How to Pursue Goals and Attain Them Part 4 – The Science and Types of Goals

“To have an extraordinary quality of life you need two skills: the science of achievement (the ability to take anything you envision and make it real) and the art of fulfilment (this allows you to enjoy every moment of it. — Tony Robbins

Many people likely have the experience of seeking help from a helping practitioner, such as a coach or counsellor, and in the end, they are asked to set a goal, which is not a bad thing. But most of the time, the discussion and recommendation will start and end with the SMART goals technique. However, having a goal, attaining a specific result, and benefiting from the process of pursuing it have advantages. Apart from achieving the outcome, a goal is meant to cause behavioural change, which may be more beneficial than the outcome. In fact, it is for this reason that a goal is regarded as a state rather than merely the outcome. A state puts people in a condition to achieve more. But more on this later!

According to Berkman (2018), an important aspect of goals which is often overlooked is that “goals are usually things we want but have difficulty achieving even when we know they are achievable.” As a result, pursuing a goal involves a struggle or striving. That idea of a struggle is also reflected by behaviour change, which he used to mean the same thing as goal pursuit. In other words, goal pursuit brings about new behaviour because goal pursuit “involves doing something different” from what has been done before

The Science Council defines science as “…. the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.” This definition is implied in our references to the science of goals. This is different from just prescribing a method and hoping that by adopting it, the expected results will be achieved. A goal is an imagined end state which requires the deployment of various means to attain it. There are psychological and neurological factors to consider when pursuing goals to facilitate goal attainment. Besides, there are different types of goals. For this reason, it is important to know the type of goal you are pursuing to facilitate attainment.

Goal Stimulus Goals As States

As stated in Part 2 of these articles, our preferred definition of a goal is a “cognitive representation of a desired end state that a person is committed to attaining” (Milyavskaya and Werner, 2018). This definition highlights the three key components of the goal pursuit and striving process. Please refer to Part 2 for an explanation of these three components. Also, please note that our use of the term “goal” in these articles refers to this definition unless a different definition is given. In addition, one of the main emphases of the definition of a goal here is regarding it as an end state. The Oxford Languages dictionary defines a state as “The particular condition that someone or something is in at a specific time.” Merriam-Webster defines it as:

1. a “Mode or condition of being”; 1. b (1): “Condition of mind or temperament “
2. a “Condition or stage in the physical being of something”

Most arguments about the differences between a state and a goal are based on the definition of a state as a condition of mind or temperament above, which implies that a state is an abstract thing. The usually cited example is happiness, and the argument is that it happens instantly. A person does not have to work toward it or wait for it to happen. But as the above definitions show, a state can be abstract or physical. Similarly, a goal can be abstract or concrete. A state is a condition of being. For example, a well-conditioned athlete can win a gold medal because he or she has put himself or herself in that state better than the rest of the athletes. To be in such a superior state, his or her goals would involve other areas such as good nutrition, running, mental balance, weightlifting, etc. Instead of setting a goal to win a gold medal, it might be better to set a goal to be in a superior state because winning a medal requires different forms of training.

Inzlicht, Werner, Briskin and Roberts (2021) define Self-regulation as “a broad term that refers to the dynamic process of determining a desired end state (i.e., goal) and then taking action to move toward it while monitoring progress along the way”. End states here are used to mean the same thing as goals and are defined as “specific desired behaviours (e.g., physical exercise), thoughts or attitudes (e.g., being compassionate), or emotional states (e.g., being content). Self-regulation, therefore, subsumes not only the regulation of behaviour but also of thoughts and emotions (e.g., Gross, 2015). So, differentiating a goal from a state has no scientific basis.

Researchers term the event or the cause of a goal-pursuit desire in people as a “goal stimulus”. The American Psychological Association defines it as “more generally, a proprioceptive or other interoceptive stimulus arising from goal-directed behaviour” (APA Dictionary of Psychology, n.d.). Proprioception is also known as kinesthesia. It refers to the body’s ability to sense movement, action, and location. Introception is the feeling or awareness of what is happening in your body.

However, there is not enough research that focuses on the kinds of goals people set for themselves. But the little research published shows that incentives and expectations are the main determinants of the types of goals that people choose to pursue (Oettingen, Pak and Schnetter, 2001).

How Do People Decide What Goal to Pursue?

According to Milyavskaya and Werner (2018), people decide what goal to pursue in the following ways:

1. They choose what they wish if they can realistically expect to achieve it.
2. They choose goals which are desirable and feasible. Being desirable means how valuable the goal is, and being feasible relates to the likelihood of achieving the goal. These two factors are also known as “value and expectancy.” The combination of the two of them is known as “expected utility”. According to Vroom’s Expectancy theory, there is a direct relationship between the effort that people put into performing their best at work and the reward they expect to receive from their hard work ((Agah, Kaniuka and Chitiga, 2020). Expectancy and value can also be based on previous experiences within a domain or with a goal, promulgating the cyclical nature of the goal pursuit process. The Expectancy-value theory holds the view that “achievement-related choices are motivated by a combination of people’s expectations for success and subjective task value in particular domains (Campbell, 2011).
3. The wish and the person’s desire to pursue the goal, reflected by the content of the goal, are deemed to be based on the person’s previous experiences and current constraints. Goals can represent both conscious and nonconscious desires. In business and other institutional settings, such as sports, goals are often assigned by others, for example, supervisors, coaches, etc. Research has shown that assigned goals may be meaningless unless the goals are owned or internalised.
4. Research also posits that upbringing, personality, and people’s view of the world affect the content of their goals. An example is research on parenting, which shows that parents’ values and their relationship with their children shape their children’s desires. In addition, personality may shape the nature of our goals; for example, individuals with a promotion orientation are more likely to set approach/promotion goals. There is more explanation about these types of goals below in the type of goals section.
5. Researchers use the term “goal domain” when referring to the categories of goals. For example, physical activity, health and nutrition, social relationships, etc., are categories of goals. It is held that since goals are domain-specific, the characteristics of the domains can also influence the goals that people choose. For example, a person will set more autonomous goals in domains where they experience greater satisfaction with the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The same applies to self-efficacy. It is believed that feelings of self-efficacy (both general and domain-specific) directly influence the feasibility dimension of goals. When we experience greater self-efficacy, we feel better able to achieve desired outcomes.
6. According to Oettingen, Pak and Schnetter (2001), further factors that determine the kinds of goals people set for themselves can be linked to implicit theories of malleability versus stability of ability. Implicit theories hold that people have beliefs about themselves that psychological attributes such as personality, emotion, ability, etc., are either fixed or controllable and changeable and can be gradually developed. For example, implicit theories about the malleability versus stability of ability lead to the preference for learning goals (i.e., goals to increase competence) and performance goals (i.e., goals to demonstrate capabilities. People who construe self as an “ideal self” intrinsically desire to be set promotion goals (i.e., goals geared at advancement, growth, and accomplishments), whereas people holding an “ought self feel compelled to be set prevention goals (i.e., goals geared at protection, safety, and responsibility (Higgins, 1997). Autonomy, competence, and social integration needs foster goals of self-realisation more than materialistic gains (Ryan et al., 1996).

Characteristics of Goals

Research has identified the following main characteristics of a goal (Milyavskaya and Werner, 2018). This is important because it helps us to distinguish a goal from what is not a goal, as our lives are full of activities.

1. Abstract and concrete goals. One important distinction is between abstract and concrete goals. Abstract goals are more general and broad and typically require numerous actions in multiple contexts. In addition, they often do not have a concrete endpoint to indicate when the goal is attained. A common example is when people say they want to be wealthy. Abstract goals are said to generally relate to a person’s identity and values and represent the highest level in the hierarchy of goals. On the other hand, concrete goals are the most common goals that people set. They are specific in terms of actions, time, and outcome. In organisational settings, research has shown that the more goals are concrete, the more likely they are to be attained. However, in terms of personal goals, it is not known whether a goal being specific instead of abstract makes it more attainable. This is one of the reasons that the success of SMART goals is questionable.
2. Goals as standards. Goals reflect a person’s standards (Brockner and Higgins, 2001). Certain personal standards are a representation of people’s beliefs about their ideal selves or ought selves. The ideal self is the beliefs, hopes, wishes, and aspirations that people have about themselves. Ought self represents responsibilities, duties, and obligations that people must comply with. Promotion-focused people seek goals that reflect their ideal selves, whereas prevention-focused goals are sought by people with ought self-orientation.
3. Difficult goals. According to Locke & Latham (2002, 2013), difficult goals enhance performance as people put in more effort and perform better when they pursue difficult yet attainable goals. These experiments were carried out regarding performance goals in organisations. It is not known whether the effect of goal difficulty is on individual goals.
4. The approach or direction of the goals. Another characteristic of personal goals is the way people frame their goals and the approach or direction of their goals. Goals may be set to move a person towards an end, in case of a positive goal, or away from it, in case of a negative goal, such as stopping smoking. These are sometimes called outcome and prevention goals or approach and avoidance motivation goals. Since this is deemed to be a fundamental aspect of motivation and behaviour, research has shown that people tend to move toward positive stimuli and move away from negative stimuli. In terms of personal goals, the idea is that people tend to approach desirable end states and avoid undesirable end states. Research indicates that approach goals are more likely to be attained and lead to a host of positive outcomes, such as well-being and performance, compared to avoidance goals.
5. Autonomous and controlled motivation. Self-Determination Theory differentiates autonomous and controlled motivation when pursuing personal goals. Autonomous motivation occurs when an individual pursues a goal out of inherent interest or personal importance, whereas controlled motivation occurs when pursuing a goal for external reasons, such as to please others, obtain rewards, or avoid guilt or shame. Autonomous goals are also said to be self-concordant and are pursued because they are what the individual genuinely values and wants to do. On the other hand, controlled goals are said to be self-discrepant and are pursued because the individuals feel they are something they must do. While controlled goals are still likely to be personally set and endorsed, they do not reflect what the individual truly wants. For this reason, they result in a lower quality of motivation that can hamper goal attainment. Research has overwhelmingly confirmed that autonomous goals are more likely to be attained. However, the effect of controlled motivation on goals is not clear, though some studies show a negative effect of controlled motivation on goal attainment. Some studies regard autonomous and controlled motivation as not being different but two sides of the same coin.

According to Werner, Milyavskaya and Koestner (2018), their research has consistently found that pursuing a goal for autonomous reasons facilitates goal attainment, whereas controlled, approach and avoidance motivations were unrelated to goal progress. This was especially true when considering the variation in motivation and goal progress among individual goals.Multiple Goals

Multiple Goals

Although much of the literature on goals assumes a single goal pursuit, as humans, especially in today’s busy environment, many people will likely pursue more than one goal at a time, as a goal is said to be hierarchical in nature. Multiple-goal pursuits are now receiving attention. For example, Höchli, Brügger and Messner (2018), identify a goal as a hierarchy consisting of three levels as follows:

• Superordinate goals are at the highest level in the hierarchy. They represent concepts of the ideal self and are very similar to values. Intermediate goals provide a general course of action that is designed to change certain behaviours. Subordinate goals are the lowest level of abstraction in the hierarchy. They define precisely and concretely what needs to be done and how to do it, taking into consideration the environmental conditions, affordances and constraints. Within this hierarchy, it can be seen how goals are interconnected. Superordinate goals determine more concrete goals at the intermediate level, and intermediate goals, in turn, determine goals at the subordinate level.

• Theories of goals, such as Goal Systems Theory, define goal systems as consisting “of mentally represented networks wherein goals may be cognitively associated to their corresponding means of attainment and to alternative goals as well” (Kruglanski et al., 2002). The theory regards goal systems as comprising two properties: “structural and allocational” properties. The structural properties of goal systems emanate from their cognitive interconnectedness, and the allocational properties from the resource limitation, which is a feature of all deliberative cognitive functioning. Since goals are mental representations, multiple goals are likely to be linked by the nature of the goals or means of attaining them. These links may be facilitative, i.e., vertically connected elements between goals and their corresponding means or inhibitory, primarily between lateral elements, that is, between competing goals or competing means.
• The Integrative Model of Goal Pursuit proposed by Milyavskaya and Werner (2021) aims to consolidate evidence from a variety of theories and perspectives. The integrative model of goal pursuit addresses all aspects of the goal pursuit process, including goal setting, goal striving, and goal adjustment. The model also addresses two additional aspects of goal pursuit that have received limited attention in previous formal models but are nevertheless recognised as important. First, it explicitly models contextual and personality influences on goal setting and pursuit, including influences of culture, other people, and the domains in which goal pursuit unfolds. Second, although it is not illustrated in the model, it addresses how this model can be applied to the dynamics of multiple goal pursuits. In summary, the integrative model of goal pursuit is a comprehensive model that can organise existing literature and provide direction for future research.

• Most people will normally have more than one goal, so that when a goal is set, it is related to other goals, or it might even conflict with other goals. The research that has examined the degree of conflict or facilitation among pairs of goals finds that people are less likely to act on goals that actively conflict with other goals. Other studies have shown that facilitation and interference are not simply two sides of a continuum but are instead two separate dimensions and that only facilitation is related to goal pursuit, while interference is not related to goal pursuit, and instead contributes to lower well-being.
• Besides simply looking at the interference among goals, many theories have been proposed to explain how goals are organised and influence one another. For example, according to Control Theory (Carver & Scheier, 1982), goals are nested within each other at progressively more abstract levels of generality, with more abstract goals (i.e., our identity and values) guiding the standards that we set as our subordinate goals.

Types of Goals

Goals may be transient, enduring, important, peripheral, concrete or abstract. However, researchers identify two main categories of goals, namely, distal goals and proximal goals. Distal goals are long-term or end goals. Since they are long-term in nature, they drive much of what an individual does and may help to direct behaviour toward achievement and success. By contrast, proximal goals are short-term or sub-goals, and allow individuals to chunk down a distal goal regarding a task which is complex into smaller, attainable ones. For this reason, proximal goals allow people to measure their progress more accurately than distal goals.

Since proximal goals are short-term in nature, they facilitate an increase in the frequency of feedback, which can be crucial for altering strategies where things do not go as expected. In addition, it helps to maintain focus, effort, and persistence to attain distal goals.

In the case of tasks where learning is yet to occur, a distal goal needs to be complemented with proximal goals because, without proximal goals, distal goals are typically too far removed to serve as a measure of progress to facilitate high self-efficacy regarding goal attainment or to suggest strategic behaviours to attain it.

Within these two main broad categories of goals, research has identified different types of goals as discussed in the following section.

Outcome Goals

The goal-setting theory makes a distinction between goals that focus on behaviour and goals that focus on outcomes (Locke & Latham, 2002; Locke & Latham, 2006). Outcome goals are the types of goals set by most people. They focus on the results that people want to achieve and are often quantifiable. For example, losing10 lbs, walking 1 mile a week or making $10,000 a month from an online shop. Another example is an athlete could perform to the best of his or her ability and still fail to achieve their outcome goal of winning the tournament or an athlete may perform below his or her ability and still win the tournament because of the performance of competitors.

The upside of outcome-based goals is that they tend to be easier to quantify, and this may be the reason that most people go for outcome goals. They are also easier to set because they are designed to change circumstances to make life better or to take away things we no longer want. This is what the SMART method is designed for.

The limitation of outcome goals is that they focus on the results without emphasising the performance or the important details and the step-by-step process needed to reach that outcome. In addition, they do not take into account the behaviour or how the person feels about performing the tasks that will bring about the expected results.

It may be better to combine outcome goals with performance or other types of goals to achieve a better result.

Behavioural Goals

Behavioural goals are focused on changing how one thinks and acts. They focus on how you feel and behave, rather than the outcome of your actions. For example, your behaviour in handling stress better, being nicer to others, spending less time procrastinating, etc.

Since this type of goal is concerned with how you are acting and reacting rather than just the results of your actions, it is more intrinsically motivating.

Behavioural goals can feed into outcome-based goals because when you change how you think and feel, often there will be a change in results. So, it may be better to combine them for better results. By deeply examining what you want to achieve and why it’s important to you, it is easier to identify the steps that make goal achievement more likely. Focusing on behaviour and assessing the way you feel when you are not performing well helps you to make a concrete effort to change. This can help to make the journey more pleasant and productive.

Though goals may need to be measurable, behavioural goals can be a challenge to quantify. However, behavioural goals can be measured by observation and feedback. This can increase motivation as achievements are recognised, even though they may be small, as each small step moves you closer to success.

Learning Goals/Mastery Goals

Achievement goal theory, which we will talk about in Part 5 of these articles, has distinguished two types of achievement goals or goal states. These are learning goals and performance goals. A learning goal is also known as a mastery goal or the state of task involvement.

 An individual is said to be task-involved when his or her primary goal is to learn and master the task for its own sake. In the case of students, task involvement was defined “as general interest in working with school subjects”, whereas defensive ego involvement was defined as “Ss’ preoccupation with the impression they make on their classmates, emphasising the concern of not looking stupid.” ( Skaalvik, Valåns and Sletta, 1994)

According to research, task involvement and intrinsic motivation are directly linked, as it usually occurs when we are intrinsically interested in the activity. Learners view a successful understanding of the material as the ultimate goal. Task-involved learners are concerned with achieving individual competence, and they believe greater success comes with greater effort. In task involvement. There is a focus on improvement. When we work hard and improve, we anticipate positive results.

In a task-involved state, we are not concerned with how others perform at the same task. For example, a study of task involvement in sports shows that task involvement appears when an athlete is intrinsically interested in the activity and judges herself in a self-referenced manner. Therefore, task-oriented goals rely on comparisons with the requirements of the task and/or internal comparisons with one’s past attainment or one’s maximum potential attainment (Skaalvik, Valåns and Sletta, 1994).

Performance Goals

The second type of achievement goal is the performance goal or the state of ego involvement. It is concerned with showing others and themselves that they have superior competence. Although performance goals may also help to master the task, they are mainly used to demonstrate superior competence. Social comparison information plays an important role in ego involvement because we cannot really judge if our competence is superior without comparing ourselves to others. Working hard to achieve success is not sufficient to demonstrate competence. Instead, we must perform as well as others, with less effort, or outperform them using the same effort.

These two goal orientations determine different consequences in the achievement context. In general, task orientation is regarded as more adaptive than ego orientation. Task orientation is related to the selection of challenging tasks, effective study strategies, positive attitudes toward learning, and positive emotions. By contrast, quite often, ego orientation is associated with the selection of easier tasks, trivial learning strategies, concern for social status, and thoughts of escape and behavioural withdrawal when difficulties are encountered.

Research results have shown that task involvement and defensive ego involvement are independent but correlated motivational states.

For training programmes or courses to be effective, trainers, coaches, etc. need to recognise and account for these two types of learner motives. Mastery goals create a task-involved framework by focusing on knowledge acquisition and mastery of tasks. Since mastery goals only relate to the learner and the information to be learned, there is no social stigma attached to failure. Learners are, therefore, much more open to challenging tasks. They are more resilient when dealing with potential failure in the task, and they get more enjoyment from the task. By setting mastery learning goals, trainers help guide learners predisposed to ego involvement towards a task-involved approach.

Performance goals measure learners based on how they perform relative to each other. This is true even if minimum passing percentages are set by instructors. And because these goals are ego-involved, they put learners on an ego-involved learning track. This creates all the problems that plague ego involvement:

1. The need to only outperform the average to achieve “success”
2. A desire for easy tasks with a low chance of failure
3. Withdrawal from learning when facing failure
4. Anxiety regarding a potential loss of social status

Process Goals

Schunk and Swartz (1993) describe process goals as techniques and strategies students use to learn, and one type of process goal is to “acquire a learning strategy or systematic plan for improving information processing and task performance.” Research shows that students taught strategies typically improve their skills. Process goals show the processes that are needed to achieve them. They focus on improving strategy, form and other aspects of performing a task well. For example, an athlete may have a training regimen of four hours a week, doing various exercises such as running, weightlifting, cycling and so on. In this way, the athlete has control over the outcome.

Schunk and Swartz (1993) examined the effect of goals and progress feedback on the self-efficacy and writing achievement of school children. The process goal with progress feedback resulted in higher performance than the process goal without feedback in both experiments, although the differences were not statistically significant.

The results also support the idea that self-efficacy is influenced by performance, as the experiments showed gains in self-efficacy because of writing strategy instruction and practice. The results also showed that self-efficacy was highly predictive of the skill and strategy used.

Process goals have also been found to increase focus and attention, reducing anxiety. They support performance goals by providing something to focus on as you work towards performance goals. They are completely under your control and are the small things you should focus on or do to achieve your performance goals.

Autonomous Goals and Controlled Motivation

Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is a theory of motivation which has been applied to many areas of life, such as health, sport, education, and work. The theory holds that all humans have three basic psychological needs, namely, autonomy, competence, and relatedness. These underlie growth and development. Self-determination will be discussed more in Part 5 of these articles. The theory identifies goals with two forms of motivation: autonomous and controlled motivation.

Autonomous motivation is defined as “engaging in a behaviour because it is perceived to be consistent with intrinsic goals or outcomes and emanates from the self. In other words, the behaviour is self-determined. . In other words, the behaviour is self-determined.”, (Hagger et al., 2014).

The characteristics of a goal described above show that a goal can originate from two main sources:

• It is chosen by an individual, reflecting what is important to them, an individual’s interests or values.
• It is chosen because of the expectations of others, such as parents or relations, etc.

Research has shown that the source of a goal will influence its attainment because it has an impact on motivation, behaviour and how the goal is pursued. If goals are not owned or endorsed by an individual, it is not likely that they will drive enough motivation to facilitate attainment. By contrast, autonomous goals allow individuals to draw on volitional resources such as the capacity to exert sustained effort.

So, adopting the best goal-setting technique does not guarantee goal attainment if people feel that the goal is imposed on them. This is something that coaches and other helping practitioners must be mindful of because the SMART method does not include how to regain motivation and self-regulation strategies.

Motivation Focus – Promotion and Prevention Goals

What affects people’s motivation that makes them more effective in achieving their personal goals has been a challenge and the subject of much research. For this reason, various assessment tools have been developed to solve these challenges. For example, the most common tool for measuring people’s personality types in business is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Although this and other assessment tools are good at measuring attributes such as the degree of introversion or extroversion, or your reliance on thinking versus feeling, which indicates what a person likes to do, they do not actually measure whether a person is good at it and how to improve it if the person is not good at it.

According to Harvard Business Review (Grant and Higgins, 2013), grouping people into personality types helps predict performance by motivational focus, which may be promotion focus or prevention focus.

Self-regulation with a promotion focus is categorised as the motivation to attain growth and nurturance, to align one’s actual self with ideal self, and the desire to reach gains (and to avoid non-gains). By contrast, a prevention focus is associated with the motivation to attain security, to align one’s actual self with one’s ought self. For example, fulfilling one’s duties and obligations, and the desire to avoid losses. Higgins, (1998) labels the first type of person as having a “promotional” attitude and the second type as a “prevention” attitude. These two approaches represent our regulatory focus – how we manage and regulate our goals, emotions, and responses.

Although everyone is concerned at various times with both promotion and prevention, most of us have a dominant motivational focus. It affects what we pay attention to, what we value, and how we feel when we succeed or fail. It determines our strengths and weaknesses, both personally and professionally. And it’s why the decisions and preferences of our differently focused colleagues can seem so odd at times.

Simply identifying your own type should help you embrace your strengths, recognise and compensate for your weaknesses. To some extent, people do this intuitively. Studies show that prevention-focused individuals are likely to accept what organisational psychologists call “conventional and realistic” work, like administrators, bookkeepers, accountants, technicians, and manufacturing workers. These occupations require knowledge of rules and regulations, careful execution, and a propensity for thoroughness and attention to detail.

References

Agah, N., Kaniuka, T. and Chitiga, M., 2020. Examining motivation theory in higher education among tenured and non-tenured faculty: Scholarly activity and academic rank. International Journal of Educational Administration and Policy Studies, 12(2), pp.77-100.

Dictionary.apa.org. n.d. APA Dictionary of Psychology. [online] Available at: <https://dictionary.apa.org/goal-stimulus> [Accessed 27 June 2022].

Berkman, E., 2018. The neuroscience of goals and behaviour change.. [online] National Library of Medicine – National Centre for Biotechnology Information. Available at: <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5854216/> [Accessed 8 April 2022].

Brockner, J. and Higgins, E., 2001. Regulatory Focus Theory: Implications for the Study of Emotions at Work. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 86(1), pp.35-66

Drew, C., 2022. Expectancy-Value Theory. [online] Helpful Professor. Available at: <https://helpfulprofessor.com/expectancy-value-theory/> [Accessed 4 May 2022]

Grant, H. and Higgins, E., 2013. Do You Play to Win—or to Not Lose?. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: <https://hbr.org/2013/03/do-you-play-to-win-or-to-not-lose> [Accessed 9 May 2022].

Hagger, M., Hardcastle, S., Chater, A., Mallett, C., Pal, S. and Chatzisarantis, N., 2014. Autonomous and controlled motivational regulations for multiple health-related behaviours: between- and within-participants analyses. [online] National Library of Medicine – National Centre for Biotechnology Information. Available at: <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4346087/> [Accessed 27 April 2022].

Higgins, E., 1998. Promotion and prevention: Regulatory focus as a motivational principle. [online] Www0.gsb.columbia.edu. Available at: <https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfiles/529/HIGGINSADVANCES_1998REG_FOC_.pdf> [Accessed 6 May 2022].

Höchli, B., Brügger, A. and Messner, C., 2018. How Focusing on Superordinate Goals Motivates Broad, Long-Term Goal Pursuit: A Theoretical Perspective. [online] Frontiers in Psychology. Available at: <https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01879/full> [Accessed 14 July 2022].

Inzlicht, M., Werner, K., Briskin, J. and Roberts, B., 2021. Integrating Models of Self-Regulation. Annual Review of Psychology, 72(1), pp.319-345.

Koestner, R., Otis, N., Powers, T., Pelletier, L. and Gagnon, H., 2008. [online] Selfdeterminationtheory.org. Available at: <https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2008_KoestnerOtisPowesPelletierGagnon_JOP.pdf> [Accessed 2 July 2022].

Kruglanski, A., Shah, J., Fishbach, A., Friedman, R., Chun, W. and Sleeth-Keppler, D., 2002. A theory of goal systems. [online] ResearchGate GmbH. Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242082665_A_theory_of_goal_systems> [Accessed 3 July 2022].

Kung, F. and Scholer, A., 2020. The pursuit of multiple goals. [online] ResearchGate GmbH. Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338012668_The_pursuit_of_multiple_goals> [Accessed 3 July 2022].

Leaper, Campbell. (2011). More Similarities than Differences in contemporary Theories of social development? Advances in Child Development and Behaviour – ADVAN CHILD DEVELOP BEHAV. 40. 337-378. 10.1016/B978-0-12-386491-8.00009-8.

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). State. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved July 14, 2022, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/state

Milyavskaya, M. and Werner, K., 2021. An integrative model of goal pursuit. [online] ResearchGate GmbH. Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280022285_AIM_An_Integrative_Model_of_Goal_Pursuit> [Accessed 7 May 2022].

Milyavskaya, M. and Werner, K., 2018. Goal Pursuit: Current state of affairs and directions for future research. [online] ResearchGate GmbH. Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324171443_Goal_Pursuit_Current_state_of_affairs_and_directions_for_future_research> [Accessed 16 April 2022].

Oettingen, G., Pak, H. and Schnetter, K., 2001. Self-regulation of goal-setting: Turning free fantasies about the future into binding goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(5), pp.736-753.

Ryan, R. M., Sheldon, K. M., Kasser, T., & Deci, E. L. (1996). All goals are not created equal: An organismic perspective on the nature of goals and their regulation. In P. M. Gollwitzer & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), The psychology of action: Linking cognition and motivation to behaviour (pp. 7-26). New York: Guilford Press.

Science Council. (n.d.). Our definition of science. [online] Available at: https://sciencecouncil.org/what-is-science/ [Accessed 7 Feb. 2026].

Skaalvik, E. M., Valåns, H., & Sletta, O. (1994). Task involvement and ego involvement: Relations with academic achievement, academic self-concept and self-esteem. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 38(3-4), 231–243. https://doi.org/10.1080/0031383940380306

Unsworth, K., Yeo, G. and Beck, J., 2014. Multiple goals: A review and derivation of general principles. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 35(8), pp.1064-107