Journal of
Experimental
Social Psychology
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2002) 368–383
www.academicpress.com
Priming against your will: How accessible alternatives affect
goal pursuit
James Y. Shaha,* and Arie W. Kruglanskib
a
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1202 West Johnson Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA
b
University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA
Received 16 October 2000; revised 26 March 2001
Abstract
Four studies examined how diverse aspects of goal pursuit are influenced by the accessibility of alternative goals. It was consistently found that such an accessibility often affects the resources allocated to a focal goal, influencing commitment, progress, and
the development of effective means, as well as one’s emotional reponses to positive and negative feedback about one’s striving
efforts. Moreover, the direction of these influences was found to depend on how the alternative goals relate to the focal pursuit.
Alternatives unrelated to the focal goal pull resources away from it, whereas alternatives facilitatively related to a focal goal draw
resources toward it. Ó 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.
When Mary enters her school library, her voice drops
to a whisper and her thoughts turn to a paper due in her
psychology class at the end of the semester. John’s
current concerns always become quite social when he
returns to his fraternity house after dinner. Such examples illustrate recent findings by Bargh and his colleagues, suggesting that goals may often be primed by
the environmental context in which they are pursued
(Bargh, 1990; Bargh & Gollwitzer, 1994; Bargh &
Barndollar, 1996). Chartrand and Bargh (1996), for
example, have demonstrated that goals can be unconsciously activated by semantically similar terms. Thus,
words like ‘‘evaluate’’ may unconsciously prime impression-formation goals and the books in a library may
bring to mind one’s goal to engage in studious contemplation. But goals are rarely primed in a motivational vacuum and may often be activated when one is
consciously pursuing something else. Thus, while John’s
fraternity house may often prime in him social intentions, the implications of such priming may depend on
its relation to John’s presently chosen pursuit. How,
then, might such social goal priming affect John when he
has the explicit intention of doing something quite dif-
*
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jshah@facstaff.wisc.edu (J.Y. Shah).
ferent, such as studying? Perhaps such a conscious intention would simply shield John from any unconscious
priming effects, making him impervious to the social
temptations embodied by his fraternity house. On the
other hand, given the extent to which goal priming has
been shown to prompt goal pursuit and magnify its
emotional significance (see Higgins, Shah, & Friedman,
1997), it is also possible that such priming may come to
interfere with the conscious pursuit of a focal goal. The
present work seeks to address these possibilities by examining whether goal priming affects one’s conscious
focus on a current pursuit and, if so, to explore the
nature of this effect as well as its implications for behavior and emotional experience.
In various forms, the general notion that a goal
pursuit may be affected by an alternative has long been
entertained in lay and scientific notions of motivation.
The 14th-Century French philosopher Jean Buridan, for
instance, asserted that awareness of two equally desirable pursuits prevents progress on either. The extremity
of his position was satirized by the parable of ‘‘Buridan’s Ass’’: a hungry ass stands between two equally
appetizing bales of hay; although obviously motivated,
the ass is unable to choose between them and eventually
dies (see Turner, 1903).
Yet classic research on motivation has offered at least
a modicum of support for Buridan’s general perspective
0022-1031/02/$ - see front matter Ó 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 0 2 2 - 1 0 3 1 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 0 5 - 7
J.Y. Shah, A.W. Kruglanski / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2002) 368–383
in acknowledging that the psychological presence of alternative goals may create an ‘‘approach–approach’’
conflict (Lewin, 1935, 1951; Miller, 1944; Zeigarnik,
1938). Such work illustrates the difficulty one may face in
focusing on a given goal when appealing alternative goals
exercise their ‘‘pull’’ on motivational resources. The
recognition of such detrimental effects led Shallice (1972)
to assume that individuals typically inhibit competing
‘‘action systems’’ whose simultaneous activation would
drain the available resources. Similarly, Kuhl (1984) has
argued that progress toward goal attainment involves
both the active pursuit of a chosen focal goal and the
inhibition of alternative goals that might come to mind.
Consistent with the above analyses, research on selfcontrol has shown that our ability to ignore some goals
has significant implications for our ability to attain others. Thus, Kuhl and Weiss (1985) found that for individuals focused on their internal states, failure to reach
one goal may result in subsequent performance deficits in
the pursuit of unrelated goals because of an inability to
cognitively disengage from the initial failure (see also,
Brunstein & Olbrich, 1985; Kuhl & Kazen-Saad, 1988).
Moreover, when Kuhl and Helle (1986) interrupted depressed patients before they could complete a goal of
cleaning up a messy desk, this interfered with a subsequent test of short-term memory, suggesting that patients
suffered from an inability to cognitively ‘‘put aside’’ interrupted goal pursuits (see also Kuhl & Beckman, 1994).
Mischel’s delay of gratification work (Mischel &
Ebbeson, 1970; Mischel, Ebbeson, & Zeiss, 1972; Mischel, Shoda, & Rodriguez, 1989) similarly found that
children are much better at keeping to their goal of
waiting for the experimenter and ignoring the temptation to fulfill another goal instead (e.g., eating a cookie)
when the competing goal-object (the cookie) is hidden
from view than when it is clearly visible. Correspondingly, children who refrained from looking at the
tempting object were better able to stick to their goal of
waiting than children who chose not to look away.
Though the foregoing findings are suggestive and
consistent with the notion that the presence of alternative goals may interfere with current pursuits, the underlying process that governs these phenomena and its
precise consequences for self-regulation have not been
fully understood, leaving a number of fundamental
questions unexplored. What exactly defines, for instance, the ‘‘presence’’ of an alternative goal and how
consciously aware of such an alternative must one be for
it to undermine one’s present pursuit? Moreover, what is
the precise mechanism whereby alternative goals may
undermine each other? Is this undermining effect simply
due to the mental distraction posed by the accessibility
of any other cognitive stimulus, or is it restricted to the
specific motivational pull that only goals may exercise?
Finally, what specific aspects of goal pursuit may be
affected by the accessibility of alternative goals and what
369
are some of the possible boundary conditions on such an
effect? While the notion of pull has traditionally suggested a ‘‘pulling away’’ of resources, thus undermining
attainment, might there be occasions in which the
presence of goal-alternatives draws resources toward a
more concerted goal pursuit? That is, could there be
circumstances wherein an accessible alternative actually
serves as a reminder of one’s current pursuit, augmenting goal focus and the intensity of goal pursuit?
The present research attempts to provide some preliminary answers to such questions by adopting a perspective on goal-directed strivings that emphasizes the
cognitive aspects of motivational phenomena.
The cognitive side of motivation
In social psychology, motivational and cognitive
perspectives have often been viewed as rival interpretations of the same findings (cf. Bem, 1967; Bem, 1972;
Kunda, 1990; Miller & Ross, 1975). Parallel to this research tradition, however, is one that has implicitly acknowledged the cognitive aspect of motivation. The
early research on intrinsic motivation, for instance (cf.
Deci, 1971; Kruglanski, 1975; Kruglanski, Friedman, &
Zeevi, 1971; Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973) assumed
that motivation may be inferred from one’s performance
of an activity and the circumstances in which it has
occurred. More recently, discrepancies from desired
states have been viewed as cognitive structures whose
degree of activation may vary chronically and as a
function of the situation (Higgins, 1989, 1997) and, as
discussed earlier, a similar perspective has been fruitfully
applied to goals (Bargh & Gollwitzer, 1994; Kruglanski,
1996a, 1996b; Trzebinski, 1989). The present research
shares the cognitive approach to motivation exemplified
by the above work and applies it toward gaining a
deeper understanding of the impact that the presence of
alternative goals may exert on ongoing strivings.
Specifically, we interpret this impact in terms of alternatives’ cognitive accessibility while pursuing a given
focal goal: to the extent that alternative goals are accessible and unrelated to the focal goal, they may interfere with the pursuit of that goal by pulling away from its
limited regulatory resources. Thus, we are assuming that
increased accessibility of alternative goals, effected, say,
by environmental priming (Bargh, 1990), may automatically pull away the attentional and motivational resources allocated to a focal goal when these alternatives
are unrelated to the focal pursuit. In turn, the lowered
resources devoted to the focal goal should also dampen
one’s emotional reactivity to perceived progress or a lack
of progress vis-a-vis that goal. If the presence of competing alternatives causes the focal goal to be pursued
less ardently, then actors should be less anxious or dejected by feedback about a lack of progress but also be
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J.Y. Shah, A.W. Kruglanski / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2002) 368–383
less satisfied or relieved by feedback about progress. In
addition, the pulling away of resources from the focal
goal by its rival alternatives might reduce the individual’s
ability to develop efficient means to goal attainment. As a
consequence, one’s progress toward goal attainment
might be hampered. In short, we are assuming that the
mere cognitive activation of alternative goals unrelated
to a current pursuit will foster a whole range of cognitive
and motivational effects that will detrimentally affect
attainment of the focal objective.
Facilitative inter-goal relations and the direction of ‘‘goal
pull’’ effects
Though an alternative goal may often pull attentional
and motivational resources away from a focal pursuit,
there are occasions wherein the attainment of one goal
facilitates an attainment of the other. For instance,
‘‘becoming a successful professional’’ and ‘‘being liked
and respected by others’’ may be seen as mutually facilitative objectives in that successful professionals are
often liked; conversely, being liked and respected by
others may be of help in attaining one’s professional
objectives. The presence of such facilitative relations
may reduce or reverse the effects posed by the accessibility of an alternative by drawing resources toward the
focal goal. That is, while an unrelated alternative goal
may pull resources away from a focal pursuit, a facilitatively related alternative may instead draw attention
toward focal goal attainment because a facilitatively
related goal may be regarded as a ‘‘means’’ for the focal
goal’s attainment. A means, in turn, may prime its
correspondent goal, which may bring to mind its inherent value or desirability and mobilize resources toward its pursuit. Shah and Kruglanski (2000) have
recently obtained evidence that goals may be primed by
their attainment means, defined as those activities that
facilitate goal attainment. This priming, in turn, was
found to increase goal focus and to intensify goal pursuit, even when the specific priming means was not
utilized. This work suggests therefore that a focal goal
may be primed by a facilitatively related alternative and
that its increased accessibility due to such priming may
benefit goal pursuit and attainment.
To summarize then, we have assumed that (a) goals
function as cognitive entities that may be made more
accessible through environmental priming (Bargh &
Barndollar, 1996); (b) the accessibility of alternative
goals may automatically affect commitment to the focal
goal which, in turn, may influence the formulation of
effective means, the likelihood of goal attainment, and
the emotional significance of goal pursuit. Finally, (c)
the direction of these effects is determined by the extent
to which the focal and alternative goals are perceived to
have a facilitating relation to each other.
We performed four studies to explore these notions.
These manipulated (through environmental priming) the
simultaneous accessibility of an alternative goal with a
focal task goal that participants were currently pursuing.
We assumed that accessibility of unrelated alternative
goals exerts a ‘‘goal pull’’ that automatically lessens
commitment to a focal goal and reduces the development and selection of effective attainment means. Such
an accessibility should also hinder attainment of the
focal goal and dampen emotional responses to success
and failure-feedback en route to its pursuit. Finally, we
assumed that the undermining effects of such ‘‘goal pull’’
would be reversed when the alternative goals were seen
as facilitatively related to the focal goal.
Study 1
Our first study sought to manipulate the accessibility
of an alternative goal and examine the consequences this
would have for attainment of a current task goal. The
accessibility manipulation was accomplished through a
subliminal priming procedure that repeatedly displayed
the name of an alternative task goal, as participants
were pursuing their primary or focal goal. We predicted
that the increased accessibility of this alternative
(through priming) would affect participants’ commitment to the focal goal, as reflected by their performance
and persistence at the task, and that the nature of this
effect would depend on the relation of the alternative
goal to the focal pursuit.
Method
Participants
Fifty-five students of the University of WisconsinMadison participated in the study in exchange for extra
credit toward a course requirement. The sex of participants was not recorded in this particular study, though
it was recorded in all our remaining experiments.
Procedure
Participants completed a majority of the procedure
on IBM-compatible computers. Instructions to all
participants stated that they would be completing two
separate tasks, the first of which would involve the
solving of anagrams. This initial task was described as
a measure of ‘‘verbal recall,’’ portrayed as a valuable
skill for writing. Each anagram consisted of a string of
letters participants attempted to ‘‘unscramble’’ to find
as many different words as possible using all of the
letters. Participants were also told that individuals with
good verbal recall could find 80% of the possible
words in the set of anagrams. To introduce the alternative goal with which the participants would be
subsequently primed, participants were informed that
J.Y. Shah, A.W. Kruglanski / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2002) 368–383
after completing the anagram task they would be
performing a different task to assess their skill at
‘‘functional thinking.’’ This task, referred to as the
‘‘box-use’’ task, would involve the naming of as many
different functions for a box as they could think of in a
set (and undisclosed) time period. Participants were
told that they would be completing this second task
immediately after they had completed the first one. No
direct information about the interrelation of the two
tasks was provided, although we assumed that participants might find reason to assume some relation from
the fact that both involved the generation of as many
different solutions as possible on each trial. But because this only hinted at a possible relation, we assumed that participants in our sample would naturally
vary in the extent to which they perceived the two
tasks as interrelated.
Participants were then asked, ‘‘how difficult does the
anagram task seem?’’ and ‘‘how related is verbal recall to
functional thinking?’’ and provided answers on a 10point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 10 (extremely).
The latter question intended to tap participants’ perception of a facilitative relation between the two task
goals, assuming that if they seemed related, attaining one
would indicate that one is likely to attain the other as
well. As we had assumed, participants’ ratings of the
tasks’ relatedness naturally varied across the entire range
of the scale from 1 to 10, with a median score of 6. Prior
to embarking on the actual anagram task and ostensibly
to familiarize them with the procedure, participants
performed five sample anagrams. It is at that time that
the priming of the alternative task goal took place: specifically, before each sample anagram was presented,
participants were subliminally primed with a word
phrase. In the control condition, they were presented
with the phrase ‘‘view it’’ for 50 ms that was backward
masked with a non-word letter string (‘‘xxxxxxxxxxxxxx’’). In the experimental, ‘‘high accessibility’’ condition, they were presented with the phrase ‘‘box use’’ for
50 ms backward masked in the same manner.
Participants then completed a set of 5 anagrams,
comprising the actual anagram task. The computer
recorded the answers they provided for each anagram.
After completing the anagrams, participants indicated
how important it was for them to do well on the boxuse task, how much they had enjoyed the anagram
task, and how difficult they found it. Each response
was given on the same 10-point scale described earlier.
Finally, a funneled debriefing procedure was used to
assess whether participants had guessed the true nature
of the study and had seen the presented primes. Each
participant was asked a series of questions concerning
his or her experiences while completing the program.
Participants were debriefed about the nature of the
experiment and the fact that they had been presented
with prime words. At this point, participants were
371
asked whether they had seen these primes and, if so,
whether they could identify them. No participant reported any suspicion about the study before the debriefing nor did any report seeing the word primes after
having been told that they had been presented on the
screen.
Anagram performance and persistence
Participants’ performance on the anagram task was
calculated by simply summing all the correct solutions
that they found across the trials.
Participants’ persistence on the anagram trials was
calculated by summing their persistence on all the actual
task trials after employing a natural logarithmic transformation on each individual trial time to lessen the
impact of outliers and to correct for skewness in the
distribution of persistence times (Judd & McClelland,
1989).
Results
Relation among variables
An initial correlational analysis found that participants’ rating of the facilitative relation between the two
tasks was not significantly related to how difficult or
enjoyable they found the anagram task, r ¼ :09, p > :50,
r ¼ .11, p > :40, respectively, but was marginally significantly related to how committed they were to the
box-use task, r ¼ . 24, p > :10. This correlational analysis also found participants’ persistence on the anagrams
to be significantly positively correlated with their performance, r ¼ :53, p < :001.
Participants’ rating of the facilitative relation between
the two tasks was then subjected to a median split to
form separate high and low relation groups. An initial
set of analyses examined whether the accessibility manipulation affected how difficult they found the anagram
task, how enjoyable they found it, and how important
they perceived the box-use task to be. Consistent with
our expectations, accessibility had no significant effect
on these ratings, F s < 1.
Separate ANOVAs were then performed to examine
the effect of accessibility manipulation on participants’
anagram performance and persistence for individuals
who perceived the goals to be facilitatively related and
for those who perceived them to be unrelated, controlling for their other ratings of the task. With all of these
variables included in the analyses, the accessibility manipulation as such was not found to significantly affect
how well participants performed and how long they
persisted at the task F ð1; 48Þ ¼ 2:05, p > :15; F ð1; 48Þ ¼
1:26, p > :25, respectively. Additionally, perceived goal
interrelation as such did not have a significant effect on
anagram performance or persistence, F s < 1, but it
significantly interacted with accessibility to affect both
dependent
measures,
F ð1; 48Þ ¼ 4:14,
p < :05;
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J.Y. Shah, A.W. Kruglanski / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2002) 368–383
Fig. 1. Anagram performance and persistence as a function of alternative priming and perceived relation (Study 1).
F ð1; 48Þ ¼ 7:44, p < :01, respectively. According to this
interaction, the detrimental effect of alternatives’ accessibility on anagram performance and persistence was
significantly greater when the perceived facilitative relation between the goals was low than when it was high.
Participants’ total anagram performance and untransformed persistence time (in seconds) as functions of the
type of prime and perceived inter-goal relation are
presented in Fig. 1.
The results of Study 1 confirm our predictions. Accessibility of the alternative goal interacted in the predicted manner with its perceived relation to the focal goal
in its impact on commitment to the focal goal, as assessed by participants’ task persistence and performance:
accessibility undermined persistence and performance to
a greater extent when the two task goals were perceived
as unrelated than when they were perceived as facilitatively related. Note that these results cannot be explained
by the effects of our accessibility manipulation on perceptions of the alternative goal in terms of its difficulty
and importance ratings, which did not differ significantly
across the two accessibility conditions. Nor can these
results be explained by the mere effects of distraction due
to a priming manipulation per se, in so far as such a
manipulation occurred in our control condition as well.
A more compelling explanation of these findings is that it
was the accessibility of alternative goals that affected the
resources allocated to the focal goal, depending on its
perceived relation to the alternative. Our subsequent
experiments attempted to conceptually replicate these
findings while also testing additional aspects of our theory. Specifically, we investigated whether accessibility of
an alternative goal and the perception of facilitative relations between it and the focal goal have the predicted
joint effects on the development of effective attainment
means with respect to the focal goal as well as on participants’ emotional reactivity to progress (or the lack of
progress) toward that goal.
Study 2
Our analysis suggests that the accessibility of an alternative goal may affect the extent to which resources
are pulled away from, versus being mobilized toward,
pursuit of the focal goal. Among other things, this may
affect the degree to which an individual would possess
sufficient resources to invest in the independent development of appropriate attainment means with respect to
that goal. When resources are pulled away, participants
may often rely on ‘‘conventional’’ attainment strategies,
or uncritically use means proposed by an external agent,
instead of developing new means. Participants may be
more likely to develop new means, however, when the
alternative re-directs their attention back to the focal
goal. Thus, the effect of an accessible alternative on the
use of means to pursue a focal goal should also be
moderated by the degree to which the alternative and
the focal goals are perceived as facilitatively interrelated.
Our present study examined the foregoing implications
of our analysis and attempted to replicate the performance and persistence findings of Study 1.
In most relevant respects, the experimental paradigm
of Study 2 resembled that of Study 1. The focal goal
again involved the solving of anagrams. Also, we again
used a subliminal priming procedure to manipulate the
accessibility of an alternative goal. Unlike Study 1,
however, participants in the present study were also
presented with a possible attainment means for pursuing
the task goal. Pre-testing had suggested that the use of
this particular means did not significantly increase the
anagram performance. Nevertheless, because accessibility of an unrelated alternative goal was hypothesized
to impair one’s ability to generate effective attainment
strategies, participants primed with an alternative goal
may more readily depend on the presented task means
when solving the anagrams. Under these conditions,
then, individuals should report a greater use of the
J.Y. Shah, A.W. Kruglanski / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2002) 368–383
presented means when solving the anagrams; and
whereas in Study 1, the priming manipulation occurred
prior to the actual anagram task while the participants
were working their way through the anagram samples,
in the present study, it took place concomitantly with
the anagram task.
Method
Participants
Forty students of the University of Wisconsin-Madison participated in the study in exchange for extra
credit toward a course requirement. Of these, 6 were
male and 34 female. Participants’ sex had no significant
effects on any of the present dependent variables and
will not be discussed further.
Procedure
Participants completed a majority of the procedure
on IBM-compatible computers. As in Study 1, they were
told they would be completing two separate tasks, the
first of which would involve the solution of anagrams.
Participants were told that following the anagram task
that assesses ‘‘verbal recall’’ they would be completing
the box-use task assessing ‘‘functional thinking.’’ Participants were also presented with an alleged strategy for
solving anagrams. It was referred to as the ‘‘pair-letter’’
strategy and it involved searching for common letter
pairings in each anagram (e.g., the ‘‘ch’’ in ‘‘cpunh’’).
Pre-testing had indicated that use of this strategy actually had no effect on the anagram performance for the
presented set of anagrams. As in Study 1, participants
were also told that individuals with good verbal recall
could find 80% of the possible words in the set of anagrams and were first given some sample anagrams before completing the actual anagram task.
After completing the sample anagrams, participants
rated how difficult and enjoyable they found the anagram task, the importance of the box-use task, and the
perceived effectiveness of the ‘‘pair-letter’’ strategy.
Participants were also asked to rate how related they
thought verbal recall was to functional thinking. Although these two tasks again differed in terms of their
contents, it was assumed that their close placement together in the same study might cause some participants
to infer that these tasks were related to each other. We
had therefore again assumed a natural variability in our
sample on the tasks’ perceived relatedness. This expectation was confirmed. On a 10-point scale ranging from
1 (not at all) to 10 (extremely), participants’ relatedness
ratings varied from 3 to 10, with a median score of 6.
Participants then completed a set of 8 anagrams,
comprising the anagram task. Before presenting each
anagram trial, we subliminally primed the participants
with a word phrase. In the two low-accessibility condi-
373
tions, participants were presented with the control
phrase ‘‘view it’’ for 50 ms backward masked in the same
manner described previously. In the two high-accessibility conditions, participants were presented with the
phrase ‘‘box-use’’ for 50 ms backward masked in the
same manner as in Study 1. No participants reported
seeing the presented word phrases.
The computer recorded the answers that participants
provided for each anagram. After completing the entire
anagram series, participants were asked to indicate how
frequently they had used the ‘‘pair-letter’’ strategy while
completing the anagram task and how often they had
thought about the box-use task while completing the
anagram task. The latter question was included as a
check on whether our priming manipulation affected
accessibility of the alternative goal in the manner that
we had intended. Participants’ responses were recorded
on the same 10-point scale described earlier. Finally, a
funneled debriefing was used to assess whether participants had guessed the true nature of the study. This
debriefing was identical in format to the one described in
Study 1. Again, no participants reported any suspicions
about the study before the debriefing nor did any report
seeing the word primes after being told that they occurred during the task. Finally, participants were thoroughly debriefed about the true nature of the study
and invited to ask any remaining questions about its
purpose.
Results
Relation among variables
An initial correlational analysis found that participants’ rating of the facilitative relation between the two
tasks was not related to how enjoyable they found the
task, r ¼ :09, p > :50, but was marginally related to
how difficult they found it, r ¼ :29, p < :10, and to the
effectiveness of the presented attainment means,
r ¼ :28, p < :10 as well as significantly related to how
committed participants were to the box-use task,
r ¼ :32, p < :05. This correlational analysis also found
participants’ persistence on the anagrams to be significantly positively correlated with their performance,
r ¼ :49, p < :001.
As in Study 1, participants’ ratings of the facilitative
interrelation of the two task goals they were expecting to
pursue were subjected to a median split to form separate
high relation and low relation groups. As in Study 1, we
also examined whether the accessibility manipulation
affected the perceived difficulty of the anagram task and
the importance of the box-use task and found that it had
no significant effect on either rating, F s < 1.
Check on the accessibility manipulation
We then proceeded to examine whether our accessibility manipulation affected the degree to which partic-
J.Y. Shah, A.W. Kruglanski / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2002) 368–383
r
374
Fig. 2. Anagram performance and persistence as a function of alternative priming and perceived relation (Study 2).
ipants reported thinking about the box-use task while
completing the anagram task. Because the accessibility
manipulation also affected anagram persistence and
because the time participants spent thinking about the
box-use task would be expected to relate to the total
time they spent on the anagram task, we controlled in
this ANOVA for overall differences in time spent on the
anagram task as well as participants’ other task ratings.
As predicted, participants reported that they thought
about the box-use task significantly more in the high
accessibility condition than in the low-accessibility
condition, F ð1; 31Þ ¼ 4:85, p < :05. The perceived interrelation of the two tasks exerted no main or interactive effects on this rating, F s < 1. Thus, it appears that
our subliminal priming manipulation was successful.
Even though it was consciously undetected by our participants, it significantly impacted the degree to which
they reported thinking about the primed alternative task
goal.
Anagram performance and persistence
In separate ANOVAs, we then examined the effect of
accessibility manipulation on participants’ anagram
performance and persistence for individuals who perceived the goals to be related and for those who perceived them to be unrelated, controlling for their other
task ratings. Participants in the high-accessibility condition did not perform significantly worse overall (although the effect approached significance, F ð1; 32Þ ¼
2:43, p > :10), but they did quit marginally sooner than
participants in the low-accessibility condition, F ð1;
32Þ ¼ 2:78, p ¼ :10. These analyses also revealed that
perceived goal interrelation, as such, did not have a
significant effect on the anagram performance or persistence, F ð1; 32Þ ¼ 1:72, p > :15; F < 1, but it did significantly interact with accessibility, (F ð1; 32Þ ¼ 5:61,
p < :05; F ð1; 32Þ ¼ 5:46, p < :05, respectively), indicating that the effect of the alternative goal’s accessibility
on anagram performance and persistence was significantly greater when the perceived interrelation between
the goals was low than when it was high. Participants’
total anagram performance and untransformed persistence (in seconds) as a function of type of prime and
perceived inter-goal relation are presented in Fig. 2.
These results replicate the findings of Study 1, attesting
to their robustness.
Provided means use
In a final ANOVA, we analyzed the effect of an alternative goal’s accessibility and its perceived relation to
the focal goal on the degree to which participants reported using the means we had provided them for
working on the anagrams. Again, there was a significant
interaction between the accessibility and interrelation
variables, suggesting that participants were significantly
more likely to rely on the presented means (rather than
generating independent means) when the alternative
goal was accessible and unrelated to the focal goal,
F ð1; 32Þ ¼ 9:56, p < :01. This interaction is illustrated in
Fig. 3.
As can be seen, the self-reported use of the provided means is by far greater when the primed term
represents an unrelated alternative versus a control
word. However, the self-reported use of the provided
means is not appreciably different when the prime
represents a facilitatively related goal versus a control
word.
In summary, the results of Study 2 replicate those of
Study 1, demonstrating the robustness of our initial
findings across several modifications in procedure and
extend them by considering how accessibility effects may
influence the use of attainment means. Once again the
J.Y. Shah, A.W. Kruglanski / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2002) 368–383
375
Fig. 3. Use of provided means as a function of alternative priming and perceived relation (Study 2).
accessibility of alternative goals was found to negatively
impact goal pursuit (as measured by anagram performance and persistence), this effect being particularly
pronounced when the alternative goal was perceived as
facilitatively unrelated (vs. related) to the anagram task.
Study 2 also validated our accessibility manipulation by
demonstrating that it affected the degree to which participants thought about the alternative goal (the box-use
task) while completing the anagrams. Finally, and most
importantly, Study 2 confirmed our prediction about the
effects of accessible alternative goals on reported reliance on externally provided means of goal attainment.
As hypothesized, reported reliance was greatest when
the primed alternative goal was facilitatively unrelated
(vs. related) to the focal goal. But can one be sure that
this self-reported reliance reflected actual means use?
Study 3 was specifically designed to investigate this
issue.
Study 3
Method
Participants
Thirty-five students of the University of WisconsinMadison participated in the study in exchange for extra
credit toward a course requirement. Of these, 17 were
male and 18 female. Participants’ sex had no significant
effects on any of the present dependent variables and
will not be discussed further.
Procedure
Participants completed a majority of the procedure
on IBM-compatible computers. The general experimental paradigm was similar in most respects to that of
Studies 1 and 2. Participants were informed that they
would be completing two separate tasks. The first of
these tasks would involve the solving of anagrams and
was characterized as a measure of ‘‘verbal fluency.’’
Participants were again told that after completing the
anagram task they would be completing the box-use
task assessing their ‘‘functional thinking.’’ As in Study 2,
participants in the present study were also presented
with a strategy for solving the anagrams. However, this
strategy was different from that presented in Study 2.
Whereas in Study 2, participants were provided with the
‘‘pair-letter’’ strategy, and in Study 3, participants were
provided the ‘‘first–last’’ strategy, which involved determining whether any of the possible solutions started
with the first or last letter of the anagram. Each of the
anagrams had at least one solution that could be found
through the use of this particular strategy and one solution that could not be found through its use. This
design feature was implemented to allow us to determine
the actual use of the supplied strategy, as evident in the
‘‘mean-related’’ solutions that participants found and
their use of other strategies, as evident in the solutions
they found that required the use of different means than
the one provided. All participants were then told that
individuals with good verbal fluency could find 80% of
the possible words in the set of anagrams and were first
given a sample of anagrams before attempting the actual
anagram task.
After completing the sample anagrams, participants
rated how difficult and enjoyable they found the anagram task, the importance of the box-use task, the
perceived effectiveness of the ‘‘first–last’’ strategy, and
the perceived facililitative relation between functional
thinking and verbal fluency. Each rating was performed
on a 10-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 10
(extremely). Again, participants’ perceptions of the
tasks’ facilitative relatedness exhibited a natural variability across the entire range of the scale. Specifically,
they varied between the scores of 1 and 10, with a median score of 6. Participants then performed a set of 8
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anagrams, comprising the anagram task. Before each
anagram was presented, participants were subliminally
primed with a word phrase. In the low-accessibility
condition, they were presented with the control phrase
‘‘see this’’ for 50 ms backward masked using the same
mask as described in Study 1 (‘‘xxxxxxxxxxxxxx’’). In
the high-accessibility condition, they were presented with
the phrase ‘‘box use’’ for 50 ms backward masked in the
same manner. No participants reported noticing the
presented word phrases.
The computer recorded the answers participants
provided for each anagram. After participants completed the entire anagram series, a funneled debriefing identical to that of Study 1 was implemented to
assess whether participants had guessed the true nature of the present experiment. No participants reported any suspicions about the study before the
debriefing nor did any report having seen the word
primes after being told that they had been presented
on the screen.
Results
Anagram performance and persistence
As in Studies 1 and 2, we then performed separate
ANOVAs to examine the effect of the accessibility
manipulation and perceived inter-goal relation on participants’ anagram performance and persistence for individuals who perceived the goals to be facilitatively
related and those who perceived them to be unrelated,
controlling for participants’ remaining ratings of the
task.
Neither the accessibility manipulation nor the
measure of perceived goal interrelation exerted main
effects on anagram performance (F s < 1) and persistence (F < 1, and F ð1; 27Þ ¼ 1:90, p > :15, respectively). However, they did so interactively such that
the detrimental effects of an alternative goal’s accessibility on performance and persistence were significantly reversed when perceived goal interrelation was
high versus being low, F ð1; 27Þ ¼ 5:34, p < :05;
F ð1; 27Þ ¼ 4:62, p < :05, respectively. Participants’ total anagram performance and untransformed persistence time (in seconds) as a function of type of prime
and perceived inter-goal relation are presented in Fig.
4. These results replicate the findings of the first two
studies.
Actual means use
Of greater interest in the present experiment were the
possible effects of our variables on the actual use of the
provided means for anagram solution.
Participants could have found a number of the possible solutions to the anagrams by using the provided
r
Relation among variables
An initial correlational analysis found that participants’ rating of the facilitative relation between
the two tasks was not related to how difficult or enjoyable they found the anagram task or how important they viewed the box-use task (r ¼ :12,
p > :45, r ¼ :03, p > :80; r ¼ :12, p > :50, respectively)
but significantly related to the perceived effectiveness
of the presented attainment means, r ¼ :37, p > :05.
This correlational analysis also found participants’
persistence on the anagrams to be significantly positively correlated with their performance, r ¼ :45,
p < :005.
As in our prior studies, participants’ ratings of the
interrelation of the task goals were subjected to a
median split to form separate high relation and low
relation groups. Also consistent with our previous two
experiments, the present accessibility manipulation did
not appear to affect the perceived difficulty of the
anagram task or the importance of the box-use task,
F s < 1.
Fig. 4. Anagram performance and persistence as a function of alternative priming and perceived relation (Study 3).
J.Y. Shah, A.W. Kruglanski / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2002) 368–383
377
Fig. 5. Anagram performance as a function of alternative priming, perceived relation, and whether attainment means was provided (Study 3).
means ( the ‘‘first–last’’ strategy). A comparable number
of possible solutions to these anagrams, however, required participants to use different means than the one
provided. To determine the degree to which participants
relied on the given means and the degree to which they
generated their own means, we calculated the total
number of solutions found by participants that involved
using the provided means and the total number of solutions that they found using different means. Each total
was examined as a function of the accessibility of the
alternative and perceived goal interrelations, as summarized in Fig. 5.
As can be seen, when the alternative goal was accessible (through priming) and seen as facilitatively unrelated to the focal goal, participants found more of the
solutions that involved using the provided means than
the solutions that involved using different means. When
the alternative was accessible and seen as facilitatively
related, however, participants found more solutions that
involved using different means than solutions involving
the use of the provided means. Performing a MANOVA, we found that the overall interaction of the
accessibility manipulation, perceived goal interrelation,
and type of solutions found (provided means vs. different means) was significant (F ð1; 27Þ ¼ 5:20, p < :05).
This suggests that when the alternative was made more
accessible through priming and was seen as unrelated to
the focal goal, participants did not generate effective
anagram solution strategies on their own and instead
tended to rely on the provided means, even though not
all solutions to the anagrams could be found by using
this strategy. In contrast, when the alternative goal was
made more accessible and seen as facilitatively related to
the focal goal, participants found more solutions from
the use of different means than from the use of the
provided means, presumably because they more readily
generated their own strategies for finding solutions to
the anagrams. Thus, the pulling of resources away from
the focal goal—when the accessible alternative goal was
facilitatively unrelated to it—may have lowered participants’ quest for effective means of goal attainment,
which, in turn, may have contributed to the observed
deterioration of anagram performance in the accessibleunrelated condition. Likewise, the mobilization of resources in service of the focal goal when the alternative
was facilitatively related thereto may have increased
participants’ quest for effective means for goal attainment, contributing, in turn, to the observed increase in
anagram performance in the accessible-related condition.
Our final study sought to replicate the general pattern of performance and persistence found in the first
three studies using a different alternative goal and to
extend the findings of these studies by considering
participants’ emotional reactions to feedback about
progress or the lack of progress on the focal task. Our
theoretical analysis suggests that commitment to the
focal goal should be affected by the accessibility of an
alternative goal and its relation to the focal pursuit.
These variables should therefore exert a parallel influence on participants’ positive or negative affective reactions to success or failure-feedback regarding this
focal pursuit. Participants whose goal commitment is
undermined by the presence of alternative goals should
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J.Y. Shah, A.W. Kruglanski / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2002) 368–383
care less and hence be less emotionally reactive to such
feedback.
Study 4
Method
Participants
Ninety students of the University of WisconsinMadison participated in the study in exchange for extra
credit toward a course requirement. Of these, 38 were
male and 52 female. Participants’ sex did not significantly affect any of the present dependent variables and
will not be discussed further.
Procedure
As in our previous studies, participants completed a
majority of the procedure on IBM-compatible computers. They were told that they would be completing two
separate tasks, the first of which would involve the solution of anagrams. This initial task was described as a
measure of ‘‘verbal reasoning,’’ a valuable skill for
writing. Unlike the alleged ‘‘functional thinking’’ task
used in our prior studies, a different second task was
introduced and described as a measure of ‘‘analytic
reasoning.’’ We again assumed that some participants,
at least, would view the two tasks as facilitatively related, as they both pertained to ‘‘reasoning’’ and both
required participants to generate as many different solutions as possible. Participants were told that this second task would require them to combine a set of four
numbers to form a fifth number by adding, subtracting,
multiplying, and dividing the set of numbers as well as
using parentheses. For instance, ‘‘ð4 3Þ þ 2 1’’
would be one way to get the number set ‘‘4 3 2 1’’ to
equal ‘‘13.’’ After the two tasks were described to participants, they completed three practice anagrams and
three practice trials of the ‘‘analytic reasoning’’ task.
They then proceeded with the anagram task. As with all
our previous studies, this task was the only one described that participants actually attempted.
Prior to embarking on the anagram task, participants
were informed that individuals with good verbal reasoning skills could find 80% of the possible words in the
set of anagrams. They were then asked, ‘‘how difficult
does the anagram task seem?’’ and ‘‘how enjoyable does
the anagram task seem?’’ and were also asked to rate
how satisfied, calm, dejected, and anxious they were
feeling at that moment. Answers to each of these questions were provided on a 7-point scale ranging from 1
(not at all) to 7 (extremely). Participants then completed
the anagram task, which consisted of 10 trials in this
study. The computer recorded the answers participants
provided for each anagram and the amount of time they
spent on each trial.
Before each anagram’s appearance in the low-accessibility condition, participants were presented with the
word ‘‘dedication’’ for 50 ms backward masked in the
same manner described in Study 1. In the high-accessibility conditions, they were presented with the word
‘‘analytic’’ in the same fashion. No participant in either
condition reported having seen the presented word.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of the
two feedback conditions. After completing the anagrams, those in the success-feedback condition were
informed that they had, in fact, found 80% of all the
possible solutions. Participants in the failure-feedback
condition were told that they had not found 80% of all
the possible solutions. After receiving the feedback,
participants again rated how satisfied, calm, dejected,
and anxious they were feeling at that moment. Finally,
participants were asked to rate how related verbal
reasoning was to analytic reasoning and how important
it was for them to do well on the upcoming analytic
reasoning task. Each of these ratings was given on the
same 7-point scale described earlier. As expected, participants’ actual facilitation ratings naturally varied
over a considerable range, namely from 1 to 7, with a
median score of 4. A funneled debriefing identical in
format to that of Study 1 was then used to assess
whether participants had guessed the true nature of the
experiment. Again, no participants reported any suspicions before the debriefing nor did any report noticing the word primes after having been told that they
were flashed on the screen.
Affective reactivity
After reverse scoring all the negative mood items,
participants’ change in mood was calculated by summing their mood scores after receiving feedback and
subtracting from it the sum of their initial mood scores.
This score represented the magnitude of their emotional
reaction to success or failure-feedback.
Results
Relation among variables
An initial correlational analysis found that participants’ rating of the facilitative relation between the two
tasks was not related to how enjoyable they found the
anagram task, r ¼ :08, p > :45, and how important they
found the analytic reasoning task, r ¼ :08, p > :45, but
was marginally negatively related to how difficult they
found the anagram task, r ¼ :19, p < :10. This correlational analysis also found participants’ persistence on
the anagrams to be significantly positively correlated
with their performance, r ¼ :40, p < :001.
Because, in this study, alternative accessibility and
feedback were manipulated before participants rated
the facilitative relation between the two tasks, we
conducted a separate ANOVA to examine the possi-
J.Y. Shah, A.W. Kruglanski / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2002) 368–383
bility that these manipulations affected participants’
facilitative relation rating. No evidence was found for
this possibility, as the ANOVA revealed that participants’ facilitative relation rating was not significantly
affected by the alternative accessibility manipulation,
the feedback manipulation, or the interaction of these
manipulations (all F s < 1).
As in the previous studies, participants’ rating of the
two tasks’ interrelation was subjected to a median split
to form separate high interrelation and low interrelation
groups. Conceptually replicating our previous results,
separate ANOVAs found that the present accessibility
manipulation did not affect the perceived difficulty of the
anagram task or the importance of the analytic reasoning task, F s < 1.
Effects on anagram performance and persistence
Replicating the results of our previous studies and
controlling for participants’ task difficulty, task enjoyment, and importance ratings, separate ANOVAs found
that the accessibility manipulation and the perceived
interrelation of the goals did not significantly affect
anagram performance and persistence (all F s < 1) but
they did so in interaction with each other (F ð1; 83Þ ¼
4:33, p < :05; F ð1; 83Þ ¼ 4:32, p < :05, for performance
and persistence, respectively). Once again, the detrimental effect of alternative goal accessibility on anagram
performance and persistence was significantly greater
when perceived task interrelation was low than when it
was high. Participants’ total anagram performance and
untransformed persistence time (in seconds) as a function of prime-type and perceived inter-goal relation are
presented in Fig. 6. These results replicate the findings of
our previous studies in this series.
Affective reactivity
A separate ANOVA examined participants’ emotional response to feedback as a function of alternative
goal accessibility and perceived inter-goal relation,
379
controlling for participants’ task ratings. The analysis
revealed that feedback had a strongly significant effect
on change in mood, F ð1; 79Þ ¼ 42:95, p < :001. Not
very surprisingly, positive feedback led to a more
positive change in mood than did negative feedback.
Neither the accessibility of the alternative nor the
perceived interrelation of the goals exerted significant
main effects on mood change, F s < 1. Nor did these
two variables interact with each other (F < 1) or with
feedback to affect the change in mood, F < 1;
F ð1; 79Þ ¼ 1:48, p > :20, respectively. However, the
three-way interaction of the accessibility of the alternative, the perceived interrelation of the goals and
feedback was significant, F ð1; 79Þ ¼ 5:63, p < :05, indicating that the effect of feedback was moderated by
the interaction of alternative accessibility and perceived
interrelation of the goals. These results are portrayed in
Fig. 7.
As can be seen, when the alternative goal is facilitatively unrelated to the focal goal, its priming dampens,
by and large, participants’ affective reactivity to feedback with regard to progress toward the focal goal. In
contrast, when the alternative goal is perceived as related to the focal goal, its priming enhances the affective
reactivity to feedback about progress.
General discussion
The present research
In his analysis of goal conflict, Lewin (1935, 1951)
likened goals to physical bodies occupying specific positions within an individual’s ‘‘life space.’’ Each entity in
this field either attracts or repels one’s focus and the
strength of these attractive and repellent forces varies as
a function of the goal’s psychological distance from the
individual’s self. The present research emphasizes how
the force exerted on an individual by any one goal
Fig. 6. Anagram performance and persistence as a function of alternative priming and perceived relation (Study 4).
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J.Y. Shah, A.W. Kruglanski / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2002) 368–383
Fig. 7. Change in mood as a function of alternative priming, perceived relation, and feedback (Study 4).
cannot be considered in isolation and instead depends
on the salience and interrelation of other goals present
in one’s life space at a given moment.
Four studies consistently suggest that priming alternative goals can affect one’s commitment to a currently
pursued objective, which, in turn, has implications for
goal-directed behavior and emotion. Moreover, such
priming effects are consistently moderated by the degree
to which the goal facilitatively relates to its alternative.
These conclusions are supported by a convergence of
findings pertaining to different accompanying aspects of
goal pursuit.
Given the relative novelty of our approach to goals
and their interrelations, it is encouraging to have replicated, time and time again, the manner by which
commitment and progress toward a focal goal is affected by the accessibility of an alternative goal. We
find that the extent to which an alternative goal is
rendered accessible affects participants’ performance
and persistence in striving for the focal goal and we
interpret these effects as reflecting the waxing and
waning of goal focus that results from the subliminal
presentation of a facilitating or unrelated alternative
goal. This presentation either pulls attention and resources away from the focal goal (and toward the alternative), or draws attention and resources toward the
focal goal by increasing its accessibility. Consistent
with such an interpretation, we find that emotional
responses to goal pursuit are amplified or dulled by the
salience of an alternative goal and its facilitative relation to the focal pursuit. Presumably, these effects reflect the pulling of resources away or the drawing of
them toward the consciously pursued goal. We find
that the development of efficient means to the focal
goal, an obvious resource-intensive activity, is also af-
fected when alternative goals are activated. It is particularly noteworthy that our effects obtain, even
though our priming manipulations were subliminal and
our participants reported no conscious awareness of
their occurrence. This attests to the relatively automatized, non-deliberative nature of the ‘‘goal pull’’ effects.
Alternative explanations of goal pull
Our results also provide evidence that counters two
major alternative explanations to how a focal pursuit
is undermined by an unrelated and cognitively salient
alternative goal. One such explanation holds that the
undermining occurs due to a mere distraction rather
than due to the pull on resources by the alternative
unrelated goal. Yet contrary to this general distraction
hypothesis, we did not find similar effects when
priming control constructs. Thus, our findings could
not be due to the priming of cognitive constructs per
se, but rather due to the specific priming of goal
constructs. Moreover, such a hypothesis could not
explain the kinds of moderation of the goal pull effects that depend on how an alternative relates to the
present pursuit.
A second explanation holds that the priming manipulation enhances the perceived importance of the activated alternative goal and/or the perceived difficulty of
the focal goal. It is such shift in perception rather than a
change in commitment to the focal goal that might have
caused our various effects. Again, however, our results
seem to belie these possibilities in that neither the perceived importance of the alternative goal nor the perceived difficulty of the focal goal was significantly
affected by our priming manipulations in any of our
studies.
J.Y. Shah, A.W. Kruglanski / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2002) 368–383
Self-regulatory implications
The present cognitive and motivational analysis of
goal effects has implications for a wide range of significant intra- and inter-personal phenomena. Two such
implications are particularly noteworthy. They concern
(a) the resolution of goal conflict and (b) the quality of
one’s social relations.
Implications for the resolution of goal conflict
An important question to pose at this point is how
one might cope with the conflict occasioned by the activation of alternative goals rival to one’s current pursuits. When Buridan was asked to explain how an ass, or
anyone else, might overcome the decisional challenge
posed by two equally attractive alternatives, he had a
ready answer: one could consider a particular alternative
closely and thereby cause any others to fall out of conscious awareness.
Such a solution, with its emphasis on lowering the
accessibliity of alternatives, can readily be applied to
the resolution of goal conflict. It suggests that one’s
ability to cognitively inhibit, or actively put aside,
alternative goals may allow one to focus more resources on a focal pursuit. It is precisely such processes that may underlie the observed individual
differences in coping with competing or conflicting
goals in social and academic settings. Locke and
Kristof (1996), for instance, found that individuals
differ in the degree to which they are able to ignore
the attractiveness of other pursuits and that this difference positively predicts their college grade point
average. Similarly, Rabiner and Gordon (1992) found
that aggressive and rejected children were less able to
manage the simultaneous and often conflicting goals
inherent in many social situations. Dodge and Crick
(1984) have suggested that children’s social competence is best understood not by the specific goals they
tend to adopt in social situations, but by their ability
to coordinate their goals with the goals of others and
to manage the inevitable conflicts that arise. They
suggest that prioritizing or deferring goals are important tools in this coordination but when attempting it, socially incompetent children are often unable
to ignore the attractiveness of their own goals or see
their relation to the goals of others. The present results offer insights into possible underlying mechanisms behind these individual differences. Of particular
interest in this regard is the relatively automatic nature of the ‘‘goal pull’’ effects, suggesting that to
counter them one may need to automatize the inhibition of alternative goals as well. If automatization
develops in the context of practice and experience (cf.
Bargh, 1996) it may be necessary to institute just such
an inhibitive experience to improve persons’ ability to
381
focus on their tasks. These possibilities appear to
merit the investment of further research resources in
their exploration.
Implications for inter-personal relations
A final, though by no means least important, implication of our analysis has to do with the quality of
our relationships to significant others. Mention has
been made already of the fact that other persons could
often trigger various alternative goals to one’s current
pursuits. In addition, some persons could themselves
embody a variety of alternative goals, hence, constituting ‘‘hubs’’ wherein significant goals may meet. For
instance, John’s wife Ann could represent to him at
once the goals of ‘‘romantic love,’’ ‘‘giving and receiving affection,’’ ‘‘camaraderie and social support,’’
‘‘securing the children’s education,’’ ‘‘paying the bills,’’
‘‘cleaning the house,’’ etc. Obviously, different social
targets may vary in the number of goals with which
they are associated and in the strength of those associations as well. This, in turn, may determine how one
comes to feel about and interact with the person in
question.
Researchers on close relationships have commented
on the decline of romance and passion in marital relations as time goes by (i.e., Berscheid, Synder, & Omoto,
1989; Huston & Chorost, 1994). From the present perspective, one reason for this decline could be a dilution
of the romantic/passionate commitment as the marital
partners come to represent to each other a bundle of
simultaneously activatable and unrelated goals competing for their mental and physical resources. In short,
the accessibility of alternative goals may carry profound
psychological implications not only for motivational
and cognitive (e.g., attributional) phenomena at the intra-individual level but also for inter-personal relations
and social interaction.
Conclusion
Although traditionally, motivational and cognitive
explanations of psychological phenomena have tended
to run along separate paths (see Bem, 1972; Miller &
Ross, 1975), there has been a growing appreciation of
the cognitive aspects of motivational constructs such as
goals (cf. Bargh & Barndollar, 1996; Kruglanski,
1996a,b). The present set of studies strengthens this
merger by illustrating how a cognitive quality of alternative goals (their accessibility) and a motivational
quality (their perceived relation to a focal pursuit) interact to affect the singularity and strength with which
one strives toward a focal goal, as well as one’s emotional reaction to its attainment or attainment failure.
By considering the cognitive qualities of goals and how
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they interact with goals’ strictly motivational aspects,
the present research has begun to demonstrate the
considerable potential of a ‘‘warm look’’ on motivation
(see Sorrentino & Higgins, 1986). Such a perspective not
only recognizes the distinct motivational and cognitive
facets of goal pursuit, but also highlights their intricate
inter-connections.
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