The dynamics of doubt: Short-term fluctuations and predictors of doubts in personal goal pursuit.

Abstract

An action crisis denotes an intrapsychic conflict in which a person feels torn between holding on to and letting go of a personal goal. It is characterized by the experience of goal-related doubts. To extend the existing understanding of action crises, we investigated the dynamics of doubts in daily life and addressed two questions: (1) To what extent do doubts with respect to a personal goal fluctuate in daily life? (2) In which situations do individuals primarily have doubts? In an experience sampling study (N ϭ 254), we assessed doubts about a personal goal five times a day over 10 days. Our findings indicate that the level of doubt varies between individuals but also fluctuates within persons. Doubts increase in response to negative goal-related events and decrease in response to positive goal-related events. Individuals with higher (vs. lower) levels of action crisis have particularly high levels of doubt during goal-related (vs. -unrelated) activity. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on goal disengagement and point to the relevance of studying motivational parameters from a dynamic perspective.

Don’t give up? It’s a little complicated: Action Crisis Moderates Consequences of goal support

“…Cognitively, action crisis represents a shift from the optimism of the implemental mindset to a more objective focus on the costs and benefits of goal pursuit (Brandstätter & Schüler, 2013 ; Vann et al, 2018 )—similar to the mindset associated with deliberation (Herrmann & Brandstätter, 2015 ), but with some potential differences, given that resources have already been invested into goal pursuit, and goal striving is at least nominally ongoing. Action crisis also increases salience of goal-related doubt when working on the goal (Ghassemi et al, 2021 ). Finally, experiencing an action crisis predicts a decrease in psychological and physiological well-being over time, particularly increasing the prevalence of depressive symptoms (Brandstätter et al, 2013 ; Holding et al, 2017 ).…”

“…Several existing lines of research provide support for this hypothesis. Action crisis is more likely to occur when goal pursuit is going poorly (Ghassemi et al, 2021 ) and similarly, people are less open to receiving goal support for difficult goals (Righetti et al, 2014 ) and goals for which they have lower expectations of success (Kappes & Shrout, 2011 ). In addition, evidence suggests that depressive symptoms, a known consequence of action crisis (Holding et al, 2017 ; Klinger, 1975 ), moderate responses to recalling instances of support.…”

You have to let go sometimes: advances in understanding goal disengagement

“…Instead, recent research has particularly focused on the second and third aspect of emotions in informing the process of goal pursuit and goal disengagement and promoting either process (Gendolla, 2012;Moors et al, 2017;Kunzmann et al, 2014). For example, Ghassemi et al, (2021) showed in a recent experience sampling study that individuals in an intense action crisis experienced doubts particularly in response to setbacks. At the same time, the experience of positive goal-related events was associated with fewer doubts, and this was related to a less intense action crisis in an exploratory analysis.…”

“…In other words, they go back and forth between weighing the Monitoring of goal progress Harkin et al, (2016) have shown in a meta-analysis that monitoring goal progress promotes goal attainment. However, the findings of Ghassemi et al, (2021) demonstrate that it also depends on whether progress can be detected. As criteria for evaluation, individuals used an intraindividual comparison (i.e., progress rate compared to one's own usual rate) as well as an interindividual comparison (i.e., progress rate compared to others' progress rate).…”

Coping with the crisis: A mindfulness manipulation positively affects the emotional regulation of action crises

“…Action crises occur when the accumulation of setbacks erodes the protective mech anisms, such as goal shielding, of the implemental and action mindsets , making people oscillate between these and the evaluative mindset during goal pursuit. Such oscillations lead to more doubts, less progress, lower well-being (e.g., reduced life satisfaction, increased depressive symptoms), and often, goal disengagement Brandstätter & Herrmann, 2016;Ghassemi et al, 2021;Holding et al, 2017).…”