Goal motivation and the subjective perception of past and future obstacles

Autonomous motivation promotes goal attainment through the conscious investment of effort, but mental contrasting with implementation intentions makes goal striving easier

People with autonomous motives (e.g., personal importance) may use automated strategies to effortlessly sustain goal-directed behavior and overcome obstacles. We investigated whether conscious effort, ease of goal striving, physiological effort, and the number of obstacles encountered mediate relations between motives and goal attainment for a competitive cycling goal. Additionally, half the participants (n = 57) were trained in Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions (MCII) - a technique that facilitates development of goal-directed behavior - with remaining participants (n = 54) treated as controls. Conscious investment of effort mediated relations between autonomous motives and goal attainment. Subjective ease of goal striving and physiological effort did not. This result indicates that successful goal striving is not perceived as effortless for autonomously motivated individuals working on competitive goals. Conversely, MCII predicted a reduction in obstacles, which in turn was associated with easier goal striving but not goal attainment. Although MCII did not support goal attainment in the current study, its ability to minimize the influence of obstacles may still be useful for other types of goals or for sustaining long-term goal pursuit.

Want-to, have-to, amotivation, grit, self-control, and tolerance ambiguity among university students: latent profile analysis

The current study adopted a person-centered approach to identify distinctive university students' profiles based on three variables (i.e., three academic motivations, grit, and self-control), regress multiple covariates (i.e., gender, age, study level, and college) on profile membership, and estimate differences on ambiguity tolerance across the estimated profiles. Data on 525 university students were modeled using Latent Profile Analysis. The findings found three latent profiles, which were: [1] Unmotivated and undisciplined students with low grit, [2] Moderately motivated and disciplined students with average grit, and [3] Highly motivated, gritty and disciplined students. Gender, study level, and college significantly predicted profile affiliation, identifying the characteristics of students within each profile. Significant differences were revealed in the ambiguity tolerance among the obtained profiles. These valuable results offer customized recommendations and prospective initiatives, strengthening the constructive effect of proper academic motivation types, purposeful grit, and intentional self-control (143 words).

Using our understanding of time to increase self-efficacy towards goal achievement

This paper reports two studies that uniquely explore how time perspective (TP) predicts general self-efficacy (GSE) towards goal achievement. In Study 1, participants (N = 162) identified a goal they wished to achieve within the near future then completed questionnaires. For those who achieved their goal, the 'past positive' and 'future' TPs were found to positively predict GSE, whereas 'present fatalism' negatively predicted GSE. Study 2 explored whether accessing time related information that may not normally be used to determine GSE via a writing intervention can promote both near and distant-future goal achievement. Participants (N = 139) were randomly assigned to one of four writing conditions and results reveal that GSE towards goal achievement can increase with a focus on both a 'positive past' with a projective positive 'future' TP. Thus, focusing on particular TPs may function to enhance (or prevent) goal achievement.