Table Of ContentGoal-Directed
Behavior
FRONTIERS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Series Editors:
Arie W. Kruglanski, University of Maryland at College Park
Joseph P. Forgas, University of New South Wales
Frontiers of Social Psychology is a series of domain-specifi c handbooks.
Each volume provides readers with an overview of the most recent theoretical,
methodological, and practical developments in a substantive area of social
psychology, in greater depth than is possible in general social psychology
handbooks. The editors and contributors are all internationally renowned
scholars whose work is at the cutting edge of research.
Scholarly, yet accessible, the volumes in the Frontiers series are an essential
resource for senior undergraduates, postgraduates, researchers, and practitioners
and are suitable as texts in advanced courses in specifi c subareas of social
psychology.
Published Titles
Negotiation Theory and Research, Thompson
Close Relationships, Noller & Feeney
Evolution and Social Psychology, Schaller, Simpson & Kenrick
Social Psychology and the Unconscious, Bargh
Affect in Social Thinking and Behavior, Forgas
The Science of Social Infl uence, Pratkanis
Social Communication, Fiedler
The Self, Sedikides & Spencer
Personality and Social Behavior, Rhodewalt
Attitudes and Attitude Change, Crano & Prislin
Social Cognition, Strack & Förster
Social Psychology of Consumer Behavior, Wänke
Social Motivation, Dunning
Intergroup Confl icts and Their Resolution, Bar-Tal
Goal-Directed Behavior, Aarts & Elliot
Social Metacognition, Briñol & DeMarree
Social Judgment and Decision Making, Krueger
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frontiers
Goal-Directed
Behavior
Edited by
Henk Aarts Andrew J. Elliot
and
Psychology Press
New York London
Psychology Press Psychology Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Goal-directed behavior / editors, Henk Aarts, Andrew J. Elliot.
p. cm. -- (Frontiers of social psychology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84872-873-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Intentionalism. 2. Goal (Psychology) I. Aarts, Henk. II. Elliot, Andrew J.
BF619.5.G63 2012
153.8--dc23 2011033612
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Contents
Preface vii
Editors ix
Contributors xi
1 The Representation and Regulation of Goals 1
Gordon B. Moskowitz
2 The Neuroscience of Goal-Directed Behavior 49
Ajay B. Satpute, Kevin N. Ochsner, and David Badre
3 Basic Goal Distinctions 85
Kentaro Fujita and Karen E. MacGregor
4 Needs and Incentives as Sources of Goals 115
Peter M. Gollwitzer, Heather Barry Kappes, and Gabriele Oettingen
5 Goal Gradients, Expectancy, and Value 151
Nira Liberman and Jens Förster
6 From Goals to Action 175
Paschal Sheeran and Thomas L. Webb
7 How Feedback Infl uences Persistence, Disengagement,
and Change in Goal Pursuit 203
Ayelet Fishbach and Stacey R. Finkelstein
8 Conscious and Unconscious Processes in Goal Pursuit 231
Ruud Custers, Baruch Eitam, and John A. Bargh
v
vi CONTENTS
9 Goal Competition, Confl ict, Coordination, and Completion:
How Intergoal Dynamics Affect Self-Regulation 267
Justin V. Cavallo and Gráinne M. Fitzsimons
10 Control, Consciousness, and Agency 301
Ap Dijksterhuis and Henk Aarts
Author Index 325
Subject Index 337
Preface
Social psychology aims to understand, explain, and predict human behavior in
its social context. One way to achieve this is by systematically observing people’s
behavior in their social surroundings and inferring from these observations the
potential causes, processes, and consequences of human behavior. We all make
such observations ourselves on a daily basis, and these observations sometimes
lead us to conclude that the behavioral system responds to social situations by trial
and error. Indeed, human behavior can be fairly unpredictable, and at times there
seems to be no clear organizing principle behind the way the social environment
animates the behaviors people display and perform.
Although human behavior sometimes appears to consist of a random selection
of responses, often it does not. Our behavior is sensitive to learning, is infl uenced by
past experiences, and tends to be organized and structured in the service of future
action. Research in the tradition of behaviorism has shown that human behavior
can emerge from rigid responses to stimuli that are reinforced by rewards. When
chained together, such responses can form complicated patterns of action, setting
one another off like a line of toppling dominos. According to this perspective, the
environment organizes and determines human behavior.
Clearly the environment plays an important role in controlling behavior.
However, acting on fi xed stimulus-response rules—such as hitting a beeping alarm
clock in the morning—is not the whole story. Our behavioral repertoire must be
more adaptive and fl exible in order to deal with the varying circumstances we
encounter in everyday social life. Such fl exibility relies on our capacity to represent
mentally what we want and do and to direct behavior in line with these representa-
tions. Accordingly, contemporary cognitive approaches to human behavior propose
that a substantial component of action is directed by goals that reliably control and
motivate the behavioral system in a dynamic world.
The idea that our behavior is directed by goals appears to be well accepted by
most contemporary researchers and theorists, but this was (and, in some instances,
still is) not always the case. This dispute about the role of goals is rooted primarily
in the cognitive revolution, in which there was little or no room for motivation and
cognition was seen as the more parsimonious account for behavior. For instance, in
the study of attributional reasoning, goals have been posited to lead people to make
self-serving attributions for success and failure, such that they believe whatever
they want to believe regarding the cause of their behavior. However, this motiva-
tional view of self-serving attributions has been challenged, as the effect of goals on
vii
viii PREFACE
attributional reasoning could be interpreted in entirely cognitive, nonmotivational
terms, as the result of prior beliefs and expectancies that people have about success
and failure. Also, in the study of stereotyping and behavior, it has been argued that
stereotypes are automatically activated and applied upon encountering members
of stereotyped groups. However, whereas the activation of stereotypical traits and
inferences indeed follows from exposure to social stimuli, such activation may be
facilitated or even inhibited by context and specifi c processing goals.
A great deal of past empirical work on the role of goals in social psychology
has been open to a cognitive account because it has often neglected to specify
precisely what goals are and how they emerge and execute control over behavior.
Fortunately, this has changed considerably over the past two decades.
This edited volume contains a collection of chapters from internationally
renowned scholars in the area of goals and social behavior. The book is organized
around a series of topics that are of critical importance to understanding the social-
cognitive aspects of goal-directed behavior. In each chapter, the authors offer an
introduction to past research on a specifi c topic and combine this with a presenta-
tion of their own empirical work to provide an integrated overview of the topic
at hand. As a whole, this volume is designed to provide a broad portrait of goal
research as it has been and is currently being conducted in the social psychological
literature. It is meant to provide an introduction to essential issues, while at the
same time offer a sampling of cutting-edge research on core topics in the study of
goal-directed behavior, such as how goals are represented, where goals come from,
and what goals do in the process of regulation. It is our hope that you enjoy and
learn as much from reading the chapters that follow as we did ourselves.
Henk Aarts and Andrew J. Elliot
Editors
Henk Aarts (PhD, Radboud University, 1996) is Professor of Psychology at Utrecht
University. His research deals with several topics related to the role of goals in
social cognition and behavior. His work is published in fundamental and applied
journals. One main interest in his research program concerns the observation that,
in contrast with what often is assumed, conscious intentions do not play a strong
causal role in behavior as well as that people infer goals from their own and others’
behavior. This suggests that although goals play a pivotal role in human behavior,
these goals may well operate outside of consciousness. In his research he tries to
unravel core aspects of this intriguing and important topic. For more information
visit http://www.goallab.nl.
Andrew J. Elliot (PhD, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1994) is Professor
of Psychology at the University of Rochester and the University of Munich. His
research focuses on approach and avoidance motivation with regard to tempera-
ment, competence, relationships, and color perception. He has authored more
than 130 publications, edited several books (e.g., Handbook of Approach and
Avoidance Motivation, Psychology Press, 2008) and journals (e.g., Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin) and has received several awards for his research contri-
butions (e.g., the APA Distinguish Scientifi c Award for Early Career Contribution
to Psychology). More information on Dr. Elliot and his research may be found at
http://www.psych.rochester.edu/research/apav.
ix
