Share
Pursuing a series of progressive (e.g., professional) goals that form a goal ladder often leads to a trade-off between moving up to a more advanced level and repeating the same goal level. This article investigates how monitoring one’s current goal in terms of remaining actions versus completed actions influences the desire to move up the goal ladder. The authors propose that a focus on remaining (vs. completed) actions increases the motivation to move up to a more advanced level, whereas the focus on completed (vs. remaining) actions increases the satisfaction derived from the present level. They find support for these predictions across several goal ladders, ranging from academic and professional ladders to simple, experimental tasks. They further find that individuals strategically attend to information about remaining (vs. completed) actions to prepare to move up the goal ladder.
Source: “Climbing the goal ladder: How upcoming actions increase level of aspiration.” from Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 99(1), Jul 2010, 1-13.
Two great movies about the dark side of ambition are here and here.
Digests of posts:
Things you didn’t know about sex
How to quickly and easily improve your life
Things you didn’t know about sports
Things you didn’t know about happiness
Things you didn’t know about lies, liars and detecting lies
Things you didn’t know about negotiation, persuasion and influence
Things you didn’t know about marriage and relationships
You should follow me on Twitter here or subscribe to this blog’s feed. If you’re a regular reader please support the blog by doing your book and movie shopping at the store. You’ll find all my recommendations there. Here are the site’s most popular posts of all time.