I’ll take the high road: Paths to goal pursuit and identity-based interpretations of difficulty

Abstract

ABSTRACT When imagining their futures, people can prioritize getting there the easy way, prefer more demanding paths, or be indifferent to means and focus only on making progress. Identity-based motivation theory predicts and mixed effect regressions reveal that what people infer about themselves when facing unchosen life difficulties and when thinking about or working on goals feels hard shapes action (N = 537 undergraduates, three studies). To varying degrees, they can infer that unchosen life difficulties build character (difficulty-as-improvement), that chosen goals are really not for them (difficulty-as-impossibility), and that chosen goals are valuable for them (difficulty-as-importance). The more people endorse difficulty-as-impossibility, the more they choose ease. The more they endorse difficulty-as-improvement the more they disdain ease and prefer the effortful way.