The Influences Of Significant Others On Goal Pursuit

Individuals lead their lives through all kinds of goal-oriented behaviors characteristically.With the increased interest in self-regulation,how people set and meet their goals has become an important research question.Certainly,many goals are pursued in such an intentional fashion,but a growing body of research suggests that goals may often be initiated and pursued automatically,and such automatic strivings may have significant implications for social evaluations,social behavior,and subjective experience. Bargh proposed the auto-motive model of nonconscious goal pursuit,and assumed that goals are mental representations that can be activated by features of the contexts in which those goals have been pursued often and consistently in the past.Relationship partners are the elicitors of strong and influential motivations that alter people's perceptions, change their emotions,and guide their behavior.Combining theories on the nature of interpersonal representations with recent theorizing about the cognitive properties of goals,Fitzsimons and his colleges proposed a triangular model of interpersonal cognition that focuses on the essential role that goals play in the links between self and other.Considering the theoretical and practical values of research on interpersonal relationship,based on the triangular model of interpersonal cognition,the current research combined the method of questionnaire,field experiment and laboratory experiment to explore how the priming of significant others influences one's goal pursuit. Regression analysis,path analysis and analysis of variance were used so as to obtain many important results.In the first study,we adopted field experiment.Using two questionnaires,we found the influence of significant others priming on goal commitment. Moreover,we excluded the influence of current affect on goal commitment.The second study used 30 undergraduate students as participants and explored the importance of significant others on one's goal pursuit behavior in the lab.It was found that significant others can activate relevant interpersonal goals so that the participants showed the actual goal pursuit behavior.Besides,goal accessibility can be increased,and mediate the impact of significant other on goal pursuit.Relation-orientation is an important concept to Chinese who pay much attention to interpersonal relationship.Given interpersonal relationship closeness influences the relationship between significant others and goal pursuit,and closeness are related to relation orientation,study 3 explored how relation orientation influences the impact of significant others on goal pursuit.Using the Relation Orientation Scale,we chose 23 college students high and low respectively on relation orientation,and randomly divided them into control group and experiment group.The result not only verified the important impact of significant others on the pursuit of the goal,but also found that relation orientation moderate the relationship between significant others and goal pursuit.Significant others have significant influence on goal pursuit when the participants are high on relation orientation,while nonsignificant impact goal pursuit if participants are low on relation orientation.Finally,the limitations of the present research were discussed from the methodological perspective;the future directions,theoretical importance and its implications on goal research and interpersonal relationship were discussed.