Goal disengagement in emerging adulthood: The adaptive potential of action crises

In emerging adulthood, being committed to and making progress on important personal goals constitutes a source of identity and wellbeing. Goal striving, however, does not always go without problems. Even though highly committed to a goal, individuals may experience recurring setbacks and, consequently, increasing doubts about the goal that might culminate in an action crisis, that is, an intrapsychic decisional conflict about whether to disengage from or to continue on their way. Action crises have been shown to lead to negative consequences on well-being and performance. Besides these negative consequences, however, an action crisis is hypothesized to have an adaptive side that is addressed in the present paper. Actively questioning the pursuit of a goal should allow for weighing up the focal goal against alternative and possibly more desirable goals. This open-minded re-evaluation, in the event of goal disengagement, is assumed to avoid the emergence of action crises in subsequently formed goals. As expected, in a longitudinal study over one and a half years with n 1⁄4 207 freshman students, the degree of experienced action crisis prior to goal disengagement predicted the desirability and decisional certainty of the subsequently formed alternative goal. Theoretical implications of the results for research on self-regulation and identity formation in emerging adulthood are discussed. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025415597550 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-112469 Accepted Version Originally published at: Brandstätter, Veronika; Herrmann, Marcel (2016). Goal disengagement in emerging adulthood: The adaptive potential of action crises. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 40(2):117-125. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025415597550 Running head: GOAL DISENGAGEMENT AND ACTION CRISES Goal Disengagement and Action Crises Veronika Brandstätter* & Marcel Herrmann University of Zurich Chapter to appear in N. Baumann, T. Goschke, M. Kazén, S. Koole, & M. Quirin (Eds.), Volition, motivation, and personality: A Festschrift in honor of Julius Kuhl. Berlin, Germany: Springer.