Actions Deviating From The Long-term Goal

Individuals,enterprises,and governments usually set long-term goals for future development.In the course of pursuing the goals,people need to perform a series of goal-directed actions over time.However,in many cases they prefer to take actions that are not consistent with the long-term goal or even deviate from it,which may cause delayed completion,or even total failure,of the long-term goal.This article focuses on why individuals take goal-deviating actions during the process of goal pursuit,and how goal-deviating tendency changes with the progress of the goal.In order to answer the questions,four studies were conducted to examine the mental process of decision-making for goal-directed/deviating actions,and the dynamic change of goal deviating tendency from the perspective of dual-reference point,including the starting and end points.The first study indicated the phenomenon that goal progress has a non-monotonic effect on the goal-deviating preference,which is lower in the early and end stages of goal progress,but higher in the middle stage.The study also found an inverted U-shaped trend of goal-deviating preference fits well within the hyperbola model.The second study examined the mechanism of goal-directed/deviating decision-making.The study found that the type of reference point moderates the mediating effect of the goal-directed action's utility between the relationship of goal progress and goal-deviating preference.However,the preference of these reference points changes as the individual progresses towards his/her goal.The results showed that the dual-reference point dependence and preference change of reference points are the root cause of the hyperbolic deviating preference observed.The third study further explored the influence of personality on preference of reference points and goal-deviating tendency.The study found that individuals who are promotion focused prefer the starting point as the reference point,demonstrating lower goal-deviating preference in the early stage,with a gradual increase noted in the middle and late stages.However,individuals who are prevention focused prefer the end point as the reference point,having a higher goal-deviating preference at the early and middle stages,which decreases rapidly in the late stage.With the findings above,the study proposed that personality differences are one of the causes of varied goal pursuit styles,such as "first loose and then tight" or "first tight and then loose".Based on the perspective of multiple reference points,the fourth study examined the effectiveness of setting short-term goals in weakening goal-deviating preference.The study showed that individuals exhibited lower goal-deviating preference when the long-term goal was split into many continuous short-term goals.The findings of the current research explored the changing trend of goal-deviating preference in the process of goal pursuit and revealed possible psychological mechanisms of this phenomenon.A dual-reference point model was proposed to provide a new perspective for understanding the preference of reversal of goal-directed/deviating actions,which has strong theoretical significance for future studies.In addition,the current article designed and verified the effectiveness of setting short-term goals as an intervention to lower the occurrence of goal-deviating preferences,which has practical implications.