social self regulations

Key factors found by Shah 2003

significant others may automatically prime related goals: this is influenced by:

• the closeness to the person

• the value of the goal to the other person

• and number of motivational complexity: if it is associated with many other goals

Shah 2003 study on closeness to significant other

p. first listed goals that a mother and a friend had for them

they then rated the closeness to mother or friend '

DV: how committed they were to achieving the goal in the next week 

findings: more committed to goals from close friends than for just friends, similar findings for mom

it has to be primed with the person who has the goal for you 

motivational complexity (shah 2003)

p. listed the person who wanted for them to possess verbal fluency the most. as a distractor, they also listed more people and goals these people would want them to achieve

they performed an anagram task in which each name flashed before the anagram task '

IV: control word vs the name who wanted verbal fluency

DV: performance on anagram task

results: not everyone can influence the goals the same - closeness influences it a lot

the more goals a person tries to pursue at once, the more thinly their attentional and cognitive resources are divided, which weakens progress on any single goal.

goal pursuit in the social world

1. when exposed to close others, we are more likely to adopt the goals they hold for us '

2. we are also more likely to adopt interpersonal goals: associated with different relationships. (ie: helpful goals are activated in the context of friendships)

relationship goals and helping (fitzsimmons & bargh)

p. were recruited from an airport departure gate

IV: primed with close friend or stranger (someone you know but is not a friend)

DV: willingness to do a 10-15 study for experimenter

results: more likely to stay if primed with friend

goal pursuit and evaluation of SO (fitzsimmons and Shah, 2008)

participants nominated friends who were helpful for a goal or not helpful

completed a sentence scramble task to prime achievement goal or no goal

then, completed a friendship questionnaire, assessing how close they were to the helpful v. non instrumental goal

results: Thinking about a significant other who supports one of your goals automatically increases your motivation and makes you evaluate them more positively, whereas thinking about a significant other who interferes with that goal weakens your motivation and leads to more negative evaluations.

interpersonal effects of goal progress (fitzsimmons and fischback) 

p. nominated people they care about who either helped or did not help with goal 

IV: p. were asked to either: focus on progress they have made towards academic goal, or progress they still need to make. 

DV: how close to ppl feel to the helpful person vs non helpful? 

This study is measuring progress, not only the goal 

results: we like the helpful one more 

Fitzsimmons and Finkel (2011) 

p. completed a difficult and fatiguing self regulatory task. they had to retype a paragraph with all vowels omitted when they are 2 spaces away from another vowel. they then provided one example of how a partner helped with an everyday goal. 

IV: wrote about a health and fitness goal, or a career goal 

DV: how likely are you to spend time on the goal in the week 

Results: if they rely on partner, they won’t try as hard. lower in fatigue makes people more likely to lean on partner more 

the downside of self control (koval et al. 2015)

insert image