Goals and related constructs are ubiquitous in psychological research and span the history of psychology. Research on goals has accumulated sporadically through research programs in cognition, personality, and motivation. Goals are denned as internal representations of desired states. In this article, the authors review the theoretical development of the structure and properties of goals, goal establishment and striving processes, and goal-content taxonomies. They discuss affect as antecedent, consequence, and content of goals and argue for integrating across psychological content areas to study goal-directed cognition and action more efficiently. They emphasize the structural and dynamic aspects of pursuing multiple goals, parallel processing, and the parsimony provided by the goal construct. Finally, they advocate construct validation of a taxonomy of goals.The pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for their attainment are the mark and criterion of the presence of mentality in a phenomenon. (James, 1890, p. 8) William James's words, written over a century ago, foreshadowed a science of goal-and plan-directed behavior that is beginning to see fruition (Ajzen, 1991;Bargh & Gollwitzer, 1994;Locke & Latham, 1990a;Pervin, 1989a). In the interval since that statement, and despite the hegemony of behaviorism, the study of goal constructs has expanded to consider (a) the interplay between persons, behavior, and environments (e.g., Bandura, 1986); (b) situated versus symbolic accounts of cognition (e.g., Vera & Simon, 1993); (c) goal-behavior gaps (e.g., Lord & Levy, 1994); (d) self-regulation (e.g., Karoly, 1993); (e) volition (e.g., Corno & Kanfer, 1993); and (f) agentic behavior (e.g., R. M. Ryan, 1992). The breadth of psychological inquiry is apparent from the list of theories that incorporate goal constructs (see Table 1). Yet, the sheer magnitude of this body of research is associated with a certain danger. Heterogeneous perspectives can generate a large body of facts, an excess of vocabulary, and numerous microtheories (Cacioppo & Berntson, 1995). Organizing this knowledge of goals across domains is as vital as understanding each domain in isolation (Spaulding, 1994). In this review, we consider the structural, process, and