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Self-Regulatory Responses to Unattainable Goals: The Role of Goal Motives

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Open access
Authors
Ntoumanis, Nikos
Healy, L.
Sedikides, C.
Smith, A.
Duda, J.
Date
2014
Type
Journal Article

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Ntoumanis, N. and Healy, L. and Sedikides, C. and Smith, A. and Duda, J. 2014. Self-Regulatory Responses to Unattainable Goals: The Role of Goal Motives. Self and Identity. 13 (5): pp. 594-612.
Source Title
Self and Identity
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School of Psychology
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This article is published under the Open Access publishing model and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/. Please refer to the licence to obtain terms for any further reuse or distribution of this work.

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Abstract

Does motivation for goal pursuit predict how individuals will respond when confronted with unattainable goals? Two studies examined the role of autonomous and controlled motives when pursuing an unattainable goal without (Study 1) or with (Study 2) the opportunity to reengage in alternative goal pursuit. Autonomous motives positively predicted the cognitive ease of reengagement with an alternative goal when the current goal was perceived as unattainable, especially whenparticipants realized goal unattainability relatively early during goal striving. Autonomous motives, however, were negative predictors of cognitive ease of disengagement from an unattainable goal. When faced with failure, autonomously motivated individuals are better off realizing early the goal unattainability. Otherwise, they will find it difficult to disengage cognitively from the pursued goal(despite reengaging cognitively in an alternative goal), possibly due to interfering rumination.