The limited role of personal goal striving in status attainment.

Despite evidence of declining intergenerational mobility, recent studies have shown a rising trend of meritocratic belief (e.g., hard work pays off) among American adults. However, as scholarly attention has been focused on the power of adolescent beliefs (e.g., expectations and aspirations), little is known about the role of adults' hard work in status attainment. Using the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) survey data, we examine the role of adults' goal striving, which is closely linked to hard work, in status attainment. Our results show that changes in goal striving are positively associated with changes in socioeconomic status among young adults, but such an association is not found among middle-aged or old adults. While persistent goal-striving of those from lower or middle family socioeconomic backgrounds is hardly a game-changer for their status attainment, whether someone from a higher family socioeconomic background works hard and commits to their goal (i.e., persistent goal-striving) does make a difference in their status outcome. The findings of this study suggest that the role of goal striving in status attainment is far more limited than the popular belief in meritocracy describes.

Childhood Abuse, Goal-Striving Stress and Self-Esteem: An Explanatory Role for Perceptions of Divine Control?

Early life course events and experiences affect lifelong processes of human development, and at the forefront of life course research, is how negative conditions during childhood compromise adult well-being. In the current study, we propose that individuals who experience early life adversity may be more susceptible to the effect of stressors that are also very much rooted in the self-concept, namely goal-striving stress, the feeling of falling short of one's expectations. Using data from the 2014 Nashville Stress and Health Study from the United States (NSAHS), we examine this process and consider how elements of religiosity, particularly beliefs in God's causal influence in human life (divine control) explain why goal-striving stress takes a larger toll on the self-esteem of individuals who experienced childhood abuse. Our findings indicate that (1) childhood abuse was positively associated with goal-striving stress and inversely associated with self-esteem, (2) goal-striving stress was inversely associated with self-esteem, (3) goal-striving stress exacerbated the association between childhood abuse and lower self-esteem. Mediated-moderation analyses also revealed that (4) lower perceptions of divine control explain why goal-striving stress was more damaging for victims of childhood abuse. Taken together, this study contributes to a growing body of work on anticipatory stressors and linkages to the self-concept for victims of early life adversity, and how adversity early in the life course might undermine key religious resources like divine control that may otherwise mitigate the noxious effects of stress.

Goal-striving tendencies moderate the relationship between reward-related brain function and peripheral inflammation.

Inflammation is associated with both lower and higher activity in brain regions that process rewarding stimuli. How can both low and high sensitivity to rewards be associated with higher inflammation? We propose that one potential mechanism underlying these apparently conflicting findings pertains to how people pursue goals in their environment. This prediction is based on evidence that both an inability to disengage from unattainable goals and low interest in and pursuit of important life goals are associated with poor health outcomes, including inflammation. Accordingly, this study examined the relationship between reward-related brain function and peripheral inflammation among individuals with different levels of ambitious goal-striving tendencies. Eighty-three participants completed an ambitious goal-striving tendency measure, an fMRI Monetary Incentive Delay task assessing orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) activation during reward anticipation and outcome, and a venous blood draw to assess the inflammatory biomarkers interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, and C-reactive protein, from which we computed an inflammation composite score. We observed a reward anticipation by goal-striving interaction on inflammation, such that high OFC and NAc activation to reward anticipation (but not outcome) were associated with more inflammation, among high goal-striving individuals. By contrast, low NAc activation during reward anticipation (but not outcome) was associated with more inflammation, among low goal-striving individuals. The current study provides further evidence that both blunted and elevated reward function can be associated with inflammation. It also highlights the role that goal-striving tendencies may play in moderating the relationship between neural reward anticipation and inflammation.

The Neuroscience of Goals and Behavior Change.

The ways that people set, pursue, and eventually succeed or fail in accomplishing their goals are central issues for consulting psychology. Goals and behavior change have long been the subject of empirical investigation in psychology, and have been adopted with enthusiasm by the cognitive and social neurosciences in the last few decades. Though relatively new, neuroscientific discoveries have substantially furthered the scientific understanding of goals and behavior change. This article reviews the emerging brain science on goals and behavior change, with particular emphasis on its relevance to consulting psychology. I begin by articulating a framework that parses behavior change into two dimensions, one motivational (the will) and the other cognitive (the way). A notable feature of complex behaviors is that they typically require both. Accordingly, I review neuroscience studies on cognitive factors, such as executive function, and motivational factors, such as reward learning and self-relevance, that contribute to goal attainment. Each section concludes with a summary of the practical lessons learned from neuroscience that are relevant to consulting psychology.

The motivational properties of hope in goal striving.

We argue that hope is not an expectancy based on beliefs about pathways to desired goals and personal capacities to act on them, but an experience of the mere possibility of a desired outcome. We propose that in the latter sense, hope has unique motivational consequences for goal striving. Specifically, we predicted that hope buffers against the detrimental impact of negative feedback on goal-progress. The results of the two studies confirmed this prediction. In Study 1, we measured participants' hopes of attaining a weight-loss goal. In Study 2, we induced hope at solving an unsolvable mathematical puzzle. In both studies, receiving negative feedback on goal-progress resulted in lower levels of success (Study 1) and persistence (Study 2) in goal-striving, but not for participants who experienced hope. We discuss the role of hope as an affective mechanism that functions to regulate energy expenditure in goal-striving.

Healthy and successful: Health-behavior goal striving in daily work life.

Health behaviors (physical activity and healthy eating) can be an essential part of everyday work life and are relevant for employees' affective states. Many worksite interventions, including goal-striving approaches, have been developed to promote health behavior at work. However, these approaches often neglect that making progress with respect to health-behavior goals necessarily takes place during workday episodes, so that work tasks are accomplished simultaneously. In our study, we aim to advance the understanding of how health-behavior goal progress is facilitated and how reflecting on it evokes affective states-taking into account simultaneous pursuit of work-task progress. We collected daily diary data from 205 employees on 1399 days. Analyses showed that goal importance positively predicted health-behavior goal progress, which in turn positively predicted pride and negatively predicted shame at the end of the workday. The negative relation between health-behavior goal progress and shame was stronger on days with low work-task progress, implying compensatory effects. Work-task progress did not moderate the relation between health-behavior goal progress and pride. We discuss the theoretical and practical relevance of integrating research on multiple goal striving when promoting health behavior in daily work life by means of goal-striving techniques.

Self-Concordance Theory and the Goal-Striving Reasons Framework and Their Distinct Relationships With Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being.

Self-concordance theory and the goal-striving reasons framework both measure the quality of people's reasons for their goal pursuits. Both have provided substantial evidence for their predictive power for people's well-being. However, it remains unclear which of the two goal-reason models is the better predictor for different forms of well-being. The paper analyses the distinct relationships of the two models in relation to hedonic well-being (Subjective Well-Being, Life Satisfaction, Affect Balance) and indicators of eudaimonic well-being (Basic Need Satisfaction, Purpose and Self-Acceptance). The findings are based on a cross-sectional, correlative research design based (N = 124). Using multiple regression analyses the results show that the goal-striving reasons framework is overall more strongly associated with hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. However, the differences for hedonic well-being as well as for self-acceptance and purpose are much larger than they are for the three basic needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Here, self-concordance achieves nearly similar correlations to the goal-striving reasons framework. The findings have implications for theory and practice as they highlight the theoretical differences between the two goal-reasons models but also help to decide which Positive Psychology Interventions are most suitable to increase which form of well-being.

An intervention to promote concrete thinking style in young adults: Effects on depressive symptoms and its protective factors.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Individuals with low concreteness-experiential thought (CET) tend to have exacerbated depressive symptoms. Interventions aimed at increasing CET have been shown to influence depressive symptoms. The present study examined the effects of increasing CET on depressive symptoms and its protective factors. METHODS: A two-armed experimental intervention was conducted with 86 healthy university students in Japan. They were randomly allocated to the intervention and waitlist groups. Participants in the intervention group engaged in an unguided and web-based (UW) intervention to increase CET (UW-CET). This intervention included a one-off session, to explain the rationale behind increasing CET via a psychoeducation video, and a five-session training on CET over a week. We assessed depressive symptoms, thought styles, and protective factors, such as mindfulness and goal striving, both pre- and-post-assessment and at the one-month follow-up. RESULTS: Participants in the intervention group had marginally increased CET in the follow-up assessments; however, participants in the waitlist group did not. Furthermore, participants in the intervention showed marginally increased mindfulness tendencies and strivings toward their personal goals, but their depressive symptoms were not affected. LIMITATIONS: The present study did not include any active control conditions. Additionally, the sample consisted of only healthy university students. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that the UW-CET can marginally increase adaptive thinking, such as CET, and promote positive psychological aspects in healthy young adults; however, the effect is small. The findings may also help expand clinical implementations to prevent depression in young adults.

Helping others but Hurting Yourself? The underlying mechanism linking helping behavior to task performance.

Helping behavior positively influences organizational effectiveness, which is why the importance of this behavior is highlighted in Chinese enterprises, and employees are encouraged to engage in it. However, from an actor-centric perspective, helping behavior is not always beneficial. In this paper, cognitive-affective personality system theory is applied to link helping behavior to task performance, thus enhancing the understanding of the effects of helping behavior. By adopting a two-wave questionnaire survey, data from 202 leader-subordinate dyads were gathered. Then, the BruceR (V0.7.2) package of Rstudio (V4.1.1) was used to generate a multi-mediated moderation model and test the hypotheses. The following results were obtained: 1) Helping behavior was negatively associated with task performance. 2) Cognitive irritation and emotional exhaustion serially mediated the influences of helping behavior on task performance. 3) Team-level communal goal striving moderated the indirect influence of helping behavior on task performance; the indirect influence was only significant when the levels of team communal goal striving were low. From an actor-centric perspective, this paper presents evidence for the connection between helping behavior and task performance. Numerous implications for management approaches are presented to maximize the management of helping behavior.

Does Connectedness Need Satisfaction Diminish or Promote Social Goal Striving?

People pursue social goals primarily to satisfy their innate need for affiliation; however, there is no consensus regarding how the successful fulfillment of affiliation need-social connectedness-influences striving for social goals. To address this issue, we proposed a dual-pathway model postulating both a negative effect of social connectedness on social goal striving via decreased emotional distress and a positive effect via increased social self-efficacy. Six studies (total N = 1,849), using cross-sectional, experimental, and daily diary methods, provided support for this model at both the between- and within-person levels. Furthermore, by distinguishing between approach and avoidance social goal strivings, and between deficit-reduction and growth connectedness need orientations, we found that the relative strength with which each path operates differed. The dual-pathway model generates theoretical and practical implications for need satisfaction and goal striving.

Evaluation of the Happiness Through Goal-Setting Training.

This paper describes the evaluation of the Happiness through Goal-Setting Training, a multiple intervention approach which helps participants to reflect on, and modify their reasons for goal pursuit. The training is theoretically grounded in the goal-striving reasons framework. This framework captures four important reasons for goal pursuit and has received a substantial amount of empirical support for its predictive power in relation to positive psychological functioning. The four goal-striving reasons are the pursuit of goals out of pleasure, altruism, fear of self-esteem loss or necessity. The evaluation of the training, employing a before-and-after study design, is based on two data sets comprising data from a face-to-face delivery of the training (N = 41) and an online delivery of the training (N = 40). Overall, the findings from both studies, using paired sample t-tests, show that the Happiness through Goal-Setting Training significantly improves the quality of people's reasons for goal pursuit as well as their positive psychological functioning measured through life satisfaction, positive affect, negative affect and work-engagement. Thus, the Happiness through Goal-Setting Training complements the existing suite of well-being interventions by providing a happiness training that focusses specifically on improving people's reasons for goal-pursuit.

Could hypomanic traits explain selective migration? Verifying the hypothesis by the surveys on sardinian migrants.

INTRODUCTION: A recent survey put forward the hypothesis that the emigration that occurred from Sardinia from the 1960's to the 1980's, selected people with a hypomanic temperament. The paper aims to verify if the people who migrated from Sardinia in that period have shown a high risk of mood disorders in the surveys carried out in their host countries, and if the results are consistent with this hypothesis. METHODS: This is systematic review. RESULTS: In the 1970's when examining the attitudes towards migration in Sardinian couples waiting to emigrate, Rudas found that the decision to emigrate was principally taken by males. Female showed lower self-esteem than male emigrants. A study on Sardinian immigrants in Argentina carried out in 2001-02, at the peak of the economic crisis, found a high risk of depressive disorders in women only. These results were opposite to the findings recorded ten years earlier in a survey on Sardinian immigrants in Paris, where the risk of Depressive Episode was higher in young men only. DISCUSSION: Data point to a bipolar disorder risk for young (probably hypomanic) male migrants in competitive, challenging conditions; and a different kind of depressive episodes for women in trying economic conditions. The results of the survey on Sardinian migrants are partially in agreement with the hypothesis of a selective migration of people with a hypomanic temperament. Early motivations and self-esteem seem related to the ways mood disorders are expressed, and to the vulnerability to specific triggering situations in the host country.

An Examination of the Conceptual Structure of Long-Term Goal Striving.

Long-term goal striving has been recognized as an important stage in goal achievement. Compared with the development of measurements of goal setting, researchers tended to measure goal striving in different manners. This study examined the conceptual structure of goal striving and validated a new scale to operationalize the construct within academic learning contexts. A 25-item scale was validated with 522 Chinese university students to assess its factor structure, reliability, gender invariance, criterion-related validity, and incremental validity. Confirmatory factor analysis results supported both the first-order and second-order model. Overall, the scale showed good reliability, validity, and invariance across gender. We suggested that this new scale could be used as an effective measure to assess the level of goal striving among university students in a Chinese context.

Goal-striving stress and repeated measures of adiposity in the Jackson heart study.

Psychosocial stressors are determinants of increases in adiposity. Both psychosocial stressors and adiposity are higher among African Americans (AAs). Therefore, clarifying the stress-obesity link in AAs is important. The stress associated with goal striving is particularly relevant to AAs because opportunity for upward mobility is not always equal. Goal-striving stress (GSS) has not been assessed with adiposity, a potential result of GSS. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine whether GSS would be associated with repeated measures of adiposity [body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), waist-to-height ratio (WHR)] in AAs. Linear mixed models were used to assess the relationship between GSS with repeated measures of adiposity across three exam periods among 2902 AAs, and sex was assessed as a moderator. Models were adjusted for demographics, health behaviours, morbidities, and daily discrimination. GSS was positively associated with repeated measures of adiposity in women but not men: WC [estimate (standard error) p-value] [0.003 (0.001) p < 0.01] and WHR [0.003 (0.0007) p < 0.01]. This suggests that high stress due to goal striving may contribute to greater increases in adiposity in AA women over time. Community-based interventions should continue to consider focused support group models as viable options for goal-striving related stress reduction.

"Moving on Up? Neighborhood Status and Racism-Related Distress among Black Americans".

At all levels of socioeconomic status, Black Americans can expect to live shorter and sicker lives than their White counterparts. This study advances the perspective that anti-Black stigma from Whites precludes Blacks from reaping the full health rewards of higher status, particularly within the context of neighborhoods. To test this hypothesis, I merge census data with rich survey and biomarker data from the Nashville Stress and Health Study, a representative sample of Black and White adults from Davidson County, Tennessee (n = 1,252). Initially, I find that Blacks who reside in higher-status and mostly White communities exhibit lower levels of neuroendocrine stress hormones, relative to their peers living in disadvantaged Black neighborhoods. But Blacks in higher-status areas also report more perceived discrimination. In turn, perceived discrimination is associated with chronic bodily pain, as well as elevated stress hormones and blood pressure tied to high goal-striving stress, or fears of being blocked from reaching life goals. After accounting for racism-related stressors, Blacks exhibit comparable levels of physiological distress regardless of neighborhood context. The inverse is true for Whites, who report fewer stressors in higher-status neighborhoods, and less physiological distress than Blacks overall. Findings are discussed within the context of social evolutionary theories of the human brain and are dovetailed with broader racial health disparities in the United States.

On the Mechanics of Goal Striving: Experimental Evidence of Coasting and Shifting.

Carver and Scheier's (1990) account of goal striving predicts that unexpectedly fast goal progress leads to reduced effort at that goal (coasting) and to shifting focus toward other goals (shifting). Although these hypotheses are key to this goal-striving account, empirical evidence of coasting and shifting is scarce. Here we demonstrate coasting and shifting in 2 experiments: Participants performed a lexical decision task and were promised a bonus if they delivered a specific number of correct responses (accuracy goal) and a specific number of fast responses (speed goal). After half of the trials, participants received (randomly allocated) feedback on their progress regarding the 2 goals, in which progress toward 1 goal was either above or below the target. In line with hypotheses, better-than-needed progress toward 1 goal led to (a) reduced subsequent progress toward that goal (as reflected in lower goal-related performance; coasting) and (b) a shift of resources toward the alternative goal (as reflected in higher goal-related performance on the alternative goal; shifting). Experiment 1 further demonstrated that positive feedback led to positive affect, and Experiment 2 demonstrated the causal role of affect in coasting and shifting. The implications of the present findings for future research on goal striving are discussed.

The association of goal-striving stress with sleep duration and sleep quality among African Americans in the Jackson Heart Study.

BACKGROUND: African Americans (AAs) report a higher frequency of certain stressors over their lifetime which may impact biological processes that can impair sleep. For this reason, goal-striving stress (GSS), the difference between aspiration and achievement, weighted by disappointment, may contribute to poor sleep quality and suboptimal sleep duration among AAs. METHODS: We completed a cross-sectional analysis using exam 1 data (2000-2004) from the Jackson Heart Study (JHS) (n=4943). GSS was self-reported and categorized in tertiles of low, moderate, and high. Participants self-reported the number of hours they slept each night and rated their sleep quality as (1) very poor to (5) excellent. Sleep duration categories included the following: short sleep (≤6 hours), normal sleep (7-8 hours) and long sleep (≥ 9 hours). Sleep quality was categorized as high (good/very good/excellent) and low (fair/poor). Relative risk ratios (RRRs 95% confidence intervals-CI) were estimated for sleep duration and sleep quality categories by GSS using logistic regression. RESULTS: After full adjustment, there were no significant associations between GSS and sleep duration categories. However, participants who reported high (versus low) GSS had a 20% greater risk (1.20 95% CI: 1.01, 1.43) of low (versus high) sleep quality in the fully adjusted model. CONCLUSION: The stress due to the deficit between goal aspiration and achievement was associated with poor sleep quality. Future investigations should examine the association of changes in GSS with changes in sleep duration and sleep quality.

Goal-Striving Stress and Incident Cardiovascular Disease in Blacks: The Jackson Heart Study.

Background Goal-striving stress (GSS), the stress from striving for goals, is associated with poor health. Less is known about its association with cardiovascular disease (CVD). Methods and Results We used data from the JHS (Jackson Heart Study), a study of CVD among blacks (21-95 years old) from 2000 to 2015. Participants free of CVD at baseline (2000-2004) were included in this analysis (n=4648). GSS was examined in categories (low, moderate, high) and in SD units. Incident CVD was defined as fatal or nonfatal stroke, coronary heart disease (CHD), and/or heart failure. We used Cox proportional hazards regression to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of incident CVD by levels of GSS, adjusting for demographics, socioeconomic status, health behaviors, risk factors, and perceived stress. The distribution of GSS categories was as follows: 40.77% low, 33.97% moderate, and 25.26% high. Over an average of 12 years, there were 140 incident stroke events, 164 CHD events, and 194 heart failure events. After full adjustment, high (versus low) GSS was associated with a lower risk of stroke (HR, 0.38; 95% CI, 0.17-0.83) and a higher risk of CHD (HR, 1.91; 95% CI, 1.10-3.33) among women. A 1-standard deviation unit increase in GSS was associated with a 31% increased risk of CHD (HR, 1.31; 95% CI, 1.10-1.56) among women. Conclusions Higher GSS may be a risk factor for developing CHD among women; however, it appears to be protective of stroke among women. These analyses should be replicated in other samples of black individuals.

Striving While Black: Race and the Psychophysiology of Goal Pursuit.

Population health scientists have largely overlooked anticipatory stressors and how different groups of people experience and cope with anticipatory stress. I address these gaps by examining black-white differences in the associations between an important anticipatory stressor-goal-striving stress (GSS)-and several measures of psychophysiology. Hypotheses focusing on racial differences in GSS and psychophysiology are tested using self-report and biomarker data from the Nashville Stress and Health Study (2011-2014), a cross-sectional probability survey of black and white working-age adults from Davidson County, Tennessee (n = 1,252). Compared to their white peers, blacks with higher GSS report greater self-esteem and fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety. However, increased GSS also predicts elevated levels of high-effort coping (i.e., John Henryism), neuroendocrine stress hormones, and blood pressure for blacks but not whites. I discuss the implications of these findings for scholars interested in the stress process and broader black-white health inequalities in the United States.

Are We Making Progress? Assessing Goal-Directed Behaviors in Leadership Development Programs.

Leadership development programs increasingly help participants engage in their career transitions. Therefore, these programs lead participants to establish not only development goals, which usually involve the improvement of a specific leadership competency, but also goals that relate to career advancement or to achieving a more general life aspiration. Assessing goal attainment, as a measure of program impact, may take years as goals vary greatly in terms of nature, timeframe, and domain. The purpose of this study was to overcome this challenge by providing a measure of goal progress as a necessary antecedent of goal attainment, and which we operationalize through a general scale of goal-directed behaviors. Subject-matter experts assessed the content validity of the measure. Factor analysis, using three samples, revealed four dimensions identified as Sharing Information, Seeking Information, Revising the Plan, and Enacting the Plan. This new scale allows data collection as early as a few months after setting the goals, which can provide practitioners with an earlier indication of program impact and facilitate future academic studies in this field.