Možnosti uplatnenia teórie regulačného súladu pri predikcii dosahovania cieľov

Abstract

The main aim of the article is to point out the possibilities of researching the process of achieving goals from the perspective of regulatory fit theory. As part of the justification of this approach, the article presents the historically main theories of achieving goals – learning and performance goals (Elliot & Dweck, 1988), ego-involved and task-involved goals (Nicholls,1984), mastery and performance goals (Ames & Archer, 1988), which both may be in the dimension of approach or avoidance (Elliot & McGregor, 2001). Then attention is also focus to the motivational construct of regulatory focus (Higgins, 1997), which we connect with achieving goals. In the introduction, the achieved goals and types of regulatory focuses are presented in relation to their consequences. Mastery goals are focused on the development of one‘s own competence, and performance goals are characterized by the effort to overcome others, so they use social comparison. The approach dimension represents an effort to outperform others (performance goals) or one‘s previous performance (mastery goals), while the avoidance dimension represents an effort not to be worse than others (performance goals) or not to be worse compared to one‘s previous performance (mastery goals). For persons using the regulatory focus promotion, the occurrence of positive consequences is motivating, and for persons using the regulatory focus prevention, the fact that negative consequences do not occur is motivating. The article discusses the results of research dealing with which types of achievement goal (mastery and performance approach and avoidance goals) or regulatory focus (promotion and prevention regulatory focus) can be associated with more positive consequences in terms of achieving goals, while pointing out the inconsistency of these results. From this point of view, the hypothesis of regulatory fit appears to be a more unambiguous predictor of the success of achieving goals. Its principle is that the achieved performance goal is in accordance with an appropriate regulatory focus. For approach goals it is promotion regulatory strategy and for avoidance goals it is prevention regulatory strategy. In this case, regulatory fit is a better predictor of the success of achieving goals than the type of goal or regulatory focus itself. Even though the regulatory focus and achieved goals certainly have common features such as their definition through gains (promotion focus and approach goals) or losses (prevention focus and avoidance goals), they are different psychological constructs, because the goal rather represents the reasons for which behavior is realized and the regulatory focus is a concrete strategy for achieving goals. Thus, the fit between the focus and the type of goal may not always occur. At the end of the article we propose arrangements from the perspective of the regulatory fit hypothesis, which could improve the prediction of the success of the achieved goal. For example, studies conducted so far investigating regulatory fit did not take into account the possibility of changing the type of goal and the type of regulatory focus over time. Also, all studies are focused either on situational (which is relevant for the situation and is variable) or dispositional regulatory focus (a stable personality trait that refers to how a person typically strives to achieve a goal) independently and did not take into account that the fit between situational and dispositional regulatory focus equally positively predicts success in achieving the appropriate type of goal.