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Although everyone strives toward valued goals, we suggest that not everyone will be perceived as doing so equally. In this research, we examine the tendency to use social class as a cue to understand the importance of others' goals. Six studies find evidence of a goal-value bias: Observers perceive goals across a variety of domains as more valuable to higher class than to lower class individuals (Studies 1-6). These perceptions do not appear to reflect reality (pilot study), and those who are strongly motivated to justify inequality show the bias to a greater extent (Studies 5 and 6), suggesting a motivated pathway. We also explore implications of the bias, finding that Americans tend to offer better opportunities to, and prefer to collaborate with, higher class than lower class others, revealing discriminatory outcomes that are partially driven by perceived goal value (Studies 2, 3, 4, 6). Results suggest that Americans expect higher class individuals to value achieving goals more than their lower class counterparts, fueling increased support for those who are already ahead. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

In addition to the team's shared goals, team members also often hold goals unrelated to the team. Research about such goals, which we call "extra-team goals" (ETGs), has been limited. In the current research, we examine how awareness of a team member's ETGs affects team outcomes. A laboratory experiment examines the effects of disclosure of different types of ETGs by one team member (target) on team performance, team viability, and team satisfaction while engaging in a brainstorming task. Our findings suggest that there are significant positive effects of ETG disclosure on team performance, team viability, and team satisfaction, and that these effects are mediated by perceptions of the target's commitment to the team's goal., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Sackett and Fitzsimons.)

Objective: What happens when people see others making progress toward a goal that they also hold? Is it motivating or could it undermine goal pursuit because people feel that they have made progress themselves (i.e., they experience vicarious goal satiation)?, Methods: We investigated these questions in a longitudinal field context - a group weight loss programme. N = 132 participants who were overweight or obese and attended weekly weight loss classes completed questionnaires over 11 weeks to investigate the consequences of observing other people making progress toward their goal of losing weight RESULTS: Observing others making good progress was associated with participants holding stronger intentions to lose weight themselves (B = 0.04, p = .012), positive goal-related affect (B = 0.27, p = .017), and feeling that they were also making progress themselves (B = 0.22, p < .001). However, observing others making good progress was also associated with losing a smaller amount of weight over the following week (B = .13, p = .005). Mediation analyses showed a significant indirect effect of observing others making good progress, via feelings about their own progress, on changes in weight, B = .02, 95% CI [.00, .04]., Conclusions: People who view others making progress tend to be less successful at losing weight themselves over the following week. The findings suggest that this is, in part, explained by the person feeling as if they have made progress themselves; thereby providing the first demonstration of vicarious goal satiation in a field context. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Many people strive toward health goals (e.g., try to lose weight) with other people. However, research into vicarious goal satiation (VGS) suggests that seeing someone else achieve their goal may lead people to believe that they have made progress themselves and undermine goal pursuit. What does this study add? A longitudinal test of VGS in a field context, namely weight loss groups. Observing other people do well was motivating for the observer. They also believed that they had made progress themselves and were less successful at losing weight., (© 2019 The British Psychological Society.)

Although women's underrepresentation in senior-level positions in the workplace has multiple causes, women's self-improvement or "empowerment" at work has recently attracted cultural attention as a solution. For example, the bestselling book Lean In states that women can tackle gender inequality themselves by overcoming the "internal barriers" (e.g., lack of confidence and ambition) that prevent success. We sought to explore the consequences of this type of women's empowerment ideology. Study 1 found that perceptions of women's ability to solve inequality were associated with attributions of women's responsibility to do so. Studies 2, 3, 5a, and 5b experimentally manipulated exposure to women's empowerment messages, finding that while such messages increase perceptions that women are empowered to solve workplace gender inequality, they also lead to attributions that women are more responsible both for creating and solving the problem. Study 4 found a similar pattern in the context of a specific workplace problem, and found that such messages also lead to a preference for interventions focused on changing women rather than changing the system. Studies 5a and 5b sought to replicate prior studies and document the weakened effects of messages that explicitly explain that women's "internal barriers" are the products of "external barriers" obstructing women's progress. This research suggests that self-improvement messages intended to empower women to take charge of gender inequality may also yield potentially harmful societal beliefs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

We investigated how power dynamics in close relationships influence the tendency to devote resources to the pursuit of goals valued by relationship partners, hypothesizing that low (vs. high) power in relationships would lead individuals to center their individual goal pursuit around the goals of their partners. We study 2 related phenomena: partner goal prioritization, whereby individuals pursue goals on behalf of their partners, and partner goal contagion, whereby individuals identify and adopt as their own the goals that their partner pursues. We tested our ideas in 5 studies that employed diverse research methods, including lab experiments and dyadic studies of romantic partners, and multiple types of dependent measures, including experience sampling reports, self-reported goal commitment, and behavioral goal pursuit in a variety of goal domains. Despite this methodological diversity, the studies provided clear and consistent evidence that individuals with low power in their relationships are especially likely to engage in both partner goal prioritization and partner goal contagion. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

Transactive goal dynamics (TGD) theory conceptualizes 2 or more interdependent people as 1 single self-regulating system. Six tenets describe the nature of goal interdependence, predict its emergence, predict when it will lead to positive goal outcomes during and after the relationship, and predict the consequences for the relationship. Both partners in a TGD system possess and pursue self-oriented, partner-oriented, and system-oriented goals, and all of these goals and pursuits are interdependent. TGD theory states that relationship partners' goals, pursuit, and outcomes affect each other in a dense network of goal interdependence, ultimately becoming so tightly linked that the 2 partners are most accurately conceptualized as components within a single self-regulating system., ((c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).)

In the new millennium, scholars have built a robust intersection between close-relationships research and self-regulation research. However, virtually no work has investigated how the most basic and broad indicator of relationship quality, relationship satisfaction, affects self-regulation and vice versa. In the present research, we show that higher relationship satisfaction promotes a motivational mind-set that is conducive for effective self-regulation, and thus for goal progress and performance. In Study 1-a large-scale, intensive experience sampling project of 115 couples (total N = 230)-we closely tracked fluctuations in state relationship satisfaction (SRS) and 4 parameters of effective self-regulation according to our conceptual model. Dyadic process analyses showed that individuals experiencing higher SRS than they typically do exhibited higher levels of (a) perceived control, (b) goal focus, (c) perceived partner support, and (d) positive affect during goal pursuit than they typically exhibit. Together, these 4 self-regulation-relevant variables translated into higher rates of daily progress on specific, idiographic goals. In Study 2 (N = 195), we employed a novel experimental manipulation of SRS, replicating the link between SRS and parameters of effective self-regulation. Taken together, these findings suggest that momentary increases in relationship satisfaction may benefit everyday goal pursuit through a combination of cognitive and affective mechanisms, thus further integrating relationship research with social-cognitive research on goal pursuit., ((c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).)

The psychological literature on self-control has illustrated the many benefits experienced by people with high self-control, who are more successful both personally and interpersonally. In the current research, we explore the possibility that having high self-control also may have some interpersonal costs, leading individuals to become burdened by others' reliance. In Studies 1 and 2, we examined the effects of actors' self-control on observers' performance expectations and found that observers had higher performance expectations for actors with high (vs. low) self-control. In Study 3, we tested the effect of actors' self-control on work assigned to actors and found that observers assigned greater workloads to actors with high (vs. low) self-control. In Study 4, we examined how actors and observers differed in their assessments of the effort expended by high and low self-control actors and found that observers (but not actors) reported that high self-control actors expended less effort than low self-control actors. Finally, we found that people high (vs. low) in self-control reported greater burden from the reliance of coworkers (Study 5) and romantic partners (Study 6), and this tendency led them to feel less satisfied with their relationships (Study 6). Together, results from these studies provide novel evidence that individuals' self-control affects others' attitudes and behaviors toward them, and suggest that these interpersonal dynamics can have negative consequences for high self-control individuals., ((c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).)

Research on close relationships has frequently contrasted one's own interests with the interests of the partner or the relationship and has tended to view the partner's and the relationship's interests as inherently aligned. The present article demonstrated that relationship commitment typically causes people to support their partner's personal interests but that this effect gets weaker to the extent that those interests misalign or even threaten the relationship. Studies 1a and 1b showed that (a) despite their strong correlation, partner-oriented and relationship-oriented concerns in goal-directed behaviors are separable and (b) relationship commitment strengthens only the link between relationship-oriented motivation and the goal pursuit (not the link between partner-oriented motivation and the goal pursuit). The remaining 7 studies zero in on circumstances in which the partner's and the relationship's interests are in conflict, demonstrating that (c) relationship commitment reliably increases the tendency to support the partner's personal interests when those interests do not pose a strong threat to the relationship but that (d) this effect becomes weaker-and even reverses direction-as the relationship threat posed by the partner's interests becomes stronger. The reduction or reversal of the positive link between relationship commitment and propartner behaviors in such situations is termed the Manhattan effect. These findings suggest that the partner-versus-relationship conflicts provide fertile ground for novel theorizing and empirical investigations and that relationship commitment appears to be less of a partner-promoting construct than relationship science has suggested; instead, its role appears to be focused on promoting the interests of the relationship., ((PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).)

A recurring observation of experimental psychologists is that people prefer, seek out, and even selectively "see" structure in their social and natural environments. Structure-seeking has been observed across a wide range of phenomena--from the detection of patterns in random arrays to affinities for order-providing political, religious, social, and scientific worldviews--and is exacerbated under psychological threat. Why are people motivated for structure? An intriguing, but untested, explanation holds that perceiving structure, even in domains unrelated to one's current behavioral context, can facilitate willingness to take goal-directed actions. Supporting this, in 5 studies, reminders of structure in nature or society increase willingness to engage in goal pursuit.

Two laboratory experiments and one dyadic study of ongoing relationships of romantic partners examined how temporary and chronic deficits in self-control affect individuals' evaluations of other people. We suggest that when individuals lack self-control resources, they value such resources in other people. Our results support this hypothesis: We found that individuals low (but not high) in self-control use information about other people's self-control abilities when judging them, evaluating other people with high self-control more positively than those with low self-control. In Study 1, participants whose self-control was depleted preferred people with higher self-control, whereas nondepleted participants did not show this preference. In Study 2, we conceptually replicated this effect while using a behavioral measure of trait self-control. In Study 3, individuals with low (but not high) self-control reported greater dependence on dating partners with high self-control than on those with low self-control. We theorize that individuals with low self-control may use interpersonal relationships to compensate for their lack of personal self-control resources.

This article explores how self-esteem and executive resources interact to determine responses to motivational conflict. One correlational and 3 experimental studies investigated the hypothesis that high and low self-esteem people undertake different self-regulatory strategies in "risky" situations that afford opportunity to pursue competing goals and that carrying out these strategies requires executive resources. When such resources are available, high self-esteem people respond to risk by prioritizing and pursuing approach goals, whereas low self-esteem people prioritize avoidance goals. However, self-esteem does not influence responses to risk when executive resources are impaired. In these studies, risk was operationalized by exposing participants to a relationship threat (Studies 1 and 2), by using participants' self-reported marital conflict (Study 3), and by threatening academic competence (Study 4). Executive resources were operationalized as cognitive load (Studies 1 and 2), working memory capacity (Study 3), and resource depletion (Study 4). When executive resources were ample, high self-esteem people responded to interpersonal risk by making more positive relationship evaluations (Studies 1, 2, and 3) and making more risky social comparisons following a personal failure (Study 4) than did low self-esteem people. Self-esteem did not predict participants' responses when executive resources were impaired or when risk was absent. The regulatory function of self-esteem may be more resource-dependent than has been previously theorized.

Despite the cultural ubiquity of ideas and images related to God, relatively little is known about the effects of exposure to God representations on behavior. Specific depictions of God differ across religions, but common to most is that God is (a) an omnipotent, controlling force and (b) an omniscient, all-knowing being. Given these 2 characteristic features, how might exposure to the concept of God influence behavior? Leveraging classic and recent theorizing on self-regulation and social cognition, we predict and test for 2 divergent effects of exposure to notions of God on self-regulatory processes. Specifically, we show that participants reminded of God (vs. neutral or positive concepts) demonstrate both decreased active goal pursuit (Studies 1, 2, and 5) and increased temptation resistance (Studies 3, 4, and 5). These findings provide the first experimental evidence that exposure to God influences goal pursuit and suggest that the ever-present cultural reminders of God can be both burden and benefit for self-regulation.

This article reviews the growing literature on the effects of self-regulatory strength (how much self-regulatory ability people have), self-regulatory content (the goals toward which people self-regulate), and self-regulatory strategies (the manner in which people self-regulate) on close relationships. The extant literature indicates that close relationships benefit when relationship partners (a) have greater versus less self-regulatory strength, (b) prioritize relationship-promotion goals versus self-protection goals, (c) facilitate versus obstruct each other's personal goal pursuits, (d) enact positive relationship behaviors using approach versus avoidance strategies, and (e) pursue shared goals using complementary versus similar regulatory focus strategies. Future research could fruitfully (a) delve deeper into the influences of self-regulatory content and strategies on relationships and (b) integrate multiple lines of research examining the effects of self-regulation on relationships., (© 2010 The Authors. Journal of Personality © 2011, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

A signature feature of self-regulation is that once a goal is satiated, it becomes deactivated, thereby allowing people to engage in new pursuits. The present experiments provide evidence for vicarious goal satiation , a novel phenomenon in which individuals experience "post-completion goal satiation" as a result of unwittingly taking on another person's goal pursuit and witnessing its completion. In Experiments 1 and 2, the observation of a goal being completed (vs. not completed) led to less striving by the observer on the same task. Given that an actor's strength of commitment affects goal contagion, we hypothesized that such commitment would be an important boundary condition for vicarious goal satiation. The results of Experiment 2 showed that observing stronger (vs. weaker) goal commitment lowered accessibility of goal-related words, but only when the goal being observed was completed. Implications of vicarious goal satiation for goal pursuit in everyday environments are discussed.

Three studies demonstrate a novel phenomenon--self-regulatory outsourcing--in which thinking about how other people can be instrumental (i.e., helpful) for a given goal undermines motivation to expend effort on that goal. In Experiment 1, participants who thought about how their partner helped them with health goals (as opposed to career goals) planned to spend less time and effort on health goals in the upcoming week. This pattern was stronger for depleted participants than for nondepleted participants. In Experiment 2, participants who thought about how their partner helped them with academic-achievement goals procrastinated more, leaving themselves less time for an academic task, than did participants in two control conditions. This pattern was stronger for participants who were told that procrastinating would drain their resources for the academic task than for participants who were told that procrastinating would not drain their resources for that task. In Experiment 3, participants who decreased their effort after thinking of an instrumental significant other reported higher relationship commitment to that individual than did participants who did not decrease their effort. The possibility for shared (or transactive) self-regulation is discussed.

Five studies support the hypothesis that beliefs in societal fairness offer a self-regulatory benefit for members of socially disadvantaged groups. Specifically, members of disadvantaged groups are more likely than members of advantaged groups to calibrate their pursuit of long-term goals to their beliefs about societal fairness. In Study 1, low socioeconomic status (SES) undergraduate students who believed more strongly in societal fairness showed greater intentions to persist in the face of poor performance on a midterm examination. In Study 2, low SES participants who believed more strongly in fairness reported more willingness to invest time and effort to achieve desirable career outcomes. In Study 3, ethnic minority participants exposed to a manipulation suggesting that fairness conditions in their country were improving reported more willingness to invest resources in pursuit of long-term goals, relative to ethnic minority participants in a control condition. Study 4 replicated Study 3 using an implicit priming procedure, demonstrating that perceptions of the personal relevance of societal fairness mediate these effects. Across these 4 studies, no link between fairness beliefs and self-regulation emerged for members of advantaged (high SES, ethnic majority) groups. Study 5 contributed evidence from the World Values Survey and a representative sample (Inglehart, Basañez, Diez-Medrano, Halman, & Luijkx, 2004). Respondents reported more motivation to work hard to the extent that they believed that rewards were distributed fairly; this effect emerged more strongly for members of lower SES groups than for members of higher SES groups, as indicated by both self-identified social class and ethnicity., ((PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).)

The authors draw on sociometer theory (e.g., Leary, 2004) and self-verification theory (e.g., Swann, 1997) to propose an expanded model of the regulatory function of self-esteem. The model suggests that people not only possess an acceptance signaling system that indicates whether relational value is high or low but also possess an epistemic signaling system that indicates whether social feedback is consistent or inconsistent with chronic perceived relational value (i.e., global self-esteem). One correlational study and 5 experiments, with diverse operationalizations of social feedback, demonstrated that the epistemic signaling system responds to self-esteem consistent or inconsistent relational-value feedback with increases or deceases in epistemic certainty. Moreover, Studies 3-6 demonstrated that the acceptance and epistemic signaling systems respond uniquely to social feedback. Finally, Studies 5 and 6 provide evidence that the epistemic signaling system is part of a broader self-regulatory system: Self-esteem inconsistent feedback caused cognitive efforts to decrease the discrepancy between self-views and feedback and caused depleted self-regulatory capacity on a subsequent self-control task., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.)

Past research has demonstrated that people's need to perceive the world as fair and just leads them to blame and derogate victims of tragedy. The research reported here shows that a positive reaction--bestowing additional meaning on the lives of individuals who have suffered--can also serve people's need to believe that the world is just. In two studies, participants whose justice motive was temporarily heightened or who strongly endorsed the belief that reward and punishment are fairly distributed in the world perceived more meaning and enjoyment in the life of someone who had experienced a tragedy than in the life of someone who had not experienced tragedy, but this pattern was not found for participants whose justice motive was not heightened or who did not strongly endorse a justice belief. These results suggest that being motivated to see the world as just--a motivation traditionally associated with victim derogation--also leads people to perceive a "silver lining" to tragic events.

In this article, we examine how the shifting motivational priority of personal goals affects relationship closeness. We hypothesize that people will draw closer to significant others who are instrumental (vs. noninstrumental) for a goal that has not been progressing well-a goal that is thus high in motivational priority. Once the goal has progressed successfully, we predict that people will cease to draw closer to instrumental others. Five studies support these predictions by showing that the impact of goal progress on reduced preference for instrumental others (Experiment 1) depends on the framing of progress as partial attainment (vs. greater commitment, Experiment 2) and the intention to balance across goals (vs. focus on one goal; Experiments 3-4). We find that moving away from instrumental others post progress is functional, in that it allows for drawing closer to those who are instrumental for alternative goals (Experiment 5).

How do everyday goals shape the way people categorize others in the social environment? Research on social categorization has emphasized the role of feature-based categories such as race and gender, showing that people rely on such categories when perceiving and remembering others. We tested the hypothesis that social perception may depend on a new type of category--what we call "goal instrumentality," or the extent to which others are useful for an active goal. We demonstrate that people make more memory errors within the categories of "instrumental" and "noninstrumental," and fewer between-category errors, when a goal has been subtly activated. We also demonstrate that people perceive others within the categories of "instrumental" and "noninstrumental" to be more similar, and others from the two different categories to be less similar, following subliminal goal activation. We discuss implications for the understanding of social categorization and the influence of goals on social cognition.

Four studies examine the hypothesis that goals adopted by high and low self-esteem people (HSEs and LSEs) to manage risk in romantic relationships may reflect global shifts in approach motivation and subsequently affect risk taking in nonsocial domains. In Studies 1 and 2, threats to participants' romantic relationships heightened HSEs' self-reported general approach motivation while lowering LSEs' approach motivation. In Studies 2 through 4, HSEs exhibited riskier decision making (i.e., a greater tendency to pursue rewards and ignore risks) in nonsocial domains following a relationship threat manipulation whereas LSEs made more conservative decisions. These results suggest that the romantic risk regulation may be inherently linked to a broader approach and avoidance system and that specific risk regulation behaviors may be driven by global motivational shifts to a greater degree than previously theorized.

Findings from 6 experiments support the hypothesis that relationship evaluations and behavioral tendencies are goal dependent, reflecting the instrumentality of significant others for the self's progress toward currently active goals. Experiments 1 and 3 found that active goals can automatically bring to mind significant others who are instrumental for the activated goal, heightening their accessibility relative to noninstrumental others. Experiments 2-5 found that active goals cause individuals to evaluate instrumental others more positively, draw closer to them, and approach them more readily, compared with noninstrumental others. Experiment 6 found that people who engage in goal-dependent interpersonal evaluations are more successful, receiving higher grades. Implications for understanding the social nature of self-regulation and the impact of personal goals on interpersonal relationships are discussed., ((c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

When people encounter threats, their attachment systems are activated and they become motivated to seek protection and support through proximity to their attachment figures. Theoretically, therefore, mental representations of attachment figures should be associated with goals related to attaining proximity and safety. The present studies explore this idea by examining the effects of a person's chronic attachment style and exposure to a particular attachment figure's name on the automatic activation of attachment-related goals. Studies 1 and 2 examine effects of exposure to the name of a security-providing attachment figure on willingness to self-disclose and seek support (two behaviors related to gaining proximity). Study 3 examines how exposure to names of different relationship partners (with whom a participant has felt secure, anxious, or avoidant) affects the mental accessibility of attachment-related goal words. Taken together, the studies support the idea that mental representations of attachment figures are associated with attachment-related goals.

Four studies examined the hypothesis that subtle language variations can have a causal impact on perceptions of relationships. In interpersonal interactions, language can function implicitly to reflect, perpetuate, and communicate relationship perceptions. Previous research has shown that interpersonal closeness and plural pronoun use are correlated; the current research demonstrates that manipulating pronoun use can lead people to perceive their own and other relationships as closer and higher in quality. In Study 1, participants who read about a relationship that was described using the pronoun we versus she and I perceived the relationship to be closer and of higher quality. Study 2 showed that pronoun variations similarly affected perceptions of participants' own ongoing relationships; Study 3 showed similar effects for perceptions of an actual interpersonal interaction. Study 4 examined potential mechanisms of this effect.

The calibration paradigm was used to test the competing hypotheses that (a) commitment motivates unduly negative evaluations of attractive alternatives (devaluation) versus (b) low commitment motivates exaggerated positive evaluations of attractive alternatives (enhancement). Single participants and dating participants low and high in relationship commitment were presented with an attractive, available person of the opposite sex and asked to judge the person's romantic appeal from their own perspective or from the perspective of their friends. Contrary to predictions based on the enhancement hypothesis, single and low-commitment participants did not provide higher ratings from their own perspective. In support of devaluation and calibration hypotheses, committed participants did provide lower ratings from their own perspective. Singles did not rate the target less attractive in a third condition in which the target was unavailable. However, dating participants, regardless of commitment level, rated the unavailable alternative negatively, consistent with social comparison processes and interdependence theory.

The mere psychological presence of relationship partners was hypothesized to trigger interpersonal goals that are then pursued nonconsciously. Qualitative data suggested that people tend to pursue different interpersonal goals within different types of relationships (e.g., mother, best friend, coworker). In several studies, priming participants' relationship representations produced goal-directed behavior (achievement, helping, understanding) in line with the previously assessed goal content of those representations. These findings support the hypothesis that interpersonal goals are component features of relationship representations and that mere activation of those representations, even in the partner's physical absence, causes the goals to become active and to guide behavior nonconsciously within the current situation.