EXPRESS: We Succeeded Together, Now What: Relationship Power and Sequential Decisions in Couples' Joint Goal Pursuits

Research has demonstrated that after making high goal progress consumers feel liberated to engage in goal-inconsistent behaviors. But what happens after consumers make high progress in the context of joint goal pursuit? We examine how jointly-made progress towards a joint goal pursued by couples affects subsequent individually-made goal-relevant decisions. Across five experiments with both lab-created couples and married participants and financial data from a couples' money management mobile app, we show that after making high progress on a joint goal (vs. low or no progress), higher relationship power partners are more likely to disengage from the joint goal to pursue personal concerns (e.g., indulge themselves or pursue individual goals), whereas lower relationship power partners do not disengage from the joint goal and continue engaging in goal-consistent actions that maintain its pursuit. We elucidate the underlying mechanism, providing evidence that the joint goal progress boosts the relational self-concept of high (but not low) relationship power partners and this drives the effects. Importantly, we demonstrate the effectiveness of two theory-grounded and easily implementable interventions which promote goal-consistent behaviors among high relationship power consumers in the context of joint savings goals.

Conclusion

This chapter summarizes the book’s contribution to understanding the role of individual legislators’ attributes in the collective goal pursuits of political parties. It assesses the performance of parties on the premises derived from our theory by calculating for each party a “batting average” describing the degree to which premises of the expertise model, electoral–constituency model, and issue ownership hold for each party. It graphically depicts the parties in the book’s two-dimensional space regarding how a country’s electoral system affects a party’s dependence on the geographic location of votes and the personal votes of individual legislators. In this manner, it reveals considerable support for the theory, which states that the less parties depend on these electoral factors to maximize seats, the more they tend to use the expertise model. The more dependence in either dimension, the more the electoral–constituency model tends to explain a party’s personnel strategy. The chapter expands on the role of electoral system variation—including electoral reform in Japan and New Zealand—on party personnel practices. It discusses how our results provide new evidence for the proposition that mixed-member proportional (MMP) systems may offer “the best of both worlds” in representation, and offers a discussion of further extensions of the theory and applications of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm to competing political parties.

The Role of Individual and Dyadic Planning in Couples’ Daily Goal Pursuits

Planning promotes progress toward goal achievement in a wide range of domains. To date, planning has mostly been studied as an individual process. In couples, however, the partner is likely to play an important role in planning. This study tested the effects of individual and dyadic planning on goal progress and goal-related actions. Two samples of couples ( N = 76 and N = 87) completed daily diaries over a period of 28 and 21 days. The results indicate that individual and dyadic planning fluctuate on a daily basis and support the idea that dyadic planning is predominantly used as a complementary strategy to individual planning. As expected, individual and dyadic planning were positively associated with higher levels of action control and goal progress. In Sample 2, dyadic planning was only associated with goal progress on days in which individuals felt that they were dependent upon their partners’ behaviors to achieve their goals.

Goals and Self-Efficacy Beliefs During the Initial COVID-19 Lockdown: A Mixed Methods Analysis

This study aimed to capture how the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis disrupted and affected individuals’ goal pursuits and self-efficacy beliefs early during the lockdown phase of COVID-19. Participants impacted by lockdown regulations accessed an online questionnaire during a 10-day window from the end of March to early April 2020 and reported a significant personal goal toward which they had been working, and then completed quantitative and qualitative survey items tapping self-efficacy beliefs for goal achievement, subjective caring about the goal during disrupted world events, and current pursuit or abandonment of the goal. The findings from both quantitative and qualitative measures demonstrated a significant drop in self-efficacy beliefs from before to during the pandemic with a large effect based on whether people thought they could still achieve their goal under current conditions. Over two-thirds of the sample was unsure or did not believe they could still carry out their goal, and over a quarter either abandoned or were uncertain they could pursue the goal. Despite this, people continued to care about their goals. Reasons for abandonment and strategies for coping with goals within the lockdown and beyond are discussed.