(10-19-22)
In all human affairs there is always an end in view–of pleasure, or honor, or advantage.
Polybus, 125 bce
Plans
- Professor Reeve begin his discussion of goal setting and striving by considering plans: “The first motivational spring to action studies was the ‘plan.'” (p. 181) and reviews the work of Miller, Galanter, & Pribram (1960), Plans and the Structure of Behavior.
- a perceived mismatch between the present state and ideal state “instigates” the experience of “incongruity” which as motivational properties and leads to actions to remove/reduce the incongruity
- the TOTE model: test, operate, test, exit
- exit is usually achieved by reaching the goal/eliminating the incongruity, but may also be produced by “good enough” or frustration and “quit”
- discrepancy as a core motivation construct (difference between present state and ideal state)
- two types of discrepancies
- discrepancy reduction: negative feedback loop
- discrepancy creation: positive feedback loop (aspirational) (moderate arousal is experienced positively)
- a goal represents a discrepancy creation
Goals and Values
- Reeve (2018): “a goal is a future-focused cognitive representation of a desired end state the guides behavior.” (p. 186), “Like plans, goals generate motivation by focusing people’s attention on the discrepancy (or incongruity) between their present level of accomplishment . . . . and their ideal level of accomplishment” (p. 186).
- Decker (2018) suggests that: “A goal is the cognitive image of a future outcome.” (p. 342)
- Goals are specific outcomes that are sought, they usually have a definite conclusion, you know when you have reached your goal.
- Austin & Vancover (1996) suggested several dimensions of goals:
- Importance: goal’s attractiveness, intensity, relevance, priority, and sign (positive, negative)
- Difficulty: how challenging it is to achieve
- Specificity: very vague to precisely stated, quantifiable
- Temporal Range: goals range from proximal (immediate) to distal (delayed) and from short to long duration
- Level of Consciousness: our awareness tends to be greater for proximal goals than for distal goals (usually)
- Connectedness/Complexity: with increasing complexity, goals have more connections to behaviors, subgoals, and other goals
- Reeve (consistent with his model) would add: Goal Congruence: is the goal endorsed, feel authentic, and accepted/embraced/owned by the self. He believes that congruent goals lead to greater energy, direction, and persistence.
- his belief that more difficult goals lead to more energy/effort would only operate within certain limits
- he is correct that feedback is also crucial in enhancing performance: knowledge of results allow us to track progress (TOTE)
- Choosing a goal: the mindset theory of action suggests that selecting a goal is determined by it’s value/utility, probability, and effort; all these factors interact to determine which goal is chosen.
- Value or utility: will reaching the goal be satisfying or useful for future endeavors?
- Probability: how likely is it that the goal can be achieved?
- Effort: if alternatives are equally valued, then the one requiring the least time and effort is chosen
- The person who commits to a goal will persist in trying to achieve that goal until one of three outcomes occurs:
- the goal has been achieved
- the original goal has been displaced by another goal
- the goal has been abandoned
- (we can also work toward one goal while planning how to reach another)
- Since goals can range from immediate to delayed, the imagined future can motivate behavior, a feature goals share with incentives.
- A future positive goal is something we are motivated to try and achieve, a negative goal is something to avoid.
- Goals, like incentives, are affected by their distance in the future: both approach and avoidance motivation increase as the event draw closer but avoidance tendency grows more steeply
- This change in the strength of approach and avoidance tendencies results from delay discounting: the negative features are perceived/experienced less for distant events than closer events at a greater factor than positive features
Origins of goals
- Goals that satisfy needs
- Reeve notes that biological and psychological needs generate goals
- Values
- Environmentally activated goals
- Murray (1938) suggested that psychological needs could be evoked by environmental demands (presses)
- Decker suggests that goals may become associated with stimuli present in the situation in which goal achievement behavior occurs and, through repetition become able to active these goals
- Other people
- parents, siblings, teachers to role models and mentors
- culture and individual experience
- Personality
- Reeve suggests that personality traits can lead to “self-set goals”: He suggests that Extraversion could led to goals of gaining attention: acting as a career, and Conscientiousness to self-improvement and personal mastery goals. Possibly Openness to Experience may lead to intellectual or aesthetic values and thus goals; Conscientiousness might lead to values of order and responsibility and goals of serving society.
Values
- Values, in contrast to goals, are open-ended, they do not have a point of completion. You can reach/achieve a goal, you do not reach or achieve a value.
- Kelly Wilson has carried out research on the role of values in human adjustment and life satisfaction. His Valued Living Questionnaire has people consider ten broad categories of values:
- Family (other than marriage or parenting)
- Marriage/couples/intimate relations
- Parenting
- Friends/social life
- Work
- Education/training
- Recreation/fun
- Spirituality
- Citizenship/community life
- Physical self-care (diet, exercise, sleep)
- The VLQ-2 added two addition categories: The Environment (caring for the planet) and Aesthetics (art, literature, music, beauty)
- Much of Wilson’s work has focused on the effect of living consistent with one’s values or of failing to do so (Wilson is one of the developers of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, ACT)
- Wilson believes that values are chosen and, “values are not feelings. Although one may have very strong emotional responses in different valued domains, the two aren’t equivalent. Key to the distinction is that values are chosen patterns of activities that can be actively constructed by the individual. . . . Emotions often come and go. They may have patterns, but they aren’t chosen. Even thoughts often have this quality. If we attempt to actively have and not have certain thoughts, such purposeful manipulation has the potential to backfire.” (2008, p. 65)
- This is consistent with the view of human personality embodied in ACT (active, self-organizing, cognitive), a view that Dr. Reeve would probably be comfortable with