The role of goal focus for goal pursuit

Prof. Alexandra Freund (University of Zurich)

12 november 2013, 16h, Uni-Mail M5193

Although there is high agreement among motivation researchers that goals can be defined as the association of certain means that lead to desired endstates (e.g., Kruglanski, 1996), surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the question how the relative salience of means or endstates in the representation of goals affects goal pursuit and achievement. In this talk, I will first introduce theoretically the concept of goal focus (process vs. outcome focus). Then, I will present several studies concerning consequences of goal focus on goal achievement, recovery after failure, procrastination, and boredom. Taken together, these studies suggest that a process focus is more adaptive for successful goal pursuit than an outcome focus.