Does Goal Conflict Necessarily Undermine Wellbeing? A Moderated Mediating Effect of Mixed Emotion and Construal Level

Abstract

Development occurs through the process of setting and working toward goals, in which individuals are often working toward multiple goals that are likely to conflict with one another. Although motivation theories hold that goal conflict is a kind of potential stress that may damage individuals’ mental health and wellbeing, the empirical research results on the relationship between goal conflict and wellbeing are quite different. There may be unknown factors affecting the relationship between the two. Against this background, we conducted the exploration of the relationship between goal conflict and life satisfaction, mainly by analyzing the moderated mediating effect of mixed emotions and construal level. The results showed that the goal conflict did not directly affect life satisfaction (β = −0.01, p > 0.5) but indirectly influenced life satisfaction through mixed emotions (β = −0.17, p < 0.001). The construal level moderated the relationship between mixed emotions and life satisfaction (β = −0.08, p < 0.01), and the higher construal level will predict higher life satisfaction especially when mixed emotions were low (M − SD) or medium (M). Therefore, the hypothesis of moderated mediating effect is verified, and we can draw the following conclusions: (1) Goal conflict does not necessarily impair life satisfaction. (2) Goal conflict impairs life satisfaction conditional on the fact that it triggers mixed emotions. Since mixed emotions are often accompanied by feelings of ambivalence and discomfort, they reduce the individual’s evaluation of life satisfaction. (3) In the path of goal conflict reducing life satisfaction through mixed emotions, the higher construal level mitigates the adverse effects of mixed emotions to some extent.

Why are hedonists less happy than eudaimonists? The chain mediating role of goal conflict and mixed emotions

“…For example, “I think that pursuing some of these goals hurts the pursuit of the other ones.” The scale uses a 5-level Likert scale, ranging from 1 “strongly disagree” to 5 “strongly agree,” with higher scores indicating higher levels of goal conflict experienced by the participants. The Conflicting Goals Scale is less time-consuming and more convenient than the Strivings Instrumentality Matrix, which has been commonly used to measure conflicting goals ( Emmons and King, 1988 ; Sun et al, 2021 ). In this study, Cronbach’s α coefficient of the scale was 0.753.…”

“…As an essential component of happiness and a key parameter for measuring life quality, life satisfaction has been widely used in studies of the relationship between happiness motivation and outcomes ( Sun et al, 2021 ). Empirical studies have found that although both hedonic and eudaimonic motivation plays a vital role in predicting life satisfaction, the effect of the former is much less stable and long-lasting than that of the latter.…”

“…Eudaimonic motivation-oriented pursuit of happiness often contain only positive valence, and rarely give rise to mixed emotions. Empirical results also show that hedonic motivation positively predicts positive and negative emotions, whereas eudaimonic motivation positively predicts positive emotions and negatively predicts negative emotions ( Sun et al, 2021 ). The Co-activation Model of Healthy Coping suggests that in low to moderate stressful situations such as the pursuit of happiness, excessive mixed emotional experiences are detrimental to favorable health outcomes ( Larsen et al, 2003 ).…”

Specificity in the Study of Mixed Emotions: A Theoretical Framework

“…Furthermore, contrary to earlier notions that nostalgia is a mixed emotion with predominantly positive psychosocial effects (e.g., Kersten et al, 2016), Newman et al (2020) found that only voluntarily-recalled nostalgia was associated with positive psychosocial outcomes, while naturalistically experienced nostalgia was associated with poorer psychosocial outcomes. More recently, mixed emotions have also been linked negatively to well-being outcomes (Oh, 2022; Sun et al, 2021).…”

Do I Really Want to Change? The Effectiveness of Goal Ambivalence Feedback on Dieters’ Motivation

“…Because a goal is a desired endpoint in the future that a person wants to achieve to change a less desirable state, people perceive or visualize an emotional payoff (greater happiness or less discomfort) while striving to achieve the goal. This means that individuals may need to disengage themselves from other goals or set new goals as prerequisites of striving for the desired goal; competing goals may create incompatible responses [ 5 , 13 , 14 , 15 ] that can interfere with the pursuit of the most desired goal, and they might cause mixed emotions [ 1 , 16 , 17 ] that may directly or indirectly decrease the person’s satisfaction with life [ 17 , 18 ]. However, there is also evidence that inter-goal conflict or facilitation may not affect goal pursuit merely because it influences people’s mood [ 16 ].…”