Motives and Mental Contrasting With Implementation Intentions Predict Progress and Management of Goals in Parents

Abstract

Parents must rapidly adapt goals from various aspects of their lives to accommodate the demands of the early stages of parenthood. According to the self-concordance model, having autonomous goal motives (based on enjoyment or personal goal value) should foster effective self-regulation (e.g., coping strategies), better goal management, and increase the likelihood of goal attainment, compared to controlled motives (goals driven by demands/pressures). Metacognitive techniques, such as mental contrasting with implementation intentions (MCII), can also facilitate goal regulation. We used experience sampling over 1 month to study goal striving in parents (N = 103). We investigated how motives and spontaneously occurring features of MCII (i.e., mental imagery, reflection on obstacles, implementation intention planning) predict three key self-regulatory coping strategies: exerting effort, disengaging, and modifying/adjusting goals to make them attainable. We examined whether these strategies influenced relations between motives and goal progress, intergoal facilitation, and interference between parenting/competing life goals. Autonomous motives and MCII-like features were positively associated with effort coping, which in turn was related to goal progress and facilitation. Additionally, in individuals with high controlled motives, MCII-like features positively predicted increased adjustment of competing life goals. Goal adjustment positively predicted differences in intergoal facilitation. Results indicate that exerting effort and adjusting goals are effective strategies for attaining and managing multiple goals. Both goal motives and MCII-like features are associated with the use of these strategies. The findings suggest that parents will benefit from selecting autonomously motivated goals and using MCII-like features to manage parenting and other competing life goals.