In “Strategies of Setting and Implementing Goals” Oettingen and Gollwitzer perform research in self-regulating one‘s goal pursuits. They find that successful goals pursuit depends on both goal setting and goal implementation For successful goal setting, individuals ought to set goals that promote positive outcomes rather than prevent negative ones; (2) focus on attaining competence vs, showing it; are based on anticipation of internal rewards as opposed to external ones; are proximal rather than distal; and are well defined rather than vague. Thus, positively framed, intrinsic learning goals with a clear and proximal structure are better attained than negatively-framed, extrinsic performance goals with a vague and distal agenda. What also correlate with better attainment of goals are strong goal commitment as well as the accompanying desirability and feasibility of those goals.
According to the Fantasy Realization theory, there are the three modes of self-regulatory thought in goal setting. The first, mental contrasting, compares a desirable future state with the present reality that obstructs it. If the desired future has a high feasibility, individuals will commit to the goal and attempt to change the status quo. In contrast, if feasibility is low individuals will not commit and will not try to change their present state. The second, indulging, is mentally elaborating the desired future only, and the third, dwelling, is mentally elaborating the status quo reality only. Oettingen and Gollwitzer argue that mental contrasting adjusts goal commitment almost solely while indulging and dwelling have only minimal effects at best (pg, 116).
In accordance with this theory, empirical findings show that, in one study, students with high expectations of success performed better and received better grades than students with low expectations of success. Students in the indulging and dwelling conditions earned moderate gradesr Oettingen has replicated these results in a number of other studies in varying life domains. For successful goal attainment, goal setting and goal commitment alone are not sufficient. Goal implementation is an integral component of the process. Successful goal implementation includes preparing oneself to maximize chances of overcoming obstacles of goal implementation. Obstacles include initiating goal pursuit, monitoring progress, stopping futile goals, and overexertion of oneself (pg 121) In order to form an implementation intention, an individual must identify all goal-relevant situational cues and plan a response to that cue (in the form of “if then Hi”).
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If someone asks a dieter to eat a chocolate cake at a birthday party, then the dieter will instead eat a fat-free dessert. The intention has a heightened activation in the brain and becomes more accessible In turn, this helps individuals recall the specific situation and allocate attention to it for an automated response and a successful implementation (pg. 122). Implementation intensions also solve the problems mentioned earlier. Implementation intensions help individuals to start in their goal-pursuit process even if they are busy, and suppression»oriented implementation intensions can suppress negative interference from internal and external stimuli and help in staying on track, Moreover, implementation intensions help halt futile goals by simply focusing negative feedback as the cue in the ifcomponent and an alternative plan of action as an appropriate response in the then component. Finally, because implementation intensions rely heavily on situational factors, the self is never depleted of mental resources.
Undergraduate college students often procrastinate throughout the semester and then earn low, unsatisfactory grades at the end of the class, which undermines their performance and hurts their GPA. This is largely due to poor or non-existent goal setting and goal implementation. The goal of the following intervention will be to educate students on successful goal attainment and teach them how to set goals properly and implement them in accordance with mental contrasting and implementation intentions strategies School counselors and psychology professors can be in charge of implementing the intervention in an after-school, extra-curricular format, The intervention will be composed of two steps: mental contrasting and implementation intensionsi.
First, students will learn how to use mental contrasting strategies to imagine a future reality and the present state, and set feasible goals to reach it. Students will be discouraged from indulging or dwelling Goals will be intrinsically-motivated learning goals, Second, students will learn implementation intensions and how to use the “if X then Y” strategy to pursue goals and monitor their progress Students will identify critical situational cues and devise goal-appropriate behavioral responses that will in time become automatic, One possible barrier of this intervention is overexertioni Students may perceive the intervention itself as an effortful endeavor and become depletedi To solve this obstacle, the intervention should be administered infrequently and not for prolong periods of time. This will work since implementation intensions become unconscious and automatic anyways.
