Choice Of Goals Research Articles

A life span model of successful aging.

To lay the foundation for our model, we first describe existing conceptions of successful aging, underlying assumptions of development, and criteria for success. The model presented extends the discourse on this topic in three directions: (a) It frames the discussion of successful aging in the broader context of life course development; (b) it accounts for both normative and nonnormative (i.e., exceptional) success; and (c) it integrates motivational processes into a theory of successful aging. Successful aging is equated with the development and maintenance of primary control throughout the life course, which is achieved through control-related processes that optimize selection and failure compensation functions. Selection processes regulate the choice of action goals so that diversity is maintained and positive and negative trade-offs between performance domains and life stages are taken into account. Compensation mechanisms serve to maintain, enhance, and remediate competencies and motivational resources after failure experiences. Both compensation and selection processes are motivated by desires for primary control and can be characterized in terms of primary and secondary control processes.

You can't just leave the goal choice to the patient

You can't just leave the goal choice to the patient

Reactions to Feedback in Goal Choice and Goal Change Processes1

Two laboratory studies were conducted to test the effects of reactions to feedback on propensity to change an initial self‐selected performance goal. In Study 1, the performance of 228 subjects on a word search task was manipulated by varying puzzle difficulty. In Study 2, two‐dimensional goals (i.e., time and quantity) were first assigned and then chosen by 75 subjects. In Study 1, satisfaction with performance and self‐efficacy predicted goal change beyond the effects of past performance. Subjects lower in both satisfaction and self‐efficacy tended to lower initial goals, whereas those higher in either or both variables tended to raise them. In a post‐hoc analysis, goal‐performance discrepancies and motivational force interacted to explain satisfaction with performance for subjects experiencing negative feedback. This result was replicated in Study 2 for self‐selected quantity goals. In Study 2, satisfaction with performance explained goal choice beyond the effects of past performance for initial time goals and final quantity goals. Trade‐offs in the selection of dual goals occurred, with subjects selecting a difficult goal on one dimension and an easy goal on the other. Suggestions for future research and practice on self‐regulation of goals and performance are provided.

Goal Setting by Groups Performing an Additive Task: A Comparison With Individual Goal Setting1

This article compares goal levels and task performance of groups and individuals that are assigned or self‐set goals. Groups performed an additive task that allowed for direct comparison with individuals' i]ndependent performance of the task. Consistent with predictions, groups and individuals selected goals that were less difficult than assigned goals which required only a modest increase in performance. Group members and individuals who were assigned goals attained higher levels of performance than self‐set or no goal condition subjects. The prediction that group members and individuals who self‐set their goals would have more positive affective reactions to the goal‐setting situation than participants in assigned condition was supported. The results of this study are consistent with the existing literature on groups and individuals regarding effects of goals, performance, and affective reactions. Analyses also indicate that the group goal decision process involves a compensatory strategy in which an average of group member preferences for the goal was used to reach a group goal decision. Discussion focuses on the similarities and differences between the findings of self‐set and assigned goal‐setting situations for groups and individuals, with particular reference to goal choice strategies, goal expectancies, and efficacy.

The Westray Mine Disaster and its Aftermath: The Politics of Causation

AbstractCausation analysis is densely political in at least three ways. First, because causation is crucial to our system of attributing moral, legal and political responsibility, causation arguments are advanced for purely instrumental purposes. They do political work. Second, because any particular occurrence is the outcome of an almost infinite number of antecedent events, “but for” causation analysis produces trivial results. A judgement about causal significance is required and will depend, in part, on the goals of the analysis. The choice of goals is political, but unstated goals and hidden assumptions often exclude consideration of some possible causes as significant. These politics of causation need to be made explicit. Third, the institutional setting in which official determinations of causation are made influence the outcome. Hence, it is necessary to explore these as well. Each of these three dimensions of the politics of causation is explored through an analysis of the 1992 Westray mine disaster which killed 29 miners in Nova Scotia, and the official responses to it. It is argued that if the goal is to protect workers and nothing else, then the political-economic context that promotes the creation of hazardous conditions must be considered a significant cause of harmful occurrences. It is unlikely, however, that any of the official responses to the disaster will take this approach.

Physicians Married to Physicians

Letters15 April 1994Physicians Married to PhysiciansLou-Anne M. Beauregard, MDLou-Anne M. Beauregard, MDHeart Institute of Southern New Jersey; Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; Camden, NJ 08103Search for more papers by this authorAuthor, Article, and Disclosure Informationhttps://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-120-8-199404150-00029 SectionsAboutFull TextPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissions ShareFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail TO THE EDITOR:The recent editorial [1] on medical spouses was interesting. When I applied for residencies, one interviewer asked if I didn't feel that I was depriving my husband, a civil engineer, by going into internal medicine. Somewhat at a loss, I stated that my husband had never questioned or interfered in my choice of career or my professional goals. During the last 15 years, we have endured residency, fellowship, and professional life together while having a family.As you stated, medicine will have to become more flexible with more dual-career medical couples. The decision about who picks up ...REFERENCE1. Fletcher RH, Fletcher SW. Here come the couples (Editorial). Ann Intern Med. 1993; 119:628-30. Google Scholar Author, Article, and Disclosure InformationAuthors: Lou-Anne M. Beauregard, MDAffiliations: Heart Institute of Southern New Jersey; Robert Wood Johnson Medical School; Camden, NJ 08103 PreviousarticleNextarticle Advertisement FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Metrics 15 April 1994Volume 120, Issue 8Page: 697KeywordsEngineersFellowshipsResidency ePublished: 15 August 2000 Issue Published: 15 April 1994 Copyright & PermissionsCopyright © 1994 by American College of Physicians. All Rights Reserved.PDF downloadLoading ...

Managerial Goal Setting

The application of traditional goal-setting theory to the managerial goal-setting context is discussed in relation to the choice of goal indicators and goal standards. Managerial work is characterized by complex causal paths, socially mediated outcomes, dynamic, evolving tasks, and multiple time frames. These characteristics make the application of goal-setting theory to managerial work more complex than simply setting specific, challenging goals. Manager's choice of goals are governed by several individual and organizational factors, including perceived control, measurability of performance and social constraints. Managerial goal setting also occurs within a rich social and political context. Research that will make the impressive core findings of goal-setting more generalizable to the managerial work context is described.

Limits of Political Strategy: A Systemic View of the African American Experience

Viewing the African American experience through a systemic perspective tells much about the nature and operation of the political system. I suggest that a systemic perspective incorporates a broad range of factors that must be considered in a constitutional context that guides not only the choice of goals and strategies, but also signals the relative chances of success in the outcome of interest conflict. I focus on the capacity and limits of various strategies, and show how the political system generally militates against fundamental policy change. However, on rare occasions such policy change does occur, but it is difficult to implement and maintain, especially regarding the matter of race. Under the circumstances, I suggest that overcoming America's continuing dilemma of race requires extraordinary leadership and people of good will who are determined to see the constitutional-democratic system work.

Planning in Context: Developmental and Situational Considerations

An analysis of the components of planning is presented that incorporates problem representation, goal selection, a decision to plan, strategy choice, strategy execution, and monitoring. We argue that which components are required and which developmental changes are triggered or revealed depend on the planning task. We present analyses of three tasks typically used to study planning: the Tower of Hanoi; errand scheduling; and story comprehension. We argue that the performance on the Tower of Hanoi task reflects representational and monitoring demands, and that story comprehension depends strongly on social comprehension and monitoring. Because many everyday plans like running errands have prepackaged components and take place in a less controllable environment, affective and attributional components affect most strongly the choice of goals, decision to plan, and strategy choice. We then speculate on the course of development of each processing component and the complex interplay of cognition, beliefs, attitudes, and motivation in assembling and implementing plans to handle different tasks. Finally, we consider changes across the life span in the kinds of plans that are generated.

Social goals: relationship to adolescent adjustment and to social problem solving.

Examined the relations between adolescent boys' social goals of dominance, revenge, avoidance, and affiliation and (1) self-reported negative adolescent outcomes; (2) subjective sense of self-esteem; and (3) externalizing, internalizing, and prosocial behaviors, as rated by peers and teachers. Results indicated that social goal values were related to diverse aspects of self-, teacher-, and peer-reported social and behavioral functioning, with a consistent association found between a range of delinquent, substance-using, and behavioral difficulties, and endorsement of high goal values for dominance and revenge and low goal values for affiliation. Results also indicated that teacher-identified aggressive boys differed from nonaggressive boys in the value they placed on social goals, with aggressive boys placing a higher value on goals of dominance and revenge, and lower value on goals for affiliation. Finally social goal choice had a clear relation to the social problem-solving differences of aggressive and nonaggressive boys.

Commitment as a moderator of the goal-performance relation: A case for clearer construct definition.

A central assumption in the goal theory literature is that the degree of commitment to the assigned goal moderates the effectiveness of the goal-setting procedure. However, attempts to empirically verify commitment's moderating role have generally met with failure, calling into question either widely used measures of goal commitment, the moderating assumption itself, or both. Three studies are described that address this issue. Results indicated that the moderation assumption is valid but is only relevant to one of three closely related motivational concepts that are commonly discussed under the heading of commitment: prechoice attitudes, the subsequent choice of a personal goal, and the maintenance of that choice

A follow-up study of problem drinkers offered a goal choice option.

Patients (N = 100) who had been admitted to behaviorally oriented residential treatment for their drinking problems were followed up for 1 year. A treatment goal option of controlled drinking was explicitly catered for. Overall outcome, in which 27% of those available for follow-up were categorized as "successful," 35% as "equivocal" and 38% as "failure," does not appear to be markedly dissimilar to that reported from other agencies. The distribution of approximately equal abstinent and nonabstinent successful outcomes is similar to that found following treatment programs that promote a single goal. Sociodemographic variables were less influential in predicting outcome than were treatment variables--with frequency of aftercare attendance being particularly significant. Those who had received previous hospital treatment for their problem, those who habitually drank in company and those who had abnormal blood test results prior to entering treatment had poorer outcome.

Social Influences on the Goal Choices of Group Members1

The influences of anticipation of evaluation, anticipation of group interaction, and taking other group members into consideration were each explored for their impact on the selection of task performance goals by group members. Self‐evaluation, esteem maintenance, and comparison with others hypotheses were described as plausible explanations for earlier findings that groups select lower task performance goals than individuals. Results provided considerable support for the self‐evaluation and comparison‐with‐others hypotheses, but indicated that esteem maintenance could not account for some aspects of the data. Discussion focused on understanding the results within the context of social comparison theory.

Force versus choice, or force and choice? An integrative model of expectancy theory

There have been two major conceptualizations of expectancy theory: single alternative force models and choice models. Traditionally the models have been viewed as mutually exclusive interpretations of expectancy theory and reviewers have concluded that the choice model is theoretically correct, while the force model is an incorrect and unacceptable operationalization of Vroom's theory. The purpose of this article is to argue that the theories are not contradictory but complimentary. It is demonstrated that an integrated force-choice model is an improvement over existing motivation theories because it not only explains goal choice, but explains why two individuals with the same goal, ability, and environmental constraints may exert different amounts of effort.

Hearing the noise in the system. Exploration of textural analysis as a method for studying change in drinking behaviour.

This paper explores how treatment research is to catch within its design those many unplanned influences which lie outside therapeutic control, but which may influence processes of change. These factors are excluded from the conventional controlled trial. The background literature is briefly reviewed. A study is then described which employed a computer assisted method of textual analysis and an entirely open-ended coding system. The material which was analysed derived from interviews with 49 subjects whose accounts were tape recorded 10 years after treatment contact. Episodes of successful or unsuccessful 'change attempt' (CA) were identified. The two types of CA were compared in relation to coded issues pertaining to the periods before, during and after the episode. A number of significant findings are reported. In the pre-attempt phase 'Success' CAs were significantly associated with traumatic events in the person's life, and with a variety of positive and negative events. During the 'attempt' phase, 'Success' was associated with choice of an abstinence goal. For 'post-attempt', 'Success' was associated with 'Substitution', 'Altruism', 'Fulfillment', and finding the process 'Difficult'. The very preliminary nature of these findings is stressed and the need for further rigorous methodological development.

Effects of self‐esteem and gender on goal choice

AbstractThe relationship between enduring or personality characteristics and goal choice has been of considerable theoretical, but little empirical interest in recent years. From an expectancy value perspective, we addressed the impact of self‐esteem and gender on choice of goal difficulty level. As predicted, esteem and gender made significant contributions to the prediction of goal choice. The implications of these findings for future research in organizational settings, goal setting theory, and the relationship between goals and tasks are discussed.

A Within-Persons Examination of the Effects of Goal Assignment on Choice of Personal Goal

The process by which an increase in assigned goal affects an individual's choice of personal goal was examined in a within-subjects laboratory experiment in which 51 undergraduate students responded to a series of decision-making scenarios. Analyses supported the idea that formal goal assignment affects personal goal choice via the assigned goal's influence on subjects' judgments of valence and motivational force across various levels of task performance (i.e., performance-valence and performance-force functions). Distinctions between within-persons and across-persons research on these issues are discussed.

Further evidence on the relationship between goal setting and expectancy theories

This investigation sought to clarify the relationship between goal setting and expectancy theories. Toward this end, (a) previous theoretical and empirical efforts at integrating these two theories are reviewed, (b) issues of causal ordering, measurement, and the meanings of those measures are examined, and (c) the results of an empirical study using a sample of 344 college students and an academic task are presented. Results illustrate how different operationalizations of expectancy and attractiveness ratings result in the measurement of different constructs and influence the significance and direction of empirical findings. For almost all operationalizations, however, significant relationships were evident between expectancy theory constructs and goal choice, goal commitment, and performance. Causal analyses using cross-lag correlations were inconclusive, but mediation and path analyses provided some evidence that goals mediate the effects of expectancy theory constructs on performance.

Effects of Goal Choice, Strategy Choice, and Feedback Source on Goal Acceptance, Performance and Subsequent Goals1

This study examined the effects of goal choice, strategy choice, and feedback source on goal acceptance, performance, and future self‐set goals. The results were partially consistent with earlier work by Earley and Kanfer (1985) in that goal and strategy choice interacted to affect initial performance and goal acceptance. However, the nature of the performance interaction was not as expected. Results pertaining to future goals and subsequent performance suggested that goal choice was an important determinant of future goals and that feedback, goal choice, and strategy choice interacted to influence subsequent performance. Contrary to expectations, feedback source did not exert a main effect on subsequent performance, goal setting, or perceptions of feedback acceptance and usefulness. Discussion centered on the differential impact of choice on perceptual and behavioral variables and the failure of self‐feedback to significantly affect subsequent goals and performance.

Choice of task and goal under conditions of general and specific affective inducement

In this study we examine the role of general and task-specific affect on task and goal choice in a performance setting. We use video stimuli to induce a general positive or general negative affective state, and use rate-of-progress and absolute discrepancy feedback to manipulate task-specific affect. Analyses indicate that general affective states influenced task and goal choices, self-efficacy expectations, and performance. Rate-of-progress feedback influenced affective state, task choice, and self-efficacy expectations. Absolute discrepancy feedback influenced task choice modestly and self-efficacy significantly. Generally, positive affect promoted mood maintenance while negative affect promoted mood repair, and general and task-specific affect exerted similar effects. Results are discussed in terms of the motivational consequences of affective states (either general or task-specific) for task and goal choices.