Goal Striving Student Flashcards
Goal striving:
the process of attaining a goal through effort, persistence, focused attention, and strategic planning
Mental simulations:
imagining aspects of a goal in one’s mind
- the content of the goal, so the final outcome
- the process of how to get to the goal (steps)
Should be focus on goal content or goal striving more? why?
focusing on goal striving rather than goal content
- it decreases anxiety
- it encourages planning and finding solutions
What would be a beneficial way of creating a vision board?
- focusing on process vs. content would be a good way to use a vision board
- focus on proximal goals or ways to break down distal goals
Implementation Intentions:
“if-then” plan that specifies in advance how goal-striving will occur
- When, where, how
- “If” = situational cue; “then” = behavioural response
ex: If there are stairs, then I will take them instead of the elevator
ex: I will study for two hours each night at 8pm.
how are implementation intentions helpful?
They help people:
- get started
- stay on track
What is a moderator of implementation intentions:
goal difficulty can fuel implementation intentions
What is a caveat to implementation intentions?
implementation intentions, when too rigid, may restrict/discourage other behaviours that may also promote goal attainment
goal flexibility:
- it’s good to have some flexibility with our goals
- rigid approaches to goal striving demand more effort
ex: students were asked to set daily goals, monthly goals or no goals at all and it showed that when people set daily goals that were restrictive it derailed them so monthly goals were more flexible
- rigid approaches to goal striving encourage an all-or-nothing perception
goal accountability:
- Write it down!
- Tell someone; ideally someone who will encourage you and keep you accountable
- Relatedness can help here, someone who can check up on you
What is a planning fallacy? is it good or bad?
- the tendency to underestimate how long a task will take, even when you know similar tasks have taken longer
- should not fall into this
- after failing to accomplish a goal, self-serving bias makes it even more difficult to learn from our mistakes
Goal Disengagement:
- the reduction of effort and goal commitment
- required in the face of an unattainable goal (goals that aren’t realistic)
- people may fail to disengage from a goal due to fear of appearing weak and the sunk cost effect (investing in something that’s a lost cause)
- implementation intentions can help people to disengage from unattainable goals
- we sometimes need to give up a goal which isn’t always bad, we may just need to reassess
