Abstract
People who think of their personal goals as identities are more likely to engage in goal-consistent behavior. However, no research has explored whether learning to frame goals as identities can be an effective strategy for pursuing goals in daily life. Across a series of studies, we assessed how incorporating a goal as part of one’s identity impacts goal-consistent choices. In a pilot study, we established a positive correlational relationship between natural goal identification and goal-consistent decision-making. Individuals with stronger healthy-eater identities made healthier food choices in a behavioral choice task. In Studies 1 and 2, we employed longitudinal interventions to teach people to frame their healthy eating goals as identities. We found that people who learned to frame their goals as identities made healthier choices, felt their goals were easier to pursue, reported greater success at managing goals, and made food choices that they both perceived to be healthier and that were rated as healthier by independent evaluators. Across studies, our findings suggest that thinking of goals as identities makes it easier to engage in goal-consistent choices.
Notes
The current scholarly literature uses several terms and measurement tools for assessing the general construct that we are calling goal identification. For example, Goal Self-Concordance scales have been used to assess the extent to which people’s goal-oriented motivations align with their authentic interests and values (Sheldon and Elliot 1999). Other self-report scales, such as the Healthy-Eater Identity Scale (Strachan and Brawley 2009) and the Exercise Identity Questionnaire (Anderson and Cychosz 1994) aim to assess a broad integration with core identity beyond alignment with authentic interests and values, directly assessing a person’s beliefs about the extent to which their goals are identities. We acknowledge that these various operationalizations (e.g., autonomous motivation, self-concordance, identity measures) are overlapping constructs, thus we discuss the background research collectively.
Across studies, we test these questions within the domain of health as dieting goals are commonly held by college students (Milyavskaya et al. 2015). However, we do not expect there is anything specific about this domain that would not translate to other goal domains.
Participants also responded to two additional measures of goal identity, including a single-item visual Goal-Self Overlap scale (modeled from Aron et al. 1992) and a five-item Goal Self-Concordance measure (Sheldon and Elliot 1999; Koestner et al. 2002). The three measures of goal identity (Healthy-Eater Identity, Goal-Self Overlap, and Goal Self- Concordance) were highly correlated (α = .91). For simplicity and ease of interpretation, we use the Healthy-Eater Identity Scale for analyses across all studies. However, analyzing the results using a composite measure of all three does not change the results. Analyses using the three-item measure are reported in the supplemental materials.
Participant were eligible for study participation if they responded that they agree or strongly agree with the statement “I have goals to eat healthy” in a pre-screen measure at the beginning of the semester.
As in the pilot study, participants also responded to two additional measures of goal-identity, the single-item visual Goal-Self Overlap scale (modeled from Aron et al. 1992) and a five-item Goal Self-Concordance measure (Sheldon and Elliot 1999; Koestner et al. 2002). For ease of interpretation, we again only discuss the Healthy-Eater Identity Scale, however using a composite scale does not change the results. In addition, for an implicit measure of healthy-eater identity, participants responded to an implicit healthy eating identity Implicit Association Task (IAT) (modeled from Young et al. 2013). Full analyses using each measure are presented in the supplemental materials.
Although the primary purpose of the nightly surveys was to remind participants in both experimental conditions to continue thinking about their New Year’s Resolution, the surveys also provided participant opportunities to report their experiences throughout the study. We did not have specific predictions about these daily measures. Analyses comparing daily mood, self-reported healthiness, and progress between conditions are reported in the supplemental analyses.
To be consistent with the instructions we gave in the computerized food choice task, we allowed participants to choose a snack at the end of the study. An anonymous reviewer suggested we also explore whether the identity manipulation influenced snack choices. Since there were a variety of snacks participants could choose from, we ran exploratory analyses predicting the amount of calories in participants’ snack choices. We conducted a one-way ANCOVA controlling for baseline healthy-eater identity. There were no significant differences in snack choice calories between the identity condition (M = 129.74 cal, SE = 14.37), the goal setting condition (M = 135.87 cal, SE = 13.85), or the control condition (M = 142.63 cal, SE = 14.93), F(3,155) = 0.66, p = .56. While we might have expected participants to make healthier choices after the identity manipulation, there may be several reasons why we did not observe a difference in this measure. Specifically, unlike in the computerized food choice task, we did not offer a binary choice of unambiguously healthy or unhealthy snacks, nor were participants aware of nutritional information when making their choice. Rather we offered a variety of snacks that may have been ambiguous in the extent to which they were personally perceived as “healthy” (e.g., a granola bar could be healthy or unhealthy depending on the other options or on personal beliefs). There also might be other extraneous factors that affected snack choice. For example, participants did not actually eat the food in the lab; several participants mentioned they would give the snack to their roommate/friend. We also did not assess participant hunger or time of day, both of which may have influenced momentary snack choice and introduced random variance into the measure. Thus, we do not believe snack choice in the lab is a strong test of participants’ healthy eating behavior. Rather we believe Study 3, in which we assess behavior in participants’ every day life, is a much stronger test of the relationship between identity and real eating behavior.
References
Anderson, D. F., & Cychosz, C. M. (1994). Development of an exercise identity scale. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 78(3), 747–751.
Aron, A., Aron, E. N., & Smollan, D. (1992). Inclusion of other in the self scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,63, 596–612.
Aronson, J., Cohen, G. L., & Nail, P. R. (1999). Self-affirmation theory: An update and appraisal. In E. Harmon-Jones & J. Mills (Eds.), Cognitive dissonance theory: Revival with revisions and controversies (pp. 127–147). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Baumeister, R. F. (2010). The self. In R. F. Baumeister & E. J. Finkel (Eds.), Advanced social psychology: The state of the science (pp. 139–175). Oxford University Press.
Berkman, E. T., Livingston, J. L., & Kahn, L. E. (2017). Finding the “self” in self-regulation: The identity-value model. Psychological Inquiry,28(2–3), 77–98.
Bryan, C. J., Master, A., & Walton, G. M. (2014). “Helping” versus “being a helper”: Invoking the self to increase helping in young children. Child Development,85(5), 1836–1842.
Burke, P. J. (1980). The self: Measurement from an interactionist perspective. Journal of Social Psychology Quarterly,43, 18–29.
Burke, P. J. (1991). Identity processes and social stress. American Sociological Review,56, 836–849.
Burke, P. J., & Harrod, M. M. (2005). Too much of a good thing? Social Psychology Quarterly,68(4), 359–374.
Carter, M. J. (2013). Advancing identity theory: Examining the relationship between activated identities and behavior in different social contexts. Social Psychology Quarterly,76(3), 203–223.
Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual Review of Psychology,65, 333–371.
Deci, E. (1980). The psychology of self-determination. Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). The general causality orientations scale: Self-determination in personality. Journal of research in personality,19(2), 109–134.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The" what" and" why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry,11(4), 227–268.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2008). Self-determination theory: A macrotheory of human motivation, development, and health. Canadian Psychology, 49(3), 182.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2011). Self-determination theory. In P. Lange, A. Kruglanski, & T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology (pp. 416–433). Thousand Oaks: SAGE.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2012). Self-determination theory. In P. A. M. Lange, A. W. Kruglanski, & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of theories of social psychology: Vol. 1 (pp. 416–437). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Festinger, L. (1962). A theory of cognitive dissonance (Vol. 2). Stanford University Press.
Fishbach, A., Friedman, R. S., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2003). Leading us not into temptation: Momentary allurements elicit overriding goal activation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,84(2), 296.
Fishbach, A., Shen, L. (2014). The explicit and implicit ways of overcoming temptation. In J. Sherman, B. Gawronski, Y. Trope (Eds.), Dual process theories of the social mind. New York: Guilford Press.
Fujita, K. (2011). On conceptualizing self-control as more than just the effortful inhibition of impulses. Personality and Social Psychology Review,15(4), 352–366.
Galla, B. M., & Duckworth, A. L. (2015). More than resisting temptation: Beneficial habits mediate the relationship between self-control and positive life outcomes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,109(3), 508.
Hayes, A. F. (2012). PROCESS: A versatile computational tool for observed variable mediation, moderation, and conditional process modeling.
Hofmann, W., Baumeister, R. F., Förster, G., & Vohs, K. D. (2012). Everyday temptations: An experience sampling study of desire, conflict, and self-control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,102(6), 1318.
Koestner, R., Lekes, N., Powers, T. A., & Chicoine, E. (2002). Attaining personal goals: Self-concordance plus implementation intentions equals success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,83(1), 231.
Koestner, R., Otis, N., Powers, T. A., Pelletier, L., & Gagnon, H. (2008). Autonomous motivation, controlled motivation, and goal progress. Journal of Personality,76(5), 1201–1230.
Koestner, R., Powers, T. A., Milyavskaya, M., Carbonneau, N., & Hope, N. (2015). Goal internalization and persistence as a function of autonomous and directive forms of goal support. Journal of Personality,83(2), 179–190.
Koestner, R. (2008). Reaching one's personal goals: A motivational perspective focused on autonomy. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne,49(1), 60.
Koole, S. L., Dijksterhuis, A., & Van Knippenberg, A. (2001). What's in a name: Implicit self-esteem and the automatic self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,80(4), 669.
Leduc-Cummings, I., Milyavskaya, M., & Peetz, J. (2017). Goal motivation and the subjective perception of past and future obstacles. Personality and Individual Differences,109, 160–165.
Milyavskaya, M., Inzlicht, M., Hope, N., & Koestner, R. (2015). Saying “no” to temptation: Want-to motivation improves self-regulation by reducing temptation rather than by increasing self-control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,109(4), 677.
Milyavskaya, M., Nadolny, D., & Koestner, R. (2014). Where do self-concordant goals come from? The role of domain-specific psychological need satisfaction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(6), 700–711.
Oyserman, D. (2015). Identity-based motivation. Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences,38, 1–11.
Oyserman, D. (2001). Self-concept and identity. In A. Tesser & N. Schwarz (Eds.), The Blackwell handbook of social psychology (pp. 499–517). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Oyserman, D., Fryberg, S. A., & Yoder, N. (2007). Identity-based motivation and health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,93(6), 1011.
Oyserman, D., Elmore, K., & Smith, G. (2012). Self, self-concept, and identity. In M. R. Leary & J. P. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity (pp. 69–104). New York: The Guilford Press.
Oyserman, D., Lewis, N. A., Jr., Yan, V. X., Fisher, O., O'Donnell, S. C., & Horowitz, E. (2017). An identity-based motivation framework for self-regulation. Psychological Inquiry,28(2–3), 139–147.
Paulhus, D. L. (1993). Bypassing the will: The automatization of affirmations. In D. M. Wegner & J. W. Pennebaker (Eds.), Century psychology series: Handbook of mental control (pp. 573–587). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc.
Rhodes, R. E., Kaushal, N., & Quinlan, A. (2016). Is physical activity a part of who I am? A review and meta-analysis of identity, schema and physical activity. Health Psychology Review,10(2), 204–225.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist,55(1), 68.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2003). On assimilating identities to the self: A self-determination theory perspective on internalization and integrity within cultures. In M. R. Leary & J. P. Tangney (Eds.), Handbook of self and identity (pp. 253–272). The Guilford Press.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. New York: Guilford Publishing.
Schlegel, R. J., Hicks, J. A., Arndt, J., & King, L. A. (2009). Thine own self: True self-concept accessibility and meaning in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,96(2), 473.
Schlegel, R. J., & Hicks, J. A. (2011). The true self and psychological health: Emerging evidence and future directions. Social and Personality Psychology Compass,5(12), 989–1003.
Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-being: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,76(3), 482.
Sheldon, K. M., & Houser-Marko, L. (2001). Self-concordance, goal attainment, and the pursuit of happiness: Can there be an upward spiral? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,80(1), 152.
Sheldon, K. M., & Kasser, T. (1998). Pursuing personal goals: Skills enable progress, but not all progress is beneficial. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,24(12), 1319–1331.
Sherman, D. K., & Cohen, G. L. (2006). The psychology of self-defense: Self-affirmation theory. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology,38, 183–242.
Shrout, P. E., & Fleiss, J. L. (1979). Intraclass correlations: Uses in assessing rater reliability. Psychological Bulletin,86(2), 420.
Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., & Simonsohn, U. (2013). Life after p-hacking. Advances in Consumer Research,41, 775.
Steele, C. M. (1988). The psychology of self-affirmation: Sustaining the integrity of the self. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology,21, 261–302.
Steg, L., Bolderdijk, J. W., Keizer, K., & Perlaviciute, G. (2014). An integrated framework for encouraging pro-environmental behaviour: The role of values, situational factors and goals. Journal of Environmental Psychology,38, 104–115.
Stets, J. E., & Burke, P. J. (2003). A sociological approach to self and identity. Handbook of self and identity.
Strachan, S. M., & Brawley, L. R. (2008). Reactions to a perceived challenge to identity: A focus on exercise and healthy eating. Journal of Health Psychology,13(5), 575–588.
Strachan, S. M., & Brawley, L. R. (2009). Healthy-eater identity and self-efficacy predict healthy eating behavior: A prospective view. Journal of Health Psychology,14(5), 684–695.
Strohminger, N., Knobe, J., & Newman, G. (2017). The true self: A psychological concept distinct from the self. Perspectives on Psychological Science,12(4), 551–560.
Stryker, S., & Burke, P. J. (2000). The past, present, and future of an identity theory. Social Psychology Quarterly,63, 284–297.
Sui, J., & Humphreys, G. W. (2015). The integrative self: How self-reference integrates perception and memory. Trends in Cognitive Sciences,19(12), 719–728. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2015.08.015.
Tajfel, H. (1982). Social psychology of intergroup relations. Annual Review of Psychology,33(1), 1–39.
Trope, Y., & Fishbach, A. (2000). Counteractive self-control in overcoming temptation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,79, 493–506.
van der Laan, L. N., de Ridder, D. T., Charbonnier, L., Viergever, M. A., & Smeets, P. A. (2014). Sweet lies: Neural, visual, and behavioral measures reveal a lack of self-control conflict during food choice in weight-concerned women. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience,8, 184.
Verplanken, B., & Holland, R. W. (2002). Motivated decision making: Effects of activation and self-centrality of values on choices and behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,82(3), 434.
Verplanken, B., & Sui, J. (2019). Habit and identity: Behavioral, cognitive, affective, and motivational facets of an integrated self. Frontiers in Psychology,10, 1504.
Walton, G. M., & Banaji, M. R. (2004). Being what you say: The effect of essentialist linguistic labels on preferences. Social Cognition,22(2), 193–213.
Werner, K. M., Milyavskaya, M., Foxen-Craft, E., & Koestner, R. (2016). Some goals just feel easier: Self-concordance leads to goal progress through subjective ease, not effort. Personality and Individual Differences,96, 237–242.
Young, D. M., Rudman, L. A., Buettner, H. M., & McLean, M. C. (2013). The influence of female role models on women’s implicit science cognitions. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 37(3), 283–292.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflicts of interest
All Author declares that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical approval
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standard.
Informed consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dominick, J.K., Cole, S. Goals as identities: Boosting perceptions of healthy-eater identity for easier goal pursuit. Motiv Emot 44, 410–426 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-020-09824-8
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-020-09824-8