Goal progress makes one happy, or does it? Longitudinal findings from the work domain

Abstract

In a 3‐year longitudinal study with a sample of N=82 young professionals (44% male; age range: 28–39 years), self‐reported progress in the pursuit of personal goals was associated with affective well‐being, work satisfaction, and subjective developmental success in the work domain. Goal progress, however, did not predict an increase in affective well‐being and work satisfaction. Four constructs – goal difficulty, current work involvement, positive fantasies, and goal progress in the private domain – were selected to analyse their potentially moderating effect on the link between goal progress and well‐being increases. Goal difficulty evinced the clearest moderating effects. Goal difficulty predicted change in all outcome criteria, that is, only adults who perceived their goals as difficult to reach also reported a change in positive and negative affect, job satisfaction, and subjective developmental success over a period of 3 years.

How do you Feel About this Goal? Goal-Related Affect, Positive Orientation, and Personal Goal Realization in the Family Domain

“…Many studies have confirmed that affect (mood and emotions) is related to progress towards a goal and success in realizing goals (Plemmons and Weiss 2013;Wiese and Freund 2005). Affect may, however, be a source of goal engagement and not only a byproduct of movement toward goals.…”

“…Unfortunately, most research on personal goals to date has focused only on the individual level (Level 2), and has relied on aggregate measures of an individual's different goals (cf. Little 1999;Sheldon and Elliot 2000;Wiese and Freund 2005), which distorts the within-individual differences between goals. A multilevel framework (Nezlek 2007(Nezlek , 2012 allows us to consider within-and between-individual variance in goals separately.…”

Career Pathways and Professional Transitions: Preliminary Results from the First Wave of a 7-Year Longitudinal Study

“…Overall, adopting a broad psychological perspective including counseling, positive, work and organizational, as well as life-span psychology, this project studies the direct and indirect impacts of individual characteristics (such as personality, character strengths, or justice beliefs), individual resources (such as social support or self-regulatory skills), and socio-cultural and economic background (such as SES or acculturation) on adults' professional transitions and career pathways and their successful development (i.e., professional success, life-satisfaction, general and domain-specific well-being) (Krings and Olivares 2007;Petersen et al 2010;Rossier et al 2012b;Wiese and Freund 2005). A longitudinal survey design implying a yearly follow up spanning 7 years on a large sample of employed and unemployed middle-aged adults living in Switzerland was implemented.…”

The importance of achieving what you value: a career goal framework of professional fulfillment

“…life overall) has yet been scarcely demonstrated. In that sense, a successful example is from Wiese and Freund (2005), which propose that work domain goal progress is judged with reference to intra-domain standards as well as with reference to personal development and circumstances in other life domains. Both professional fulfillment parts can be identified in Wiese and Freund's (2005) study, as authors test and confirm not only the effect of positive goal progress in well-being, but also the discrepancies between one's expectations concerning goals and the actual reality of the desired state, which is, the current degree of achievement.…”

“…Sheldon & Elliot, 1999;Sheldon & Houser-Marko, 2001). It has been observed that self-reported progress in pursuit of personal goals was associated to affective well-being, work satisfaction, and subjective developmental success in work domain (Wiese & Freund, 2005). While personal goal setting is extremely common, goal attainment is not (Koestner, 2008).…”