Goal Concepts in Personality and Social Psychology

Lawrence A. Pervin

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317510215
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Personality in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Is behavior motivated? And if so, can it be motivated by the anticipation of future events? What role does cognition play in such motivational processes? And, further, what role does motivation play in ongoing cognitive activity? Questions such as these provide the foundation for this book, originally published in 1989. More specifically, the chapters in this book address the question of the utility of goals concepts in studying motivation and social cognition.

1 Goal Concepts in Personality and Social Psychology: A Historical Introduction

LAWRENCE A. PERVIN
Rutgers University

Is behavior motivated? And, if so, can it be motivated by the anticipation of future events? What role does cognition play in such motivational processes? And, further, what role does motivation play in ongoing cognitive activity? Questions such as these provide the foundation for this book. More specifically, the chapters in this book address the question of the utility of goals concepts in studying motivation and social cognition.

These questions may seem obvious. Yet, the history of the field suggests otherwise and careful consideration leads one into issues that have preoccupied philosophers for centuries. Only a decade ago a review of 24 years of the distinguished Nebraska Symposium on Motivation suggested that the concept of motivation had ceased to be of major concern to the field and was of questionable utility as a scientific construct (Benjamin & Jones, 1978). As noted by Cofer (1981), the demise of drive theory toward the end of the 1960s was associated more generally with a decline in motivation theory. Though a chapter on cognition did not appear in the Annual Review of Psychology until 1966 (Van de Geer & Jaspars, 1966), cognition and information processing rapidly displaced motivation as a dominant issue of concern to psychologists. That is, not only did cognition rise as an area of interest, but it supplanted other areas of interest, such as motivation (Pervin, 1980). Thus, Cofer (1981) noted that most cognitive theorists did not consider issues traditionally addressed by motivation theorists and asked: "Where, in cognitive theory, are the strong urges and the 'hot' emotions or passions that have been central to our thinking in respect to motivation and emotion for so long?" (p. 51).

Yet, to juxtapose cognition and motivation in relation to one another may unduly simplify the matter. First, the "New Look in Perception" of the 1940s and 1950s emphasized the role of motivation in perception and thinking (Bruner, 1951). Second, at least some early information processing models of cognition did attend to the relation between motivation and cognition (Simon, 1967). More recently, theories in personality and social psychology, derived primarily from the cognitive revolution, are leading the way in exploring relations between motivation and cognition. Thus, the cognitive revolution that initially was associated with the demise of key components of motivation theory now provides the bulwark for a return to interest in purposive, goal-directed behavior.

Both thinking and motivation, cognition and goal-directed behavior, have been of interest and concern to psychologists since the beginning of the field. They form part of the triad so often defined as the areas of concern to psychologists—conation, cognition, and emotion. To understand, then, the issues addressed in the papers in this volume, it may be useful to place them in a historical context (Boden, 1972; Brody, 1983; Ryan, 1970; Silver, 1985).

Historical Overview of Goal Concepts

Modern day action theorists, concerned with goal-directed behavior, trace their roots to Wundt and early German psychology (Frese & Sabini, 1985). At the same time, it is clear that early functionalist thought, with its roots in James, touched on many key issues of concern to goals theorists. James (1890) defined the phenomena of interest to psychologists as including feelings, desires, and cognitions and suggested that "the pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for their attainment are thus the mark and criteria of the presence of mentality in a phenomenon" (p. 8). James used words that are beginning to reappear in the psychological literature (e.g., wish, will, volition, desire) and was concerned with fundamental issues, such as the following: Does goal-directed behavior (mind, mentality) exist in lower mam mals? What is the relation of consciousness to the unfolding of an organized, reflex-like pattern of movements? What is the relation be tween cognition of an end result and action; that is, how do we account for the translation of consciousness to the unfolding of an organized, reflex-like pattern of movements? What is the relation between cognition of an end result and action; that is, how do we account for the translation of wish into will? How do we account for disturbances of will such as where normal action becomes impossible (obstructed will) or where an abnormal action becomes irrepressible (explosive will)? His description of the situation that provides, in miniature form, the basis for an entire psychology of volition remains worthy of our consideration today:

We know what it is to get out of bed on a freezing morning in a room without a fire, and how the very vital principle within us protests against the ordeal. Probably most persons have lain on a certain morning for an hour at a time unable to brace themselves to the resolve. We think how late we shall be, how the duties of the day will suffer; we say, "I must get up, this is ignominious," etc.; but still the warm couch feels too delicious, the cold outside too cruel, and resolution faints away and postpones itself again and again just as it seemed on the verge of bursting the resistance and passing over into decisive act. Now how do we ever get up under such circumstances? (James, 1892, p. 424)

The suggestion has been made that behaviorism displaced the concept of action with behavior (Frese & Sabini, 1985). Discussion then focuses on the debate between Tolman and Hull (Silver, 1985). Such a historical account, however, leaves out the enormously important work of McDougall (1908, 1930). Whereas Watson (1930) described images as "ghosts of sensations" and rejected both mentalism and teleology in favor of more mechanistic views, McDougall rejected a stimulus determined view of behaviorism in favor of an emphasis on active strivings toward anticipated goals. Whereas the science of his day rejected teleological notions because they smacked of religion, McDougall was impressed with motivation as it was expressed in the foresight of goals:

We foresee a particular event as a possibility; we desire to see this possibility realized; we take action in accordance with one desire, and we seem to guide the course of events in such a way that the foreseen and desired event results. To explain an event as caused in this way was to invoke teleological causation, a causal activity thoroughly familiar to each man through his own repeated experiences of successful action for the attain ment of desired goals. (McDougall, 1930, p. 5)

McDougall was so struck with the goal-seeking quality of behavior that he announced himself to be a purposive psychologist and defended the view called hormic psychology. Purposive behavior was defined by seven characteristics: (1) spontaneity of movement, (2) persistence of movement, (3) variation of direction of persistent movements, (4) cessation of movement when a particular change in the situation has occurred (goal reached), (5) preparatory movement for a new situation, (6) improvement in the effectiveness of behavior when placed repeatedly in similar situations, and (7) participation of the whole organism in the activity. Variation in the direction of activity was held to be the most distinguishing feature of purposive behavior and what most differentiated it from stimulus governed, reflexive behavior.

Although McDougall is frequently dismissed as an instinct theorist, he can still be read with profit. Beyond his emphasis on goals and purposive strivings, he emphasized the interrelationships among cognition, affect, and conation. His concept of instinct included cognitive and affective components, as well as motor aspects. In higher animals, instinctive behaviors could increasingly be performed with awareness of a goal or end point and could be initiated by ideas of objects and by the objects themselves! The cognitive (perceptual) and motor aspects were seen as being highly modifiable so that, as a result of experience and learning, the same emotional response could become associated with many objects and result in many different behaviors. In sum, McDougall emphasized the system (cognitive, affective, behavioral) functioning of the organism in relation to goal-directed striving.

Writing in roughly the same time period as McDougall, but from a very different perspective, Alfred Adler was similarly led to an emphasis on individuals as goal-directed and motivated by their expectations of the future. Whereas often much is made of Adler's split with Freud over the emphasis on sexual instincts, of perhaps equal importance was Adler's emphasis on expectations of the future as opposed to experiences of the past. Consider, for example, the following: "Causes, powers, instincts, impulses, and the like cannot serve as explanatory principles. The final goal alone can explain man's behavior. Experiences, traumata, sexual development mechanisms cannot yield an explanation, but the perspective in which they are regarded, the individual way of seeing them, which subordinates all life to the final goal, can do so" (Adler, 1930, p. 400). Anticipating later developments in psychology, Adler replaced the concept of drives with that of values and goals. His emphasis on concepts such as the individual's hierarchy of goals, guiding self-ideal, and style of life, would appear to be similar to current concepts such as possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986) and action style (Frese, Stewart, & Hanover, 1987).

The Ansbachers (1956), who did so much to bring Adler's views to the attention of American psychologists, note that Adler was quite sympathetic to the personalistic psychology of William Stern, who so much influenced Gordon Allport, and that in many ways his ideas paralleled those of Gestalt psychology.

The Gestalt psychologists emphasized molar behavior, the total action of the organism, goal-directed action and the related positive and negative valences of objects, and differences between drivelike, involuntary action and intentional action (Kohler, 1929; Lewin, 1935, 1951). Tolman (1925a, 1925b), influenced both by the work of the Gestalt psychologists and the emphasis of E. B. Holt on wish and purpose, was led to the position of purposive behaviorism. In contrast with Skinner (1953), who rejected teleology as a "spector" and viewed expressions of goals or purpose as abbreviations for statements about operant conditioning, and with Hull (1943) who, while accepting purposive behavior in principle remained committed to a molecular, mechanistic view, Tolman suggested that behavior reeks of purpose and cognition: "Behavior as behavior, that is, as molar, is purposive and is cognitive. These purposes and cognitions are of its immediate warp and woof' (1932, p.6). One could observe a readiness to persist and a docility in purposive behavior, characteristics that were noted to be similar to those emphasized by McDougall. However, whereas McDougall inferred purpose, Tolman identified purpose with specific behavioral characteristics and demonstrated the variability of means-ends relationships, which were seen as essential to purposive behavior. Although lost from the attention of many current psychologists, Tolman anticipated some of the key elements of social learning theory and made a valiant effort to capture systematically the patterned, organized, purposive quality of behavior.

F. H. Allport (1937) similarly was impressed with the "teleonomic" quality of behavior, that is, its purposive or goal-directed characteristics. He contrasted a dynamic emphasis on behavior trends (goals) with static trait descriptions of behavior. His brother, G. W. Allport (1937), remained committed to a trait point of view but similarly emphasized the motivated, organized, purposive, intentional aspects of personality. G. W. Allport rejected traditional instinct and drive concepts of motivation as too limited to be expressive of the individual. At the same time, he was concerned that trait concepts seemed insufficiently dynamic. Thus, he asked whether traits were self-active and, after first suggesting that strictly speaking they were not, he went on to suggest that "in another sense traits do initiate behavior" (1937, p. 321). His conclusion was that although not all motives were traits and not all traits were motives, there was overlap between the two. However, it was the traits with a motivational component, what he called its "telic significance," that played a particularly significant role in personality. Thus, it was the striving towards goals, or what he later called propriate strivings (Allport, 1955), that was important for the organizati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• 1 Goal Concepts in Personality and Social Psychology: A Historical Perspective
• 2 Self-Regulation of Motivation and Action Through Internal Standards and Goal Systems
• 3 The Personal Striving Approach to Personality
• 4 Ups and Downs of Life Tasks in a Life Transition
• 5 Energization and Goal Attractiveness
• 6 Possible Selves: Personalized Representations of Goals
• 7 Goals and the Self-Identification Process: Constructing Desired Identities
• 8 Goal Setting Theory and Job Performance
• 9 Interpersonal Goal Conflict
• 10 The Role of Goal Categories in the Representation of Social Knowledge
• 11 Inter-Personalism: Toward a Goal-Based Theory of Persons in Relationships
• 12 Goal Concepts: Themes, Issues, and Questions
• Author Index
• Subject Index