TY - JOUR
T1 - Vicarious goal satiation
AU - McCulloch, Kathleen C.
AU - Fitzsimons, Gráinne M.
AU - Chua, Sook Ning
AU - Albarracín, Dolores
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Jillian Freeman, Lindsey Thomson, and Krysta Williams for help with data collection and David Coleman for his programming skills. This research was supported by an Idaho State University WE LEAD seed grant awarded to the first author, and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant to the second author.
PY - 2011/5
Y1 - 2011/5
N2 - A signature feature of self-regulation is that once a goal is satiated, it becomes deactivated, thereby allowing people to engage in new pursuits. The present experiments provide evidence for vicarious goal satiation, a novel phenomenon in which individuals experience "post-completion goal satiation" as a result of unwittingly taking on another person's goal pursuit and witnessing its completion. In Experiments 1 and 2, the observation of a goal being completed (vs. not completed) led to less striving by the observer on the same task. Given that an actor's strength of commitment affects goal contagion, we hypothesized that such commitment would be an important boundary condition for vicarious goal satiation. The results of Experiment 2 showed that observing stronger (vs. weaker) goal commitment lowered accessibility of goal-related words, but only when the goal being observed was completed. Implications of vicarious goal satiation for goal pursuit in everyday environments are discussed.
AB - A signature feature of self-regulation is that once a goal is satiated, it becomes deactivated, thereby allowing people to engage in new pursuits. The present experiments provide evidence for vicarious goal satiation, a novel phenomenon in which individuals experience "post-completion goal satiation" as a result of unwittingly taking on another person's goal pursuit and witnessing its completion. In Experiments 1 and 2, the observation of a goal being completed (vs. not completed) led to less striving by the observer on the same task. Given that an actor's strength of commitment affects goal contagion, we hypothesized that such commitment would be an important boundary condition for vicarious goal satiation. The results of Experiment 2 showed that observing stronger (vs. weaker) goal commitment lowered accessibility of goal-related words, but only when the goal being observed was completed. Implications of vicarious goal satiation for goal pursuit in everyday environments are discussed.
KW - Goal contagion
KW - Nonconscious goal pursuit
KW - Self-other representations
KW - Self-regulation
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.12.019
DO - 10.1016/j.jesp.2010.12.019
M3 - Article
C2 - 23606756
AN - SCOPUS:79952815606
VL - 47
SP - 685
EP - 688
JO - Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
JF - Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
SN - 0022-1031
IS - 3
ER -