Inspirational others: Goal activation by social comparisons

We all have goals in our lives. However, we are not always acting in a way to come closer to our goals. One obstacle for goal pursuit is that a specific goal has slipped too much into the background of our mind to influence our behavior. To act on a goal, we have to think about this goal at least unconsciously. The process, by which a goal moves from the background into the forefront of our mind, is called goal activation. The research program Inspirational others: Goal activation by social comparisons aims to get a better understanding how and when other people activate goals in ourselves. Other people are a source of information and by comparing with these people we gain an understanding of the self. Observing other peoples behavior might be inspirational and increase goal activation based on a comparison process. We aim to study how different types of comparisons whether one searches for similarities or differences between oneself and the other - influence goal activation and goal-related behavior. Thereby it might be important, whether or not the observation of the other person makes me think about the other persons goals. If I think about his or her goals, a sense of similarity between me and this person might activate a similar goal in me and a sense of dissimilarity might activate an opposite goal. Thus, comparing and searching similarities between me and a person receiving high grades or comparing and searching for dissimilarities between me and a person receiving low grades might both activate my goal to do well in school. However, if I dont think about the other persons goal the result might be different. Goals are driven by a sense of discrepancy. I strive for things I dont have yet. Goal activation might occur if one feels distant from things one aims to reach or close to things one aims to avoid. Comparing with another person might influence this sense of discrepancy. Searching for dissimilarities between me and the person receiving high grades or searching for similarities between me and the person receiving low grads might highlight a sense of discrepancy to a desired outcome (getting high grades or avoiding low grads) and activate my achievement goal. To learn more about the influence of social comparisons on goal activation, we will confront people with the behavior of others in a controlled setting (laboratory) and subsequently assess goal activation (with computerized measurements) and goal- related behavior. Many people struggle to reach important goals in their live. Observing others could be inspirational, but we have to understand under which circumstances this is actually the case.

People are social beings. We can master and solve many challenges and problems only by working together. But other people are also important for goals of the individual. Comparisons with other people are used to evaluate the self and can trigger feelings of pride, but also envy. Others can serve as role models or inspire us. In this project, we studied the consequences of observing the behaviour of others on us. It turns out that some consequences do not emerge as expected. This concerns the process of goal-contagion described in the literature. Here, the observation of goal-oriented behaviour of others should lead to the same goal being unconsciously activated in the observer and then also trigger goal-oriented behaviour. Unfortunately, we have not been able to show this effect in studies conducted by us (Brohmer et al., 2019; Corcoran et al., 2020) and also a systematic meta-analysis of published studies raises doubts about the size and significance of the effect. Further research is needed to specify this process more precisely (it could, for example, only occur with certain goals or under certain conditions) or to reject the assumption of the process. Also, other aspects - we, for example, have examined feelings elicited by such observations - may play an important role. This does not mean, however, that observing others does not influence us in our behaviour. In a series of studies, we have looked at the issue of self-control (Kedia et al., 2019). In order to achieve long-term goals, it is often necessary to exercise self-control and resist short-term temptations. Seeing that others do so can help to show more self-control. In our studies, participants have observed another woman deciding eleven or twelve times between a larger reward that she have to wait longer for or a smaller reward that she would receive earlier. If the person chose mostly the later, larger reward, the observers also did so more often afterwards - even 3 months after the observation. But not only other people, also technical progress can help us to achieve our goals. For example, many people want to engage in more physical activities, but do not succeed in doing so in everyday life. A systematic analysis of the literature has shown that interventions implemented with mobile applications on smartphones can be very promising in this respect - especially if goals are set and feedback is provided on one's own behaviour (Eckerstorfer et al., 2018).