Psychological research on goal pursuit and self-regulation has traditionally examined how people's explicit evaluations of their goals influence their ability to successfully meet those goals. The more a person reports wanting and desiring a particular goal, the more likely he or she will pursue and meet that goal (e.g., Carver &Sheier, 1981;Locke &Latham, 1990). More recently, there has been a new wave of research that addresses the role of implicit evaluations in goal pursuit and self-regulation. Preliminary research has suggested that people's motivation and ability to successfully attain a given goal depends to some extent on the evaluative information that becomes unintentionally and spontaneously activated in memory whenever the goal is activated (Custers &Aarts, 2005;Ferguson &Bargh, 2004;Ferguson, 2007, in press). Specifically, the more positivity is implicitly associated with an abstract goal word (e.g., """"""""equality"""""""") in memory, the more the person makes choices and behaves in line with the respective goal. The current proposal seeks to answer fundamental questions in this new line of research. First and foremost, the proposed research will examine whether the positivity associated with an abstract goal in memory has a causal influence on goal success (Question 1). The methodological strategy to address this question will be to experimentally increase the implicit positivity associated with goals in memory (or not) and then measure the successful pursuit of those goals. Second, this work will identify whether and why implicit evaluations of different types of goal-related information - abstract versus concrete - differentially facilitate the successful pursuit of that goal (Question 2). The approach for answering this second question will be to compare the effect of increasing implicit positivity associated with abstract versus concrete goal information in memory on successful goal-pursuit. Third, this research will compare the predictive validity of implicit versus explicit evaluations of goals under various circumstances (Question 3). Specifically, the strategy to address this third question will be to examine the influence of self-presentational norms, as well as the variable of spontaneous versus overt goal pursuit, on the predictive validity of implicit and explicit evaluations of abstract goal words for motivated behavior. Overall, the current proposed work addresses significant theoretical as well as practical questions related to implicit evaluative processing in self-regulation, and holds considerable translational value in terms of applications to both diagnosis and treatment within the mental health field. Moreover, this proposed work is uniquely well suited to a life span perspective. Recent research has shown that the influence of positive affective information increases as people move into late adulthood (e.g., Carstensen &Mikels, 2005). It follows that the current proposed work on implicit evaluative processing in motivation may be directly applicable to this population.
An increased understanding of the psychological processes underlying effective self-regulation has tremendous implications for the field of mental health (e.g., Baumeister &Heatherton, 1996;Heatherton &Ambady, 1993;Higgins, 1997;Metcalfe &Mischel, 1999). The current proposed work addresses significant theoretical as well as practical questions related to implicit evaluative processing in self-regulation, and holds considerable translational value in terms of applications to both diagnosis and treatment within the mental health field. This work also has the potential to inform the further development of an extensive research agenda on this topic from a lifespan perspective.
