title: Personal goals and emotional well-being: the moderating role of motive dispositions.
abstract: Two studies examined the importance of motive dispositions in determining the extent to which the pursuit of personal goals accounts for interindividual differences in emotional well-being. Within the domains of agency and communion, motives were assessed with a picture-story test, whereas self-report measures were used to assess goal attributes. Study 1 found that progress toward motive-congruent goals, in contrast to progress toward motive-incongruent goals, accounted for students' daily experiences of emotional well-being. Study 2 found that the combination of high commitment to and high attainability of motive-congruent goals predicted an increase in students' emotional well-being over 1 semester. In contrast, high commitment to motive-incongruent goals predicted a decline in emotional well-being. Results are discussed with reference to a 2-system approach to human motivation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Erlangen, Germany. brunstei@rz.uni-potsdam.de
authors.forename: J C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Brunstein
authors.forename: O C
authors.initials: OC
authors.lastname: Schultheiss
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Grässmann
mesh_terms: D000339:Affect; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D009042:Motivation; D010551:Personality / Q000502:physiology; D010552:Personality Assessment