Flexible Tenacity in Goal Pursuit

Abstract

Goal-directed behavior possesses various observable features (Gollwitzer and Moskowitz, 1996). First and foremost, it is characterized by persistent striving until the goal is reached. Second, goal-directedness expresses itself in energization when situations or means that can be used to reach the goal are encountered. And third,goal-directed organisms show appropriateness: If one route to goal attainment is blocked, another course of action to the same goal is taken. Alternatively, if the goal changes, the goal-directed individual readily adapts to these changes by performing different actions. It is the aspect of appropriateness that is scrutinized in the present chapter. We assume that goal pursuits, conscious as well as nonconscious (Gollwitzer & Bargh, 2005), possess much flexibility. But we want to carry this issue one step further. We raise the question of whether very tenacious goal pursuits do still possess the feature of appropriateness, or whether such determined goal pursuits are characterized by rigidity. The kind of heightened tenacity we analyze is not that of increased energization, which is experienced in the face of difficulty (Wright, 1996). Rather, we focus on the tenacity that originates from planning out an intended goal pursuit in advanee. As research on implementation intentions (i.e., if-then plans) has observed (see summaries by Gollwitzer, 1999; Gollwitzer, Bayer, and McCulloch, 2005; Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006), individuals who furnish their goals with implementation intentions achieve higher goal attainment rates than individuals who act on the basis of mere goals (or goal intentions). The question we want to answer first in the present chapter is therefore the following: Are the benefits of forming implementation intentions associated with costs in terms of reduced flexibility (appropriateness)? Once we have found an answer to this first question, we turn in the second part of the chapter to the possibility of using implementation intentions to achieve flexible tenacity. The second question raised is thus quite different: Can forming an implementation intention be used as an effective selfregulatory strategy to protect a focal goal pursuit from disruptions (i.e., spontaneous attention responses to distraetions, bad habits, and detrimental self-states such as emotional experiences) that reduce flexibility in achieving the goal? In order to find answers to both of these questions, we first present an overview of research on the effeets of implementation intentions and the psychological mechanisms on which these rest.