Goal Congruence and Positivity Toward College Major: The Role of Self‐Connection

Abstract

Promoting college student retention and career success remains a primary goal for higher education. Toward this end, we examined the role of goal congruity and self‐connection in the extent to which students feel positivity toward their major. Specifically, we tested the role of self‐connection in the relationship between goals and positivity toward college major among 188 college students. When we examined communal goals, a moderated indirect effect emerged, suggesting that communal goals related to self‐connection only when students' majors did not provide communal affordances. For agentic goals, an indirect effect emerged such that endorsing agentic goals (regardless of agentic affordances) promoted self‐connection. In both cases, self‐connection then related to views toward one's major. These results suggest that communicating the communal value of majors to college students might promote self‐connection and have positive implications for retention of college students. Furthermore, encouraging students to consider their communal and agentic goals might lead to feeling positively toward their major.