Aspirations and Well-being: Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Life Goals

The present study explored whether participants can be classified into groups according to their intrinsic and extrinsic life goals and how these groups differ in satisfaction of basic psychological needs and well-being. Four questionnaires were administered to 835 college students: Aspiration Index (Kasser and Ryan, 1996), The Basic Psychological Needs Scale (Gagnè, 2003), Subjective Vitality Scale (Ryan and Frederick, 1997) and The Satisfaction with Life Scale (Diener at al., 1985). K-Means cluster analysis was used to classify individuals on the basis of their life aspirations: importance, present attainment and likelihood of future attainment. The same four-cluster solution was obtained for all three measures. The first cluster included individuals high on extrinsic and low on intrinsic life goals. The second contained students high on intrinsic and low on extrinsic aspirations. The third group included students with high scores on both intrinsic and extrinsic goals, and the fourth those with low scores on both kinds of goals. The group with high scores on both intrinsic and extrinsic goals had the highest scores on measures of well-being, followed by the group with high intrinsic and low extrinsic aspirations. These two groups had also higher values for all basic psychological needs compared to groups with low scores on intrinsic values. These findings suggest that both intrinsic and extrinsic goals can contribute to well-being.