Goals in Personality, Emotion, and Subjective Well-Being

Abstract

Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll wind up somewhere else.” The humor of this statement almost disguises its wisdom. Without goals, human behavior would be random and directionless, and we would all doubtless end up somewhere other than where we would like to be. As we have seen so far, social cognitive psychology assumes that most important human activity is planful and is directed toward the attainment of desired ends and the avoidance of unwanted ends. Indeed, few beliefs are more central to our conceptions of human nature than those concerning our capacity for goal setting and self-regulation. Our ability to set goals, develop plans or strategies, and implement those plans influences our emotional states, our relationships with other people, and our adaptation to life’s challenges. Piaget (1967–1971) stated, “Life is essentially autoregulation” (p. 26), and indeed, research on learning in animals provides evidence for their capacity to engage in goaldirected behavior (Rescorla, 1987; Tolman, 1932/ 1967). However, human beings have developed a capacity for goal setting and self-regulation that goes far beyond that of other life forms. Indeed, our capacity for envisioning possible futures and guiding ourselves toward them over long stretches of time can be viewed as a uniquely human ability. Even the different human emotions are associated with different, largely social, goals (Lazarus, 1991a; Roseman, Wiest, & Swartz, 1994; Frijda, 1988).