The Research On Goal Orientation Of Undergraduate Future Time Perspective

Goal orientation of future time perspective (FTP) is a personality dynamic trait individual directs to future, and is a psychological representation to cognition, experience and behaviors on one's expectation of activity. Every one has to face future, choose his means and achieve his goals. The research on goal orientation of FTP contributes to a deep understanding the nature of time personality. It is of theoretical and practical significance to look on present and future with positive attitude,study time psychology,and establish the views of scientific development and socialism honour and disgrace.Some publications and conference papers on goal orientation have been studied in angle of view of achievement motivation, but so far the literatures on goal orientations research from FTP have not been reported. Based on the summary of literatures, this study adopted related methods such as the combination of theoretical and practical study, the combination of quantitative and qualitative study to try to explore nature, structure, mechanism, function of goal orientation of FTP systematically, including 11 researches totally.First, based on the interview, this study investigated 134 and 127 undergraduates by the open-ended questionnaire and explored 38 chief life goal domains of 341 undergraduates, referring to the existing research literatures, and put forward construct structure of goal orientation of FTP. Then this study compiled questionnaires with better reliability and validity, next using the self-compiled questionnaires examined respectively general goal orientation and task goal orientation of FTP of 767 and 765 undergraduates and their developmental characteristic, moreover investigated the relationship among general goal orientation and trait coping style, life events and achievement motivation of 441 undergraduates, and the relationship among task goal orientation and time management disposition, self-efficacy of 563 undergraduates, as well as affecting factors of goal orientation. Finally, by using two experiments, this study also investigated performing difficult tasks of 56 undergraduates with different levels of general goal orientation, and the influence on engaging in the subsequent difficult task of 54 undergraduates with different levels of task goal orientation after acquiring positive feedback or negative feedback, furthermore, mechanism and function of goal orientation of FTP.The main findings of the research are summarized below:(1) Goal orientation of FTP is a personality characteristic of time dimension and belongs to the realm of individual possible self.(2) Goal orientation of FTP is a multi-layer and multi-dimension system, including general and task goal orientations, which consist of three dimensions such as goal cognition, goal experience, and goal behavior disposition, and have different mental parts.(3) General and task goal orientation respectively corresponds to different future mental time: General goal orientation corresponds to far future mental time and near future mental time and reflects general characteristics of cognitive, emotional and behavioral disposition that individual performs to various far-near goals and is a relatively abstract time personality characteristic; while task goal orientation corresponds to nearer future mental time and reflects specific characteristics of cognitive, emotional and behavioral disposition when individual faces specific tasks, and is a comparatively concrete time personality characteristic.(4) Different undergraduates' future goals mainly concentrated on the domains such as parents and family, love and marriage, bring-up children, social achievement, social relative, occupation development, school work progress, healthy life and ability cultivation, etc. On the whole, undergraduates had higher general and task goal orientation levels, moreover, their near goal orientation was significantly higher scores than far goal orientation; result indicated that the higher school work achievement grade was, the higher general and task goal orientation levels was also.(5) Undergraduates' future goal orientations were closely related to some mental variables: general goal orientation was significantly positively related to achievement motivation and positive coping style, whereas significantly negatively related to life stress such as study stress, interpersonal stress, etc.; but task goal orientation was significantly positively related to self-efficacy and time management disposition.(6) Different levels of university students' task goal orientation can differently influence on behavior outcome. The participants' behavior outcome and behavior satisfaction after acquiring positive feedback had significantly higher scores than those acquiring negative feedback, however, no difference was found to exist in their behavior persistence and feedback-seeking behavior when different participants of general goal orientation performed difficult tasks.(7) The study demonstrated the two questionnaires of general goal orientation and task goal orientation of undergraduates FTP have better reliability and validity.In conclusion, as an exploration, this study theoretically revealed the effect of goal orientation in individual' mind and behavior, and from various dimensions explored content, structure, characteristics, mechanism and function of goal orientation of FTP by using many methods, at the same time also for the first time from the individual goal orientation confirmed three stage models- far future, near future, and nearer future. This will help enhance overall understanding university students' personality characteristics on time dimension and further developed concerning theories of time personality science, and has the important guiding value to construct his or her rational way of individual' far-near goal and uphold mental health in harmonious society.