Strategies of self-regulation in goal attainment versus goal maintenance

We propose that there exists an important difference between attainment and maintenance in terms of the goal pursuit strategies for which they call. Specifically, we propose that goal attainment calls for the use of eager approach strategies, whereas goal maintenance calls for the use of vigilant avoidance strategies. We distinguish between attainment versus maintenance as two different goal pursuit conditions on the one hand, and promotion versus prevention focus as two different self-regulatory concerns on the other hand. We then use insights from Regulatory Fit Theory to make predictions concerning the interactive effects of these two motivational dimensions on outcome valuations. Consistent with our proposal about attainment and maintenance, we found that participants in a promotion focus valued the outcome of an attainment task more than did participants in a prevention focus, whereas the opposite was true for a maintenance task. Implications for maintenance-related phenomena such as belief perseverance effects are subsequently discussed. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This article is concerned with the psychology of two distinct conditions of goal pursuit: attainment and maintenance. Traditionally, much of the literature on goal pursuit has emphasized the former by focusing on what happens when people are in the condition of trying to attain their goals (see Atkinson, 1957; Latham&Locke, 1991; Lewin, Dembo, Festinger, & Sears, 1944, for examples). Underlying this work has been the assumption that a substantial part of self-regulation consists of setting goals, generating plans, and then executing those plans so as to bring about previously unattained outcomes. But attainment is not the only goal pursuit condition in which people often find themselves. Instead, people also often find themselves in a condition where they must maintain the states that they have already achieved. Thus, people employ strategies such as devaluing alternative romantic partners and giving greater weight to positive relationship features as a way of maintaining established romantic European Journal of Social Psychology Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 37, 628–648 (2007) Published online 18 September 2006 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.380 *Correspondence to: Jeff C. Brodscholl, Department of Psychology, Columbia University, Schermerhorn Hall Rm. 406, 1190 Amsterdam Ave, MC 5501, New York, NY 10027, USA. E-mail: [email protected] Contract/grant sponsor: National Institute of Mental Health; contract/grant number: MH-39429. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 28 October 2005 Accepted 2 June 2006 attachments (Johnson & Rusbult, 1989; Lydon, Meana, Sepinwall, Richards, &Mayman, 1999; Neff & Karney, 2003; Simpson, Gangestad, & Lerma, 1990), and they employ a variety of other strategies as a way to maintain desired feelings and beliefs about the self (Tesser & Cornell, 1991; Tesser, Crepaz, Collins, Cornell, & Beach, 2000; see Cialdini et al., 1976; Liu & Steele, 1986; Pemberton & Sedikides, 2001; Reeves & Tesser, 1985; Steele & Liu, 1983; Swann, Pelham, & Krull, 1989; Swann & Read, 1981; Swann, Stein-Seroussi, & Giesler, 1992; Swann, Wenzlaff, Krull, & Pelham, 1992; Tesser, 1980; Tesser & Smith, 1980 for examples). The attainment-maintenance distinction is a distinction between two types of goal pursuit conditions that vary in their relation between the actor’s current state and his or her desired end-state. In the condition of attainment, the current state is negatively discrepant from the desired end-state, and strategies need to be carried out that will move the individual toward the desired end-state. By contrast, in the condition of maintenance, the current state is already equal to the desired end-state, and strategies need to be carried out that will permit the individual to remain at the desired end-state. Within both attainment and maintenance, a desired, positive end-state is the reference point or comparison standard for the individual’s goal pursuit. Moreover, both attainment and maintenance relate to positive outcomes (to be attained or maintained). What varies between these two goal pursuit conditions is simply the position of the individual’s current state in relation to his or her desired end-state: The current state is discrepant with the desired end-state in attainment, but congruent to it in maintenance. Given that attainment and maintenance differ in terms of people’s relations to their desired endstates, it seems reasonable to suspect that these two conditions should also differ in terms of the types of goal pursuit strategies for which they call. Specifically, because attainment involves a discrepancy between a current state and a desired end-state which the individual must close, attainment should call primarily for a strategy of bringing about additions, or, more specifically, for eager strategies of approaching (i.e., advancing towards) outcomes that maximize end-state matches. By contrast, because the condition of maintenance involves a congruency between a current state and a desired endstate which the individual must preserve, maintenance should call primarily for a strategy of stopping subtractions, or more specifically, for vigilant strategies of avoiding outcomes that yield end-state mismatches. To date, however, little attention has been paid to how attainment and maintenance might differ regarding strategic self-regulation in these two conditions, nor have there been any theoretical analyses that have attempted to distinguish between attainment and maintenance in terms of the types of goal pursuit strategies for which they call. We attempt to address this gap in the literature by employing a novel experimental paradigm for examining the differences that, we believe, exist between these two goal pursuit conditions in terms of the two types of goal pursuit strategies described above (called eager approach and vigilant avoidance, respectively). We ground this paradigm in the theory of ‘regulatory fit’ (Higgins, 2000), a relatively new framework for understanding how value is derived from the degree to which the strategic preferences of an individual’s regulatory orientation suit the strategic requirements of a goal pursuit task. According to regulatory fit theory, people sustain their regulatory orientation by using goal pursuit strategies that fit the strategic preferences of that orientation, making people ‘feel right’ about what they are doing. When people have a positive response to what they are doing, such as a positive response to an object they have chosen or towards a goal they are pursuing, the effect of regulatory fit is to intensify this positive response (Higgins, 2000; see Camacho, Higgins, & Luger, 2003; Cesario, Grant, & Higgins, 2004; Freitas & Higgins, 2002; Freitas, Liberman, & Higgins, 2002 for demonstrations). Studies in which people are asked to choose between two objects using decision strategies that either do or do not fit with their strategic preferences have, in fact, shown valuations of the chosen object to be higher under fit versus non-fit conditions (Avnet & Higgins, 2003; Higgins, Idson, Freitas, Spiegel, & Molden, 2003). Moreover, these effects have been shown to be independent Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 37, 628–648 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp Attainment and maintenance 629