the face of adverse outcomes, people and other animals often learn that the world is cruel and that punishments cannot be avoided. After dogs got shocks that they could not prevent and humans were forced to suffer unpleasant noise, neither dogs nor humans tried to manipulate their environment when it was possible to turn off the shocks or noise (Hiroto & Seligman, 1975; Seligman & Maier, 1967).  

Learning from negative feedback further requires deducing what an incorrect response teaches about the correct response. Learning by elimination requires more mental effort. A study that demonstrated this barrier presented participants with three boxes containing monetary prizes (a) a large gain, (b) a moderate gain, and (c) a small loss. Before choosing which box to open to win the prize, players were offered the opportunity to learn about the location of either the moderate gain or the small loss. In this game, information on the location of the loss is superior: if the player knows to avoid this box, they will earn more on average. Yet roughly a third of participants chose to learn about the location of the moderate win, thus unable to see that the losing box contained better information (Eskreis-Winkler & Fishbach, 2020).  

Interventions that address cognitive barriers to learning from feedback often reduce the mental effort required to learn, increase the availability of cognitive resources, or change the culture around failure. For example, directly pointing out the information in negative feedback lessens the effort required to learn. Allowing more time for learning from and celebrating failures (and not only successes) similarly facilitates learning and staying motivated.  

PART III: MULTIPLE GOALS 

The existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) argued that the “purity of heart is to will one thing.” Modern psychological research deems this impossible. People constantly navigate multiple goals. A simple lunch decision can involve a compromise between tasty, healthy, environmentally responsible, and not-too-expensive food. More significant decisions, such as which career to pursue or house to buy, are often subject to greater internal debate and resolving goal conflicts.    

Generally speaking, two or more goals can compete with or complement each other. When goals are competing, people can seek compromise within a single action or over a sequence of actions. For example, when participants could only choose one pain medication, they selected the option offering moderate relief for a moderate duration (a compromise between two goals). But when they could select any number of options, they preferred a combination of one option offering immediate relief for a short duration and another offering delayed relief for a long duration (satisfying one goal at a time; Bonezzi et al., 2012). 

This section addresses research on goal tradeoffs and the psychological processes involved in seeking to compromise versus prioritize between goals. It also reviews the unique characteristics of self-control conflicts and how people exercise patience in pursuing long-term goals.  

Compromising Versus Prioritizing Goals  

A person may wish to both be a night owl and be able to watch the sunrise, or they may want to get out of debt while also enjoying a luxurious summer vacation. How do people resolve the inevitable conflicts between these goals? Theoretically, they can compromise by seeking a middle ground or alternating between pursuing these goals. Alternatively, they may prioritize one of the goals over the others.  

These are two opposite approaches for resolving goal conflicts. When people compromise, they strike a balance between two or more opposing goals to satisfy them all partially. Each goal will be partially achieved, and no goal will be completely left behind. The person chooses to make progress on all fronts. Research on balancing and licensing finds that progress toward one goal can often justify the pursuit of a conflicting goal (Dhar & Simonson, 1999; May & Irmak, 2014; Monin & Miller 2001). At times, merely symbolic or planned future progress justifies switching to another goal. For example, when White Americans had the opportunity to voice support for Barack Obama before the 2008 election, they were subsequently more likely to agree that certain jobs are better for white people than for Black people (Effron et al., 2009). An egalitarian action, such as supporting a Black candidate, felt like an excuse for expressing racial discrimination among those holding these views (and the goal to advance their own group). In another domain, when people stated an intention to watch a highbrow movie or read a highbrow magazine in the future, they were more likely to choose lowbrow movies and magazines for immediate consumption (Khan & Dhar, 2007). The opposite of balancing is highlighting. When people highlight, they stick to a single goal and repeatedly pursue it until it is fully satisfied. For example, after exercising, they are more likely to choose healthy food, and after expressing an egalitarian view, they are more likely to take consistent actions.   

Like when people pursue just a single goal, whether a goal-related action is interpreted as a sign of commitment or progress often determines subsequent action (Fishbach et al., 2014). When people construe a goal-related action as a sign of progress, they balance, subsequently shifting to conflicting goals. Highlighting arises when people interpret an action as an expression of commitment, inferring that a focal goal is within reach and important (Gal & McShane, 2012). As a result, they prioritize it over other goals. Because increasing commitment to a particular goal has the implicit effect of decreasing commitment to conflicting goals, it becomes less important to identify a compromise.  

Variety seeking is another form of goal compromise: People may switch between options over time or select different options within a given choice set to partially satisfy multiple goals (McAlister & Pessemier, 1982; Ratner & Kahn 2002). They may choose, for example, different workout activities or different cuisines, for different days of the week. By pursuing multiple goals, people can signal control and productivity (Etkin & Mogilner, 2016).  

The opposite of variety seeking is consistency seeking. People are consistent when they form habits, which are learned dispositions to repeat past tendencies (Galla & Duckworth, 2015; Neal et al., 2013). Habits represent consistent behavior that prioritizes one goal over others, for example, a daily morning workout instead of switching between exercising and sleeping late.  

Unsurprisingly, another example of seeking compromise is the compromise effect: a preference for moderate choices and a distaste for extremes. Moderate or “middle” options satisfy several goals partially and no goal fully (Simonson, 1989). For example, in consumer choice, the compromise option may offer an average product at an average price (Sheng et al., 2005). Yet, there are times when people wish to prioritize goals, and they exhibit compromise avoidance (Simonson & Tversky, 1992).  

Choosing to Compromise Versus Prioritize 

Whether people seek to compromise or prioritize goals depends on several factors. First, identity matters. When people’s goals reflect their identity (whether in the eyes of others or  themselves), they prefer to fully satisfy a single goal rather than partially satisfy conflicting goals. This is because when communicating their identities, people do not want to send mixed signals (White et al., 2014). Moreover, people prioritize when they see the tradeoff between goals as a “taboo trade-off”—one that involves a sacred value and a secular goal (Mullen & Monin, 2016; Tetlock et al., 2000). For example, the framing of the decision between arriving more quickly and following the speed limit matters. If people see it as an ethical conflict between convenience and safety, they will prioritize safety; otherwise, they will seek a compromise (driving slightly above the speed limit).  

The relationship between the subgoals and means to one goal as complements versus substitutes also matters. Complementarity implies that pursuing one means makes the next one more effective, and this relation yields prioritization. Substitutability or equifinality means that the first means renders the second redundant and yields compromise. For example, when two handbook chapters seem to substitute, a reader may only read one before switching to something else. But when readers think of these chapters as complements (e.g., the first helps them understand the second), they read both (Shaddy & Fishbach, 2018).  

Similarly, people choose to compromise when the marginal utility of additional goal-related actions decreases. For example, most people would derive much utility from a morning workout. A second workout, perhaps at lunch, might still be useful, but less so than the first. Working out for yet a third time, after work, would be overkill. Because the utility function for these actions is concave (Greene & Baron, 2001), people switch to another goal. On the other hand, actions or items that exhibit increasing marginal utility lead to prioritization, as in the goal gradient effect (the first purchase makes it more likely that the person will come back to the same café and less likely that they will try someplace new; Kivetz et al., 2006). The utility function of all-or-nothing goals is convex, which encourages focusing on a single goal until it is achieved (Festjens & Janiszewski, 2015).  

For compromises that involve alternatives between goals over a sequence of actions, the time of making the decision also matters. When making choices for the entire sequence simultaneously, people tend to seek a compromise between goals more than when they make these choices sequentially (Simonson, 1990). For example, Khan and Dhar (2007) asked participants to choose movies to rent and manipulated whether participants considered these decisions in isolation or alongside future decisions. Options included highbrow movies, such as Schindler’s List, and lowbrow movies, such as Ocean’s Eleven. Participants who considered their decisions simultaneously alongside future decisions were more likely to balance their goals by choosing a lowbrow movie this week and a highbrow movie next week. Indeed, simultaneous choice promotes greater variety seeking, licensing, and the compromise effect—all manifestations of compromises between goals.  

Self-Control and Patience  

A self-control dilemma is the ultimate goal conflict (see Hofmann, this volume). It involves a goal and a temptation, or what a person believes they ought to do and what they want to do instead. Exercising self-control is hard because momentary desires (like getting more sleep) can be at least as powerful as overarching goals (of getting up to work), and they pull in the opposite direction. According to Wilhelm Hoffman et al. (2012), people experience momentary desires (e.g., eat, drink, sleep, smoke, use social media, spend money, have sex) for about half of their wake time. About half of those desires conflict with other goals (e.g., not eating or drinking, to stay awake); hence they pose a self-control problem.   

Self-control conflicts have occupied human thought since (at least) the beginning of documented history. They appear in ancient mythologies, as in the biblical couple Adam and Eve and the Greek myth of Odysseus and the sirens. Indeed, in one of the first demonstrations of a precommitment strategy, the resourceful Odysseus tied himself to the mast to avoid following the beautiful singing of the deadly sirens.  

To assess self-control, researchers rely on executive functioning tests and self-report measures (Gustavson et al., 2015; Malanchini et al., 2019). For example, the grit scale is a self-report measure of perseverance and passion for long-term goals (Duckworth et al., 2007). When people agree that setbacks do not discourage them, that they are hard workers, that they finish whatever they begin, and so on, their grit scores are high. These “gritty” individuals resolve goal conflicts in favor of the long-term goal. They are more likely to obtain advanced degrees, have higher GPAs in college, and do better basic cadet training at West Point, among other positive outcomes.  

Self-control develops with age (Allemand et al., 2019; Casey et al., 2013), and individual differences in self-control predict professional and financial outcomes (Benjamin et al., 2020). Further, people who report strong self-control also tend to be happier and have more love. In contrast, a lack of self-control is associated with low relationship commitment, binge eating, alcohol use, occasional speeding, and crime (de Ridder et al., 2012).  

Success at self-control requires that the person first detect and then battle temptations (Myrseth & Fishbach, 2009). People detect a temptation when they realize that they should not do something even though they want to do it or that they should do something even though they do not want to. Detecting a temptation is not trivial because most temptations are not explicitly announced (e.g., by an experimenter) and have a negligible impact if indulged in moderation. One beer does not make a person an alcoholic and losing one’s temper once does not end a relationship. In moderation, each of these is an acceptable, harmless behavior.  

Accordingly, detecting temptation is more likely when people consider making the same decision on multiple occasions. They adopt a broad decision frame (or bracket; Rachlin, 2000; Read et al., 1999). For example, people tend to overspend on “exceptional” or irregular items such as a bottle of champagne and a ticket for a play. When people thought about making such purchases once, they were willing to pay 30-40% more compared with when they considered every time they would want to make these purchases in a given year (Sussman & Alter, 2012). Adopting a broad frame helped them recognize that these purchases undermined their financial goals.  

Once a conflict has been identified, the mental processes of battling temptation begin. Self-control strategies operate by increasing the motivation to adhere to the goal and decreasing the motivation to give in to temptation. The result of exercising self-control is that two opposing forces with similar motivational pull—a goal and a temptation—get further apart, with the motivation to adhere to the goal getting significantly stronger. For example, a study by Giné et al. (2010) offered smokers who wanted to quit a savings account in which they deposited funds for six months. If they quit smoking within that time, their money was returned; otherwise, their money was forfeited to charity. This self-imposed reward (for quitting) and punishment (for smoking) changed the motivational strength of both adhering to the goal and giving in to temptation, which increased smoking cessation (see stickK.com for a similar commitment platform). 

Anticipating potential obstacles and temptations is often the key to success in self-control. When people anticipate a problem, they are emotionally and physically better able to counteract it (i.e., counteractive control; Trope & Fishbach, 2000; Fishbach & Converse, 2010). Research on mental contrasting similarly found that identifying the gap between the present and desired state motivates goal adherence (Oettingen et al., 2009). According to Gabrielle Oettingen’s WOOP strategy, there are four steps one should follow: wish, outcome, obstacle, and plan. When people reflect on a goal they wish to achieve, the specific outcome, what will stand in their way of achieving the goal, and how they plan to overcome that obstacle, they are more successful (Saddawi-Konefka et al., 2017). 

Forming Habits 

Self-control often relies on behavioral patterns (Rachlin, 1995). To succeed, the person needs to adhere to the goal each time they encounter a temptation. If done successfully, they develop a habit. People rely on habits when wearing a seatbelt or sunscreen, completing a daily morning exercise, and brushing their teeth. These behaviors do not require careful consideration of the goal and the temptation. Instead, the person follows a pattern; their self-control is an automatic response to the environment (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2003; Galla & Duckworth, 2015, see also research on implementation intentions; Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).  

Habits are learned associations between contexts (e.g., locations, preceding actions) and action. As discussed above, they allow for consistent action. Once habits have formed, the context brings the response to mind (Wood & Neal, 2007). But notably, not all habits facilitate an overarching goal. Bad habits undermine self-control, while other habits are neutral for goals. For example, habitual popcorn eaters at the movies were minimally influenced by their hunger or how much they liked the food, so they ate equal amounts of stale and fresh popcorn (Neal et al., 2011). Bad habits are often difficult to overcome. To change a habit, it is often helpful to control the cues that trigger this response (Wood et al., 2005). For example, a person may choose to watch movies in a theater that does not sell popcorn. Alternatively, people need to exert more effortful control to inhibit the unwanted response once it is activated by cues (Quinn et al., 2010). 

Patience 

Patience involves choosing a larger-later reward over a smaller-sooner reward. It is a goal conflict that requires delaying gratification. Walter Mischel developed the marshmallow test to study how young children delay gratification (Mischel & Ebbesen, 1970). His test typically offers children a choice between two food rewards (e.g., one vs. two marshmallows). If the child waits, they can get the larger reward. The number of minutes they wait defines their “patience score,” and while the correlations are relatively small, patience scores predict academic achievement in adolescence (Mischel et al.,1989; Duckworth et al., 2013; Watts et al., 2018).  

Another approach to measuring patience involves estimating people’s time preferences and calculating their discount rate—that is, how much they value an outcome less when it is delayed. Typically, people are presented with a series of intertemporal choices; for example, they may be asked to choose between getting $100 today and $110 next month. A person who chooses the immediate outcome is said to have a higher discount factor than someone who chooses to wait. Thus, the person who waits is less impulsive or more patient.  

The tendency to discount the future more is associated with addictive behaviors (e.g., smoking, alcohol, substance abuse; MacKillop et al., 2011), less exercise and higher BMI (Chabris et al., 2008), relationship infidelity (Reimers et al., 2009), and low FICO score (Meier & Sprenger, 2012). The reason? Intertemporal choices capture the resolutions of a goal conflict between larger-later and smaller-sooner options beyond monetary payoffs (e.g., between drinking and staying sober or between overeating and weight-watching).   

At times, patience is the hallmark of success in self-control (Frederick et al., 2002). Yet, patience requires that a person is not only able to wait but also that they desire to do so. If a person does not value the long-term outcome or has low trust that forgoing smaller-sooner outcomes will pay off, they might choose the immediate option without trying to resist. Waiting can be risky, so only when people trust that larger-later rewards will be delivered, they choose to wait (McGuire & Kable, 2013; Roberts & Fishbach, 2022). For example, when community trust in the government in Bangladesh increased, people made more patient monetary choices (Jachimowicz et al., 2017), and when children believed experimenters were more reliable, they waited longer in the marshmallow test (Kidd et al., 2013).  

Interventions that increase patience make it either easier or more psychologically valuable to adhere to a long-term goal. For example, it is easier to wait when deciding in advance. According to the common difference effect, preferences between two delayed outcomes often switch when both delays are incremented by a given constant amount (Loewenstein & Prelec, 1992; Thaler, 1981). A person would be tempted to choose $100 now over $120 next month but be less tempted to choose $100 next year over $120 in 13 months, even though the only difference between these two tradeoffs is a constant delay of one year.  

In contrast, it is more valuable to exercise patience when the rewards are more attractive, such as when deciding between larger magnitudes of money. According to the magnitude effect (Thaler, 1981), discount rates are lower for larger magnitudes. For example, people may prefer $10 immediately over $20 in 1 year, but they would also prefer $2000 in a year over $1000 immediately, even though the latter choice is equal to making the former choice 100 times.  People are also more patient for foods that they like more. When choosing between a large coffee later and a small one now, participants were more patient when the tradeoff was between a favorite instead of non-favorite coffee brand (Roberts et al., 2021). To increase patience, it might be helpful to increase the attractiveness of the reward.  

One strategy that increases the attractiveness of rewards is the wait-to-choose technique. This strategy introduces a time interval between learning about the smaller-sooner and larger-later options and choosing between them (Dai & Fishbach, 2014; Imas et al., 2022). As people wait to choose, they value what they are waiting for more, which makes them more patient. In a natural demonstration of this technique, in 2008, stimulus payments were distributed in the U.S.A. based on the recipients’ last two digits of their social security number (effectively random assignment). People who waited longer to receive their stimulus payment made more patient decisions with the money, choosing to save a greater portion instead of spending it immediately (Thakral & Tô, 2021).  

Another strategy involves increasing the sense of psychological connection to one’s future self, or self-continuity (Bartels & Rips, 2010). People are more likely to choose to wait for a larger-later outcome if they believe their future self—the person who will benefit from waiting—is psychologically connected to them. Thus, using virtual reality to simulate people’s image at retirement age increases motivation to save by making people feel personally connected to their future selves (Hershfield et al., 2011).  

PART IV: SOCIAL SUPPORT 

Many of the goals people hold are shared with others. Whether it is a study group, a team at work, or starting a family, people work with others toward a common goal. Hence, topics such as social loafing and free riding (Kravitz & Martin, 1986; Latane et al., 1979), as well as coordination and division of labor (Wegner et al., 1991), are central to research on goals. Further, the people around us, what they do, and what goals they endorse all influence how we pursue our individual goals. Understanding when people conform (Asch, 1956; Goldstein et al., 2008; Hornstein et al., 1969; Sherif, 1936), complement (Ward & Lynch, 2019), and rebel (Brehm, 1966) is, therefore, a central question for goal research. This section reviews research on pursuing shared goals with others as well as pursuing goals in the presence of others.  

Shared Goals  

As Ringelmann observed with his rope-pulling experiment, when several people pull a rope together, social loafing and free riding prevail. Each person puts less strength into their efforts. Social loafing refers to the tendency to exert less effort when working in a group than alone (Karau & Williams, 1993). Free riding refers to the tendency to benefit more than contribute to a group (Hardin, 1968). When people avoid paying taxes but enjoy public goods such as highways or public parks, they are free riders (Albanese & Van Fleet, 1985).  

Social loafing and free riding occur in all groups, from sports teams to organizational committees to symphony orchestras and juries. This phenomenon is so robust that it is sometimes referred to as the “social disease” (Latané et al.,1979). Whereas the presence of an audience can increase motivation (i.e., social facilitation), when others help, motivation decreases.  

The main reason people work less hard on a shared goal is that the group context makes it harder to perceive a single person’s contribution to goal achievement. When actions do not make a noticeable impact on a goal—they are a drop in the bucket—the motivation to invest in this goal declines. Accordingly, remedies for social loafing often involve identifying individual contributions to a group goal (Kravitz & Martin, 1986). For example, having people sign their names when donating to a cause (Koo & Fishbach, 2016) or having students work in small groups of 3-4 instead of 7-8 will combat social loafing, as well as lead to more realistic assessments of one’s own contribution (i.e., less overclaiming, Caruso et al., 2006). In a study of the effect of the size of the group, Bibb Latané et al. (1979) asked participants to make noise by clapping their hands and shouting out loud in a group. As the number of people in a group increased from one to six, each person started making less noise. 

Yet, relaxing efforts while working with others is not always a “disease” or a problem that needs to be addressed. It might be an efficient division of labor. The underlying assumption in the interventions that combat social loafing and free riding is that people tend to procrastinate when they believe others are working toward a shared goal, causing the group to do worse than it would otherwise. But, at times, people relax their efforts to coordinate with others rather than take advantage of others. For example, family members might take turns making dinner, as having everyone working together is less ideal. Too many cooks might make a delicious broth, but only while neglecting the laundry.  

Beyond turn-taking, people often complement each other’s efforts using their unique skills or interests. Wegner et al. (1991) compared how real couples and pairs of strangers worked together on a memory challenge. Participants had to memorize facts about television shows, science, and other topics. Teams made of true couples outperformed strangers because they had an efficient division of labor. When couples were learning new information, each person focused on mastering the answers in categories they were relatively expert in while paying little attention to the other half of the categories, which they assumed their partner would master.  

The downside of an efficient division of labor is that people develop unique expertise with too little overlap. The group loses its flexibility in assigning roles to pursue a shared goal or in compensating for changes in the makeup of the group. One study found that married couples tend to assign one person to handle the household finances. The downside is that over time, their partner’s lack of engagement translates into a lack of basic financial knowledge that is critical for navigating today’s complex decisions. The partner not assigned the financial responsibilities ends up with poor financial literacy, which hinders their independence (Ward & Lynch, 2019).   

Other times, people fail to contribute personal efforts because they believe the group will be better off if another group member does the work. They believe an unequal allocation will maximize the benefits for the team. For example, a couple may assign childcare responsibilities to one person only because they think it comes more naturally for that partner. What appears selfish could be driven by a mental calculation of how to minimize the work for the team.  

Individual Goals in the Presence of Others   

The real and imagined presence of others influences goal pursuit. First, observers’ mere presence influences motivation (e.g., social facilitation vs. choking under pressure; Zajonc, 1965, 1980). Second, real and imagined others apply conformity pressure, set social norms, serve as role models, and provide direct and indirect support (Carrell et al., 2011; Fisher & Oppenheimer, 2021; John & Norton, 2013; Zee et al., 2020). Beyond the effect of relationships on goals, goals shape relationships (Fitzsimons et al., 2015; Fitzsimons & Finkel, 2018; Hofmann et al., 2015). People connect over shared goals and over supporting each other’s individual goals. The study of motivation is closely related to the study of interpersonal relations.  

Mere Presence 

The presence of observers improves performance on simple, well-practiced tasks and undermines performance on complex tasks (Bond & Titus, 1983; Guerin, 2010; Latane, 1981; Uziel, 2007; Triplett, 1898). According to Zajonc (1965, 1980), the presence of observers causes excitement and physiological arousal that can facilitate performance on easy tasks and for experts (on tasks related to their expertise). But on more challenging tasks and for novices, the arousal is too extreme, and it distracts and undermines performance (Blascovich et al., 1999), causing them to choke under pressure (Baumeister, 1984).  

The presence of others can also create competition and rivalry. This, in turn, can fuel motivation, but only if people are not too distracted by others or do not direct their resources at sabotaging others’ successes instead of advancing their own goals (Converse & Reinhard, 2016; Huang et al., 2019; Pike et al., 2018).  

 Beyond altering overt behavior, the presence of others also affects people’s perceptions of their own actions. Being observed magnifies the perceived impact of the action. So, for example, people judged a piece of chocolate to be more flavorful when they tasted it while another person did (Boothby et al., 2014). Players in a badminton tournament felt their contribution toward their teams’ wins and losses was larger when their audience was larger (Steinmetz et al., 2016). Because people consider the perspective of others, the presence of more perspectives leads them to augment perceptions of the impact of their actions; they infer from the presence of more observers that their action had more impact. Even merely suspecting that others are watching, as in learning that one’s speech is recorded, increases the perceived impact of actions.  

Conformity, Social Norms, and Role Models 

People tend to conform to others when choosing a hobby, a profession, what to buy, and what to eat. They would like to have or say what others have had or said. Solomon Asch was the first study conformity (Asch, 1956). In his line perception experiments, participants consistently agreed with false statements about which line was the length of a comparison line when others gave that wrong answer. This was a demonstration of normative conformity: participants determined that it paid off to give the wrong answer even though they recognized it was wrong. It is the same reason people may follow a fashion they disagree with—wearing heels or a tie—because they believe it will help them get a job. 

Other times people conform because they believe others have figured out what to do or say. This is informational conformity. It can lead people, for example, to adopt a fashionable diet. They rely on the wisdom of the crowds. In a study, when hotel guests read that “the majority of guests in this room reuse their towels,” they were more likely to adopt this descriptive norm than when hotel management appealed to their environmental concerns (Goldstein et al., 2008). 

A third reason people conform is that they see themselves as part of the group. The boundaries between the self and others are often not clear-cut. Instead, people experience psychological overlap with close others. For example, they use “we” even when they did not contribute to a goal, as in “we won the game” when referring to their favorite sports team. When people adopt the experiences and goals of close others, they conform. Research on shared reality finds that people experience the world similarly and adopt similar viewpoints to their close others (Echterhoff et al., 2009; Hardin & Higgins, 1996). If friends have a goal, a person will share that goal with them because they are part of a single whole. 

While conformity often explains the goals people choose, other times, instead of mimicking close others, people choose actions that complement what others say and do. The experience of psychological overlap accounts for both coordination patterns: conformity and complementarity. That is, people respond to others’ goals similarly to how they would react to their own goals. They ask themselves whether, given what “we” said or did (in reality, what the other said or did), it is best to repeat this statement or action or do something else. For example, if a person states that animal welfare is important to them personally, it could also become important for their partner. The partner’s commitment to protecting animals increases. But if the first person has already pursued the goal (e.g., working in a dog shelter), the partner might be less likely to conform because they, as a couple, may have already done enough.  

A study that demonstrated complementarity informed college participants that students on their campus are highly moral. The participants were later more discriminatory in their hypothetical hiring practices: they were willing to hire a less-qualified white person over a more-qualified Black person for a police job, excusing their behavior by telling themselves that the work environment would be hostile to Black people (Kouchaki, 2011). Other students’ moral actions licensed (i.e., complemented) participants’ one-time deviations. Another study documented that among pairs of participants, when one person announced their favorite candy flavor, their friend was more likely to get it for themselves. But if the first person ate that favorite candy, the friend was more likely to choose another flavor for themselves to complement their friend’s choice (Tu & Fishbach, 2015). 

Another way others influence goal adherence is by serving as role models. A role model is someone to whom a person feels close and who displays the qualities that a person would like to see in themselves. A role model might be a friend, family member, or a teacher, but also more remote figures such as celebrities or politicians. An influential role model does more than set an example; they set expectations they want their followers to live up to. An athlete who wants their followers to be in great shape is a more influential role model for motivating the pursuit of fitness than an athlete who only cares that their fans watch them on TV.  

Negative role models also influence goal pursuit. These are the people most would want to distinguish themselves from. A person might choose to do something to be different than what a negative role model does. For example, a student seeking to rebel might conceptualize the straight-A student as a negative role model, just as an employee seeking to be ethical would distinguish themselves from a corrupt manager. When people consider those they do not wish to be like—a negative role model—they learn from these models and change their behavior to be different (Lockwood et al., 2002). 

Goals and Relationships 

The people in our life help support our goals. They often serve as means (e.g., romantic partners suppose each other’s career aspiration). We pull closer to those who both support and ease the path to their ambitions and push away from those who hinder them. And because a relationship involves mutual support, it is only successful when all parties feel they are getting something and giving something (Fitzsimons et al.,2015; Lakey & Orehek, 2011; Iida et al., 2008; VanDellen et al., 2015).  

On the other hand, when people objectify others, treating them like a means to achieve their goals, the relationship suffers. It is no longer based on mutual support. One study documented that people objectified the same individuals more when they were pictured at work (e.g., in an office) than not at work (e.g., in a coffee shop). At work, people are often considered a “resource” (hence, “human resources”). The tendency to objectify people at work was, in turn, associated with more negative work experiences (Belmi & Schroeder, 2021).  

Other studies documented that people move toward and away from others as they prioritize or deprioritize the goals those people can help them achieve. In one study, students who thought about the academic progress they needed to make felt closer to the friend who would help them get there compared to a friend who was less helpful. However, when students thought about the progress they had already made, they felt equally close to both friends (Fitzsimons & Fishbach, 2010).  

CONCLUDING REMARKS 

This chapter reviewed goals and motivation research in psychology. It addressed the challenges of setting a goal, sustaining motivation through feedback and progress monitoring, and managing multiple goals, including resolving self-control conflicts. It also described the principles of leveraging social support for shared goals and goals pursued in the presence of others.  

A long-standing question in motivation research refers to the role of conscious awareness in the processes addressed here. How automatic is the process of setting and pursuing a goal? Research on goal activation documented priming effects: Contextual cues activate goals outside of conscious awareness, and these goals guide the selection of means that facilitate their pursuit, often also outside of conscious awareness (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2000; Bargh et al., 2001; Custers & Aarts, 2010; Shah & Kruglanski, 2003). Notably, goal setting and goal striving can each be independently conscious (or not). For example, priming cues for money can boost selfish behavior (Lodder et al., 2019; Vohs, 2015). While those who act selfishly might be fully aware that they prioritize pay over other motives (conscious goal striving), they are unaware of what triggered this goal (unconscious goal setting). In contrast, when people exaggerate their school performance, stating their GPA is higher than it is, they often implicitly motivate themselves to study (unconscious goal striving). Though they are unaware that their exaggeration is strategic, they might be conscious of what made them prioritize their academic goal (Gramzow et al., 2003).  

More recent research documented unconscious motivational readiness: the mind prepares people to act on a goal without their conscious awareness. For example, when people experience a self-control conflict, they try to look away from the temptation and focus on the goal at hand (Stillman et al., 2017). And when people are unconsciously primed with a goal conflict, they adopt more careful information processing (Savary et al., 2015).  

These unconscious processes matter for goal pursuit. For example, when preparing to pursue a goal, people exhibit implicit positive evaluations of actions and objects related to the goal (Ferguson & Bargh, 2004). They further attribute importance to these actions. Implicit importance, in turn, predicts goal achievement, sometimes better than explicit beliefs about the importance of pursuing a goal. For example, the implicit importance of grades predicted studying and standardized testing performance over and above and better than explicit beliefs about the importance of academic pursuits (Critcher & Ferguson, 2016). 

But notably, conscious processes can override these implicit responses. For example, research on mindful attention (Papies et al., 2015) found that training participants to observe their thoughts in reaction to appetitive stimuli—observing these thoughts as merely mental events—reduced their effects on evaluation and action. After learning to observe their reactions to various pictures as passing mental events, participants’ sexual motivation no longer made opposite-sex others seem more attractive. Similarly, participants’ hunger levels no longer boosted the attractiveness of unhealthy foods, resulting in healthier eating choices.  

As a final point, the processes of goal pursuit described here are subject to developmental effects. They change over people’s lives (Brandtstädter & Rothermund, 1994; Freund & Baltes, 2002; Lachman, 2006; Schulz & Heckhausen, 1996). Specifically, there is growing attention to goal pursuit with an aging population in western society. Aging individuals often experience action crises—a conflict between pursuing and disengaging with a goal—when they confront increasing difficulty and repeated setbacks in adhering to their goals (Brandstätter et al., 2013). The challenge is to disengage from a goal when it no longer fits the person.[7] Further, with aging, goals shift from a predominant gain orientation in young adulthood to an increasing concern for maintenance and the avoidance of losses at an older age (Heckhausen et al., 2010; Mustafíc & Freund, 2012). 

A lifespan approach to motivation recognizes that opportunities are unevenly distributed for most goals. These opportunities increase, peak, and then decline (e.g., opportunities for having children or developing a career; Heckhausen et al., 2019). Such progressions create psychological processes directed at disengagement from goals. Goals are not only initiated; they are also removed when they are no longer useful.   

REFERENCES  

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ENDNOTES

The Handbook of Social Psychology, 6th edition © 2025 by Situational Press is licensed under Creative Commons- Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. This work may be copied and distributed only in unmodified form, for noncommercial purposes, and with attribution.

Note that the social-psychological distinction between an activity that is seen as a means versus an end is different from the lay distinction between an activity that is self-selected versus externally imposed. By that lay view of intrinsic motivation, undergoing a painful dental treatment is intrinsically motivating because the person is not paid to do it. By the social-psychological definition, it is not. ↑

The approach (BAS) and avoidance (BIS) scales tend to be uncorrelated or slightly negatively correlated, Mardaga & Hansenne, 2007), which suggests that some people have similar approach and avoidance tendencies. ↑

The planning fallacy is also the outcome of a cognitive bias: people tend to focus on the task at hand while neglecting all other demands on their resources when budgeting time and money. ↑

Notably, the overjustification effect may not be robust. It is often temporary, such that engagement increases after the initial decline (Goswami & Urminsky, 2017). ↑

Interestingly, offering payment for blood donation did not affect men, and letting women contribute the payment to charity canceled out that negative impact of willingness to donate. ↑

Note that some of the depletion effects may not be robust (Carter et al., 2015; Vohs et al., 2021). ↑

Notably, action crises are not limited to aging individuals, and the ability to disengage and then reengage with a goal is associated with subjective well-being at any age (Ghassemi et al., 2017; Marion-Jetten et al., 2022; Wrosch et al., 2003). ↑