Exploring the Bidirectional Relationship Between Threats and Goals

Organizations and policy decision makers have long understood that helping consumers pursue their long-term goals promotes consumer welfare and well-being. Their help is often needed as many consumers struggle with goal setting and goal attainment. For example, a common idea regarding certain goals (e.g., status, fitness, happiness) is that they should not be pursued directly, but, rather, should emerge as a fortuitous byproduct of engagement in other activities. This theorizing is, at one level, intuitively appealing. Certain goals, such as trying too explicitly to fall asleep, may be counterproductive. However, most recognize that the likelihood of achieving a goal is greater when one's behavior is modified in service of that goal. Thus, a person who consciously (re)arranges various aspects of their life (e.g., diet, work habits) to get a good night's sleep will likely sleep better. This perspective is consistent with the large body of research on goals, which has demonstrated that goal activation increases the likelihood of goal attainment by promoting self-regulation toward the goal (e.g., Kruglanski 1996). However, it also raises the interesting and open question of whether there are predictable factors that moderate when goals may function as intended versus ironically backfire. I contend that illuminating such factors is critical for stakeholders interested in promoting a “better world” by supporting consumers’ goal setting and goal pursuit.

I draw from my extant work on self-regulation (e.g., Cannon, Goldsmith, and Roux 2019) to suggest one possible factor. Having a goal requires acknowledging a discrepancy between one's current level of goal attainment and a more desirable reference point. Thus, one cannot have a goal without acknowledging a negative discrepancy in their current situation. I posit that two primary types of responses follow from acknowledging this discrepancy: a threat response and a self-regulatory response. Next, I offer support for this theorizing, then raise a call for organizations, policy decision makers, and academic researchers to better understand and support these two divergent pathways.

When Discrepancies Lead to Threats

Researchers define psychological threat as an aversive psychological state resulting from an observed discrepancy between one's current state and desired end state (e.g., Han, Duhachek, and Rucker 2015). I posit that goals are more likely to promote a threat response when the unfavorable disparity is attributed to causes outside one's control. This notion is consistent with findings in the attribution theory literature (i.e., Miller and Norman 1975) revealing that consumers’ default tendency is often to attribute negative events to situational (i.e., extrinsic) factors, as opposed to dispositional or intrinsic factors. Accordingly, for many goals, acknowledging an unfavorable discrepancy may also force admission that one lacks personal control over important outcomes in their life.

Threats to personal control necessarily inhibit perceptions of change potential (Bandura 1994). If perceptions of change potential are low (i.e., because perceptions of personal control are low), then goal attainment becomes less likely because self-regulating toward the goal becomes less likely (Bagozzi and Edwards 1998). Conversely, factors that help mitigate the psychological threat associated with observing the discrepancy should improve perceptions of change potential and thus improve the likelihood of goals producing positive outcomes.

Goals as Impetus for Self-Regulation

When the sense of psychological threat associated with a goal is ameliorated, perceptions of change potential should improve. Thus, consumers should be more likely to believe that they can reduce the observed discrepancy through directed effort. Accordingly, a goal is set and consumers modify their behavior in an effort to achieve that goal (e.g., Higgins 1990). I categorize this as a self-regulatory­ response to a goal, as it implies that consumers will make a causal connection between their observed discrepancy and behavioral action(s) aimed at reducing the discrepancy. Once this connection is made, increased self-regulation toward the goal will follow (Carver and Scheier 1982).

A Call to Organizations, Policy Makers, and Researchers

Uncovering the conditions under which goals may be more effective allows for fruitful suggestions for improving consumer welfare. For instance, organizations interested in improving employee happiness at work could affirm their employees’ sense of personal control in the process (e.g., through interventions that promote a sense of agency and autonomy in the workplace). Such activities may be sufficient to buffer against the threats to personal control that can be activated by acknowledging an unfavorable discrepancy in one's workplace happiness. Accordingly, they can be effective at promoting a self-regulatory response.

Similarly, organizations that are concerned with improving consumer well-being could utilize these insights when designing products. A fitness brand, such as Peloton, could develop control-affirming programs around goal achievement that consumers could opt in to (e.g., a user interface that emphasizes individual-level choice along the fitness journey). Doing so might not only facilitate indirect benefits to the brand through the improvement of consumer welfare but also offer more direct benefits to the brand, as consumers provide more positive evaluations of brands when they believe the brand cares about them and their well-being (Aggarwal 2004).

Finally, when designing public programs (e.g., debt remediation programs), policy decision makers could explore whether subtle variations that increase perceptions of personal control (e.g., cueing participants to recall areas of their life in which they have control) might be successful for buoying control perceptions more generally and hence promoting goal-consistent behavior (i.e., debt repayment).

Future academic research could empirically test such interventions and examine convergent individual difference variables that might influence one's response to goals due to their relationship to perceptions of change potential and/or personal control. For example, individuals who are chronically high (vs. low) in self-efficacy might be more likely to adopt a self-regulatory response when confronted with an unfavorable discrepancy. Similarly, the tendency to maintain an internal (vs. external) locus of control could yield comparable results. Finally, research on implicit theories (e.g., Elliott and Dweck 1988) has shown that incremental theorists believe their traits to be malleable and are challenge seeking, whereas entity theorists believe their traits to be stable and are challenge avoidant. Thus, my theorizing would predict that when confronting an unfavorable discrepancy, incremental (vs. entity) theorists should be more likely to respond by adopting a self-regulatory (vs. threat) response.

In summary, I offer a novel perspective on how consumer welfare may be improved by viewing goals and threats as different outcomes that derive from the same origin (i.e., observing an unfavorable discrepancy) yet produce distinct consequences. I hope this theorizing will spark interest among organizations, policy decision makers, and researchers interested in promoting a better world through improvements to consumer welfare and well-being.