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For Whom the Goals Loom: Context-Driven Goal Contagion
Abstract and Figures
Goal contagion is a process in which perceivers inadvertently "catch" goals inferred from others' behavior; yet, social perception is often driven by the broader contexts surrounding others-and these contexts may suffice to drive goal inferences and contagion on their own. In Study 1, context-driven goal contagion occurred merely from perceiving that a peer was facing an immediate academic deadline as opposed to a distant (or no) deadline. In Study 2, this process was moderated by the potential selfrelevance of the peer's situational context. In Study 3a, context-driven goal contagion caused changes in anagram task behavior; in Study 3b, it caused changes in GRE test performance consistent with participants' GPAs. Note that these effects occurred both in the absence of any behavioral cues and when behavioral cues were held constant. Implications for the situated nature of goal contagion are discussed.
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... Second, much of the goal contagion research has been conducted in laboratory settings (e.g., Aarts et al. 2004;Dik and Aarts 2007;Leander and Shah 2013;Loersch et al. 2008;Shteynberg and Galinsky 2011). Due to the artificiality and contrived nature of laboratory experiments, studies in actual classroom settings are needed. ...
... The findings also enrich the theorizing on goal contagion research as past studies have mostly relied on experimental paradigms (Aarts et al. 2004;Dik and Aarts 2007;Leander and Shah 2013;Loersch et al. 2008;Shteynberg and Galinsky 2011). The present longitudinal study extends previous findings and provides evidence that goal contagion operates beyond controlled settings and applies in real classroom settings. ...
... This study also provides support for the applicability of goal contagion theory to higher-order goals in the goal hierarchy (Carver and Scheier 2000). The results highlight that goal contagion is not limited to lowerlevel proximal goals (e.g., Aarts et al. 2004;Dik and Aarts 2007;Leander and Shah 1 3 2013; Loersch et al. 2008), but also applies to higher-level goals such as achievement goals. ...
Past studies that explored the antecedents of achievement goals have mostly focused on the role of personal characteristics and parental/teacher influences. However, the role of one’s classmates has not been given much attention. Drawing on the concept of goal contagion, the present study aimed to examine whether classmates’ achievement goals influence one’s achievement goals. We recruited 848 secondary school students nested within 30 classes and asked them to answer relevant questionnaires at Time 1 and Time 2. Multilevel analysis was used to examine whether classmates’ achievement goals at Time 1 predicted one’s achievement goals at Time 2 thereby demonstrating achievement goal contagion. To rule out alternative explanations, we controlled for baseline achievement goals at Time 1, social desirability bias, and other relevant demographic factors. Results indicated that mastery-approach, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals were contagious, but mastery-avoidance goals were not. Our study highlights the importance of understanding achievement goal contagion among classmates.
... Participants primed with a significant other person who had high expectations about the participants' performance and highly valued the goal attainment positively influenced participants' performance on an anagram task (Shah, 2003a). Moreover, previous research has found that both social (Loersch, Aarts, Payne, & Jefferis, 2008) and temporal (Leander & Shah, 2013) proximity promoted goal contagion. In one study by Loersch and colleagues (2008), participants watched a video in which two racquetball players were behaving either cooperatively or competitively. ...
... The goal contagion effect emerged only for participants who thought that the players were from their own university. In Leander and Shah's (2013) research, participants imagined a friend with an academic deadline the next day or in the coming weeks. The academic achievement goal of the friend was more salient for participants if they had read about the temporally proximal deadline. ...
... Second, using descriptive action verbs enabled us to create two parallel versions of vignettes in which the construal level of actions was identical, but the content and implied goal of the actions differed. In this pilot study, we wanted to make sure that vignettes implying an academic or social goal were successful in increasing the cognitive salience of goal-related concepts measured with a categorization task as used by Leander and Shah (2013). We assumed that an academic achievement goal would be more salient for participants who read about actions implying an academic goal. ...
We investigated how psychological distance influences goal contagion (the extent to which people automatically adopt another person’s goals). On the basis of construal-level theory, we predicted people would be more prone to goal contagion when primed with psychological distance (vs. closeness) because they would construe the other person’s behavior in terms of its underlying goal. Alternatively, we predicted people primed with psychological closeness (vs. distance) would be more prone to goal contagion because closeness may increase the personal relevance of another’s goals – a process not mediated by construal level. In two preregistered studies, participants read about a student whose behavior implied either an academic or a social goal. We manipulated (a) participants’ level of mental construal with a mind-set task (Study 1) and (b) their social distance from another person who showed academic or social behaviors (Study 2). We measured performance on an anagram task as an indicator of academic goal contagion. For Study 1, we predicted that participants reading about academic (vs. social) behaviors would show a better anagram performance, especially when primed with an abstract mind-set. For Study 2, we predicted that construal level and relevance effects might cancel each other out, because distance triggers both high-level construal and less relevance. In contrast to the construal-level hypothesis, the mind-set manipulation did not affect goal contagion in Study 1. In accordance with the relevance hypothesis, psychological proximity increased goal contagion in Study 2. We discuss how the findings relate to previous findings on goal contagion and imitation.
... As with previous experimental methods (Leander & Shah, 2013;Thrash et al., 2017), we ran a moderated mediation to further examine whether the mediation model linking situational intrinsic motivation to task performance via self-assessment practice was contingent upon the intervention and control conditions 3 . The moderated mediation model (see Fig. 7) with a bootstrap of 1000 had good fit to the data, χ 2 (2) = 2.889, CFI = 0.988, TLI = 0.960, RMSEA = 0.065. ...
... Extending previous research, the current results suggest that even if need-supportive statements are in written form, they remain perceivable to students. Research has shown that, even with the absence of physically observable cues, individuals are able to perceive psychological constructs from their environment (e.g., knowing that one aims to meet a certain deadline evokes you to strive for the same goal; Leander & Shah, 2013; see also Radel et al., 2015;King & Mendoza, 2020;King & Mendoza, 2021). Furthermore, experiments demonstrated that, despite the lack of contact between readers and writers, readers are able to perceive psychologically rich written contents (e.g., readers can perceive inspiration from texts written by inspired writers and, in effect, be inspired writers themselves; Thrash et al., 2017; see also Walton, 2014). ...
Self-determination theory argues that students' intrinsic motivation is cultivated when teachers teach in ways that meet students' basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness (i.e., need-supportive teaching). However, the suspension of in-person teaching and learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic has urged teachers to search for strategies to practice need-supportive teaching online. This study tested the effect of need-supportive task instruction on students' situational intrinsic motivation in an online language learning task. We also examined whether the ensuing intrinsic motivation on the task would positively predict task performance directly or indirectly through self-assessment practice. Controlling for pre-test situational intrinsic motivation, secondary school students randomly assigned to the need-supportive task instruction (n = 56) showed significantly higher situational intrinsic motivation than those in the control group (n = 50). The need-supportive task instructions had a medium effect size on intrinsic motivation. Although such intrinsic motivation had no direct effect on task performance, it yielded significant indirect effects via self-assessment practice. Post-hoc moderated mediation analysis demonstrated that the indirect effect of intrinsic motivation on task performance was specific to students in the need-supportive task instruction group. Overall, need-supportive statements embedded in task instructions generated increased intrinsic motivation on an online task. As schools transition to the new normal of education, this study presents a unique opportunity for educators to implement theoretically informed, brief, and sustainable interventions to support students' motivation and learning online.
... The literature reviewed so far indicates that psychological distance facilitates the imitation of goals. Research on coal contagion-a phenomenon involving goal imitation-however, indicates that psychological nearness (and not distance) facilitates goal contagion (Leander & Shah, 2013;Loersch, Aarts, Payne, & Jefferis, 2008;Wessler & Hansen, 2016). In one study, for instance, participants watched a video in which two racquetball players were behaving either cooperatively or competitively (Loersch et al., 2008). ...
... That is, they chose strategies that are more competitive when they watched competitive in-group members and strategies that are more cooperative when they watched cooperative in-group members. A comparable effect was found for temporal nearness (Leander & Shah, 2013): Participants imagined a friend with an academic deadline the next day or in the coming weeks. The academic achievement goal of the friend was more salient for participants if they had read about the temporally near deadline. ...
Imitation is a ubiquitous part of everybody's life. When imitating other people, a certain psychological distance is always involved—for instance, the imitator may be near to or distant from observed behavior in space (e.g., when one is learning a task face‐to‐face vs. by watching a video) or time (e.g., the behavior appears in a new vs. an old video). In this article, we review recent research that investigated the influence of psychological distance on imitation. In doing so, we differentiate between imitation of movements and imitation of goals. The reviewed research suggests that movement‐based (vs. goal‐based) imitation is stronger when the observed behavior is near than when it is distant. Additionally, the influence of psychological distance on imitation appears to happen already on an input level. That is, the level of construal guides observers' attention either to the observed movement or its goal, facilitating the imitation of the respective action feature. In addition, we review research demonstrating that psychological distance reduces goal contagion—a finding that seems to be at odds with studies showing that distance increases goal‐based imitation. We identify differences between the two lines of research (goal contagion vs. goal imitation) and discuss open questions and future directions that result from the reviewed findings.
... Dincolo de judecăţi de valoare precum bun sau rău (aşa cum am arătat, scopurile urmărite într-o manieră percepută ca fiind nepotrivită nu conduc la contagiune) sau de efortul depus de ţintă (care poate creşte gradul de contagiune), caracteristicile contextului şi cele ale actorilor sociali pot conduce şi ele la apariţia sau la inhibarea contagiunii scopurilor. Aceasta poate să apară chiar şi atunci când modelul şi persoana care poate fi influenţată împart acelaşi context social, relevanţa scopului jucând totuşi un rol important în contagiune (Leander, & Shah, 2013). Astfel, studenţii şi-au însuşit mai uşor scopuri care ţin de activitatea lor academică atunci când au fost expuşi exemplului unui prieten care avea de predat un proiect în foarte scurt timp (comparativ cazului în care persoana avea de predat proiectul mai târziu). ...
... Aceste rezultate arată că atât timp cât contextul este unul potrivit, oamenii pot realiza comportamente doar pentru că o persoană se află într-o situaţie similară, fără ca persoana respectivă să deţină un rol agentic în realizarea scopului. Deşi aceste procese ar putea avea un important rol motivaţional (a fi în contact cu oameni cu scopuri relevante situaţiei în care te afli te poate determina în mod inconştient să acţionezi în consecinţă), ele pot cauza şi preluarea unor scopuri consumatoare de timp şi, în final, nesatisfăcătoare (Leander, & Shah, 2013). ...
Motivaţia poate fi prezentată ca un proces interior conştient care conduce omul către îndeplinirea scopurilor. Astfel, căpătăm o imagine ușor distorsionată a unui individ activ, curios, agentic, capabil să schimbe mediul în care trăieşte doar pentru că îşi doreşte aceste lucru. Diverşi teoreticieni ai motivaţiei umane consideră că omul îşi stabileşte conştient anumite scopuri şi acţionează conştient pentru îndeplinirea lor. Conform teoriei social-cognitive (Bandura, 1986), oamenii îşi setează scopuri într-un anumit domeniu atunci când consideră că sunt auto-eficienţi în domeniul respectiv. Intenţia conştientă este un concept de bază şi pentru teoria auto-determinării (Deci & Ryan, 1985). Ambele teorii ale motivaţiei (dar şi multe altele) au primit susţinere empirică şi experimentală variată, dar asta nu înseamnă că omul acţionează mereu după aceleaşi principii. Numeroase cercetări din psihologia socială recentă ne arată că omul acţionează inconştient, în virtutea unor scopuri împrumutate de la semenii săi. Un concept de bază prezent în cadrul acestor cercetări este contagiunea scopurilor (Aarts, Gollwitzer, & Hassin, 2004). Acesta ne arată cum, în viaţa de zi cu zi, prezenţa celorlalte persoane ne îndreaptă către activităţi, nevoi, dorinţe şi scopuri pe care cu doar câteva momente înainte nu ni le-am fi dorit. Acest capitol prezită, pentru început, o serie de teorii şi cercetări pe baza cărora s-a dezvoltat ideea de contagiune a scopurilor. Apoi, cititorul va putea parcurge o trecere în revistă a celor mai importante studii din acest domeniu şi a modului în care rezultatele lor pot fi aplicate în viaţa de zi cu zi. În final, vor fi indicate şi alte domenii care sunt afectate de contagiunea scopurilor, dar şi viitoare dezvoltări ale acestei teorii.
... For example, research shows that emotions often transfer across individuals (Bruder et al., 2012;Howard & Gengler, 2001;Levy, 2001;Neumann & Strack, 2000;Parkinson & Simons, 2012). Contagion can induce differing goals and produce changes in behavior (Leander & Shah 2013), including perceptions of the paranormal Lange & Houran, 2001). Laboratory studies have similarly demonstrated physical or somatic transference effects (Lorber et al., 2007). ...
The idea of ‘life after death’ transcends philosophy or religion, as science can test predictions from claims by both its advocates and skeptics. This study therefore featured two researchers with opposite views, who jointly gathered hundreds of research studies to evaluate the maximum average percentage effect that seemingly supports (i.e., anomalous effects) or refutes (i.e., known confounds) the survival hypothesis. The mathematical analysis found that known confounds did not account for 39% of survival-related phenomena that appear to attest directly to human consciousness continuing in some form after bodily death. Thus, we concluded that popular skeptical explanations are presently insufficient to explain a sizable portion of the purported evidence in favor of survival. People with documented experiences under conditions that overcome the known confounds thus arguably meet the legal requirements for expert witness testimony. The equation that led to our verdict can also purposefully guide future research, which one day might finally resolve this enduring question scientifically.
Keywords: anomalous experience, empiricism, paranormal belief, probability, survival
... For example, research shows that emotions often transfer across individuals (Bruder et al., 2012;Howard & Gengler, 2001;Levy, 2001;Neumann & Strack, 2000;Parkinson & Simons, 2012). Contagion can induce differing goals and produce changes in behavior (Leander & Shah 2013), including perceptions of the paranormal Lange & Houran, 2001). Laboratory studies have similarly demonstrated physical or somatic transference effects (Lorber et al., 2007). ...
... Three aspects become apparent from the empirical literature: First, different research teams have tested a wide array of diverse goals. Therefore, the GC effect was shown for goals ranging from having casual sex (Aarts et al., 2004) to behaving prosocially (Dik & Aarts, 2007) to achieving high scores in a task (Leander & Shah, 2013) to dieting (Lee & Shapiro, 2015). Second, in most of the literature, GC manipulation is accompanied by moderators that might operate in a unique way for some goals but potentially not for others. ...
Goal contagion is a social-cognitive approach to understanding how other people’s behavior influences one’s goal pursuit: An observation of goal-directed behavior leads to an automatic inference and activation of the goal before it can be adopted and pursued thereafter by the observer. We conducted a meta-analysis focusing on experimental studies with a goal condition, depicting goal-directed behavior and a control condition. We searched four databases (PsychInfo, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and JSTOR) and the citing literature on Google Scholar, and eventually included e = 48 effects from published studies, unpublished studies and registered reports based on 4751 participants. The meta-analytic summary effect was small − 'g' = 0.30, '95%CI' [0.21; 0.40], τ² = 0.05, '95%CI' [0.03, 0.13] − implying that goal contagion might occur for some people, compared to when this goal is not perceived in behavior. However, the original effect seemed to be biased through the current publication system. As shown by several publication-bias tests, the effect could rather be half the size, for example, selection model: 'g' = 0.15, '95%CI' [–0.02; 0.32]. Further, we could not detect any potential moderator (such as the presentation of the manipulation and the contrast of the control condition). We suggest that future research on goal contagion makes use of open science practices to advance research in this domain.
... Different versions of this basic idea have been referred to as goal contagion (e.g. see Aarts, Gollwitzer, & Hassin, 2004;Dik & Aarts, 2007;Jia, Tong, & Lee, 2014;Loersch, Aarts, Keith Payne, & Jefferis, 2008;Pontus & Shah, 2013), or goal slippage (Michael & Székely, 2017). Goal contagion or goal slippage might result from, or be enhanced by, the perception of a joint action partner's effort investment, insofar as effort investment may elicit a sense of commitment to one's partner (and consequently to one's partner's goals). ...
A wealth of research in recent decades has investigated the effects of various forms of coordination upon prosocial attitudes and behavior. To structure and constrain this research, we provide a framework within which to distinguish and interrelate different hypotheses about the psychological mechanisms underpinning various prosocial effects of various forms of coordination. To this end, we introduce a set of definitions and distinctions that can be used to tease apart various forms of prosociality and coordination. We then identify a range of psychological mechanisms that may underpin the effects of coordination upon prosociality. We show that different hypotheses about the underlying psychological mechanisms motivate different predictions about the effects of various forms of coordination in different circumstances.
... Goal contagion theory Lee, Li, Shin, and Kwon (2016) The goal contagion theory explains the process of goal contagion, through which individuals automatically adopt and pursue a goal that is implied by another person's behavior (Aarts, Gollwitzer, & Hassin, 2004;Leander & Shah, 2013). 1) To explain the intention to adopt innovative information technology (IT) in firms with limited IT knowledge . ...
• The purpose of this study is to enrich the existing state-of-the-art literature on the impact of big data on business growth by examining how dozens of organizational theories can be applied to enhance the understanding of the effects of big data on organizational performance. While the majority of management disciplines have had research dedicated to the conceptual discussion of how to link a variety of organizational theories to empirically quantified research topics, the body of research into big data so far lacks an academic work capable of systematising the organizational theories supporting big data domain. The three main contributions of this work are: (a) it addresses the application of dozens of organizational theories to big data research; (b) it offers a research agenda on how to link organizational theories to empirical research in big data; and (c) it foresees promising linkages between organizational theories and the effects of big data on organizational performance, with the aim of contributing to further research in this field. This work concludes by presenting implications for researchers and managers, and by highlighting intrinsic limitations of the research.
Goal shielding theory suggests that one's focal pursuits automatically inhibit the activation of interfering goals (Shah, Friedman, & Kruglanski, 2002); however, it is not entirely clear how individuals come to identify what constitutes “interfering”. Three studies examine how this identification process may be guided by fundamental social motives that individuals possess, particularly in social situations wherein goals are primed through mere exposure to others' goal-directed behavior (“goal contagion”, Aarts, Gollwitzer, & Hassin, 2004). Participants' fundamental motives for positive self-regard (Study 1), autonomy (Study 2), and distinctiveness (Study 3) were either manipulated or measured and participants read scenarios that manipulated the goal-directed behavior of a target other. Results indicated that participants inhibited the activation of goals being primed by others when the implicit influence interfered with their fundamental motives in some way. These findings suggest that fundamental motives can guide whether individuals will catch goals from others or shield themselves from such influences.
Perceivers received information about a target person’s level of athletic performance (e.g., kicking a soccer ball) and the situational forces surrounding that performance. Perceivers’ inferences about the effort and ability of the target depended on whether the situational forces involved psychological forces (a bribe offered for low performance) or physical forces (a wind that hindered performance). Replicating past research, psychological forces had a stronger impact on inferred ability given the presence of low performance, as opposed to high performance. Additional analyses indicated that this pattern was mediated by inferences about the effort of the target. In contrast, physical forces appeared to have a direct impact on inferences of ability and affected inferences based on both low and high performance. The results suggest that perceivers make inferences about multiple attributes within a target person and, in the process, attempt to reconcile those inferences.
The theory outlined in the present chapter adopts a cognitive approach to motivation. In the pages that follow we describe a research program premised on the notion that the cognitive treatment affords conceptual and methodological advantages enabling new insights into problems of motivated action, self-regulation and self-control. We begin by placing our work in the broader historical context of social psychological theorizing about motivation and cognition. We then present our theoretical notions and trace their implications for a variety of psychological issues including activity-experience, goal-commitment, choice, and substitution. The gist of the chapter that follows describes our empirical research concerning a broad range of phenomena informed by the goal-systemic analysis. Motivation Versus Cognition, or Motivation as Cognition Motivation versus cognition: the “separatist program. ” Social psychological theories have often treated motivation as separate from cognition, and have often approached it in a somewhat static manner. The separatism of the “motivation versus cognition ” approach was manifest in several major formulations and debates. Thus, for example, the dissonance versus self-perception debate (Bem, 1972) pitted against each other motivational (i.e., dissonance) versus cognitive (i.e., self-perception) explanations of attitude change phenomena. A similar subsequent controversy pertained to the question of whether a motivational explanation of biased causal attributions in terms of ego-defensive tendencies (cf. Kelley, 1972) is valid, given the alternative possibility of a purely cognitive explanation (Miller & Ross, 1975). The separatism of the “motivation versus cognition ” approach assigned distinct functions to motivational and cognitive variables. This is apparent in major social psychological notions of persuasion, judgment or impression formation. For instance, in the popular dual-mode theories of
Goal contagion is the automatic adoption of a goal upon perceiving another’s goal-directed behavior (Aarts, H., Gollwitzer, P. M., & Hassin, R. R. (2004). Goal contagion: Perceiving is for pursuing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(1), 23–37). This paper tests the hypothesis that goal contagion is more likely between people who belong to the same groups. Because past work on goal contagion has required participants to read about the behavior of others, we also test whether goals are caught when one sees rather than reads about another’s motivated behavior. Across three studies, this ecologically valid methodology reliably produced goal contagion, and this effect was more likely to emerge when participants shared a group membership with those they observed. In Study 1, participants were more likely to take on the goal of individuals who belonged to their same university. Study 2 demonstrated that this effect occurred even when participants were not explicitly focused on the group membership of others. A final study verified that our effects were motivational by demonstrating that failing at a goal relevant task increased negative affect, but only for those who viewed the motivated behavior of someone from their own group.
The present study examined the immediate and delayed effects of unobtrusive exposure to personality trait terms (e.g., "reckless," "persistent") on subjects' subsequent judgments and recollection of information about another person. Before reading a description of a stimulus person, subjects were unobtrusively exposed to either positive or negative trait terms that either could or could not be used to characterize this person. When the trait terms were applicable to the description of the stimulus person, subjects' characterizations and evaluations of the person reflected the denotative and evaluative aspects of the trait categories activated by the prior exposure to these terms. However, the absence of any effects for nonapplicable trait terms suggested that exposure to trait terms with positive or negative associations was not in itself sufficient to determine attributions and evaluations. Prior verbal exposure had little effect on reproduction of the descriptions. Moreover, no reliable difference in either evaluation or reproduction was found between subjects who overtly characterized the stimulus person and those who did not. Exposure to applicable trait terms had a greater delayed than immediate effect on subjects' evaluations of the stimulus person, suggesting that subjects may have discounted their categorizations of the stimulus person when making their immediate evaluations. The implications of individual and situational variation in the accessibility of different categories for judgments of self and others are considered.
Addresses fundamental self-regulatory issues by considering the basic ways in which goals can differ from each other not only in terms of their motivational contents but also in terms of their significant cognitive properties. To integrate these differing goal qualities under a general perspective, this chapter adopts a systematic approach in assuming that an individual's goals and means can be viewed as a network of cognitive associations endowed with specific structural properties. The authors begin by portraying the fundamental characteristics of goal systems: how goals inter-connect with other goals and with their attainment means and what significant configurations result from these associations. In doing so, they outline a number of characteristics of goal-systems such as their potential for implicit activation, their contextual dependence, and the transfer of properties that may occur between their components. This chapter then considers the consequences of goal systems for various self-regulatory phenomena including goal commitment, choice, substitution, and intrinsic motivation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
automatic activation of motives and goals / chronically accessible motives and social interaction goals (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)