In recent years, there has been increasing interest in how close relationships can impact personal goal pursuit. Extensive research on social support has shown that support often facilitates goal pursuit. However, Fitzsimons and Finkel found that perceived partner support may actually undermine motivation and decrease goal pursuit intentions. In this article, we report three well-powered studies (N = 850) that investigated the conditions under which romantic partners may bolster or undermine goal pursuit. In contrast with the original Fitzsimons and Finkel’s findings, the results of these studies consistently showed that perceived partner support bolsters goal pursuit intentions by increasing goal commitment. Implications for successful goal pursuit in the context of relationships are discussed.
AndersonE. S.WinettR. A.WojcikJ. R. (2007). Self-regulation, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and social support: Social cognitive theory and nutrition behavior. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 34, 304–312. doi:10.1007/BF02874555
BaumeisterR. F.BratslavskyE.MuravenM.TiceD. M. (1998). Ego depletion: Is the active self a limited resource?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1252–1265. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.74.5.1252
4.
BaumeisterR. F.VohsK. D.TiceD. M. (2007). The strength model of self-control. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 351–355.
5.
BolgerN.ZuckermanA.KesslerR. C. (2000). Invisible support and adjustment to stress. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 953–961. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.953
6.
BrunsteinJ. C.DangelmayerG.SchultheissO. C. (1996). Personal goals and social support in close relationships: Effects on relationship mood and marital satisfaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 1006–1019. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.71.5.1006
7.
BuhrmesterM.KwangT.GoslingS. (2011). Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data?Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 3–5. doi:10.1037/e527772014-223
CohenS.GottliebB.UnderwoodL. (2000). Social relationships and health. In CohenS.UnderwoodL.GottliebB. (Eds.), Measuring and intervening in social support (pp. 3–25). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
10.
CohenS.WillsT. A. (1985). Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 98, 310–357. doi:10.1037//0033-2909.98.2.310
11.
CutronaC. E. (1990). Stress and social support—In search of optimal matching. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 9, 3–14. doi:10.1521/jscp.1990.9.1.3
12.
FeeneyB. C. (2004). A secure base: Responsive support of goal strivings and exploration in adult intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 631–648. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.87.5.631
13.
FishbachA.DharR. (2005). Goals as excuses or guides: The liberating effect of perceived goal progress on choice. Journal of Consumer Research, 32, 370–377.
HayesA. F. (2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. New York: The Guilford Press.
16.
KopetzC.FaberT.FishbachA.KruglanskiA. W. (2011). The multifinality constraints effect: How goal multiplicity narrows the means set to a focal end. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 810.
17.
KruglanskiA. W.BélangerJ. J.ChenX.KöpetzC.PierroA.MannettiL. (2012). The energetics of motivated cognition: A force-field analysis. Psychological Review, 119, 1–20. doi:10.1037/a0025488
18.
KruglanskiA. W.ShahJ. Y.FishbachA.FriedmanR.ChunY. W.Sleeth-KepplerD. (2002). A theory of goal systems. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 34, 331–378. doi:10.1016/s0065-2601(02)80008-9
19.
Landman-PeetersK. M.HartmanC. A.PompeG. V.BoerJ. A.MinderaaR. B.OrmelJ. (2005). Gender differences in the relation between social support, problems in parent-offspring communication, and depression and anxiety. Social Science & Medicine, 60, 2549–2559. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2004.10.024
20.
LatanéB.WilliamsK.HarkinsS. (1979). Many hands make light the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 822.
21.
LurquinJ. H.MichaelsonL. E.BarkerJ. E.GustavsonD. E.Von BastianC. C.CarruthN. P.MiyakeA. (2016). No evidence of the ego-depletion effect across task characteristics and individual differences: A pre-registered study. PLoS One, 11, e0147770. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0147770
22.
OlsonD. A.ShultzK. S. (1994). Gender differences in the dimensionality of social support. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24, 1221–1232. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.1994.tb00555.x
23.
OrehekE.ForestA. L. (2016). When people serve as means to goals: Implications of a motivational account of close relationships. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25, 79–84. doi:10.1177/0963721415623536
24.
RusbultC. E.FinkelE. J.KumashiroM. (2009). The Michelangelo phenomenon. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 305–309. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01657.x
25.
SemmerN. K.ElferingA.JacobshagenN.PerrotT.BeehrT. A.BoosN. (2008). The emotional meaning of instrumental social support. International Journal of Stress Management, 15, 235–251. doi:10.1037/1072-5245.15.3.235
26.
SiceloffE. R.WilsonD. K.HornL. V. (2013). A longitudinal study of the effects of instrumental and emotional social support on physical activity in underserved adolescents in the ACT trial. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 48, 71–79. doi:10.1007/s12160-013-9571-x
27.
SrivastavaS.McGonigalK. M.RichardsJ. M.ButlerE. A.GrossJ. J. (2006). Optimism in close relationships: How seeing things in a positive light makes them so. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 143.
