When Goal Pursuit Gets Hairy: A Longitudinal Goal Study Examining the Role of Controlled Motivation and Action Crises in Predicting Changes in Hair Cortisol, Perceived Stress, Health, and Depression Symptoms

The action crisis is a critical phase in goal striving during which the goal pursuer feels conflicted about persevering with the goal or initiating disengagement. Recent research suggests that goal motivation, specifically controlled motivation (i.e., pursuing a goal out of obligation and pressure), increases the likelihood of experiencing action crises. In turn, action crises in goal pursuit have been linked to increases in depression symptoms and cortisol. In the present 8-month longitudinal study, we tracked university students’ personal goals to examine whether the pursuit of controlled goals and the experience of action crises was associated with increasing levels of hair cortisol, perceived stress, poor health, and depression symptoms ( N = 156). Structural equation modeling suggested that experiencing action crises in goal pursuit was associated with increases in markers of stress, depression, and ill-being. This effect was partially explained by controlled goal motivation. The clinical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Mind Your Goals, Mind Your Emotions: Mechanisms Explaining the Relation Between Dispositional Mindfulness and Action Crises

Action crises describe the intra-psychic conflicts people face when deliberating whether to continue pursuing or to give up a goal for which difficulties keep accumulating. Action crises lead to negative consequences such as elevated distress and depression. Less is known about their predictors. We propose mindfulness as a negative predictor of action crises because mindful people should set more autonomous goals and better regulate their emotions. Three prospective studies examined the relation between mindfulness and action crises and explored goal motivation and emotion regulation as mediators (Study 1, N = 137 students, mean age 22; Study 2, N = 79 students, mean age 24.27; Study 3, N = 236 workers, mean age 40.71). Results showed that mindfulness predicts action crises over time and that this relation is mediated by goal motivation and emotion regulation. We discuss how mindfulness can affect action crises in the phases of the Rubicon Model of goal pursuit.

Goal disengagement in emerging adulthood

In emerging adulthood, being committed to and making progress on important personal goals constitutes a source of identity and well-being. Goal striving, however, does not always go without problems. Even though highly committed to a goal, individuals may experience recurring setbacks and, consequently, increasing doubts about the goal that might culminate in an action crisis, that is, an intra-psychic decisional conflict about whether to disengage from or to continue on their way. Action crises have been shown to lead to negative consequences on well-being and performance. Besides these negative consequences, however, an action crisis is hypothesized to have an adaptive side that is addressed in the present paper. Actively questioning the pursuit of a goal should allow for weighing up the focal goal against alternative and possibly more desirable goals. This open-minded re-evaluation, in the event of goal disengagement, is assumed to avoid the emergence of action crises in subsequently formed goals. As expected, in a longitudinal study over one and a half years with n = 207 freshman students, the degree of experienced action crisis prior to goal disengagement predicted the desirability and decisional certainty of the subsequently formed alternative goal. Theoretical implications of the results for research on self-regulation and identity formation in emerging adulthood are discussed.