4 The goal construct in interpersonal communication
Abstract: Although scholars invoke the goal construct to understand interpersonal communication, comprehensive and consistent conceptualizations of the construct are difficult to find in the literature. Much research a) does not define the goal construct leaving it as a given or primitive term, b) implicitly suggests a definition, or c) provides only a partial definition. Likewise, scholars often conflate goals with related but conceptually distinct constructs. The current chapter addresses these concerns. First, the goal construct is explicitly defined: Goals are mental representations of a desired end-state that can reside in hierarchies and be set at various levels of specificity. Next, goals are differentiated from related constructs. Finally, three ways in which the goal construct currently resides in interpersonal communication are demonstrated – goal activation, goals and interpersonal relationships, and goal inference processes.
Key Words: goals, conversation, social interaction, cognition, relational communication, goal inferences, constraints, goal activation, message production and processing
1 Introduction
The goal construct maintains a central place in understanding interpersonal communication. Many scholars invoke the goal construct to elucidate their theoretical and empirical efforts. The prominence of goals in communication is demonstrated by several books (Berger 1997; Wilson 2002) and edited volumes (Cody and McLaughlin 1990; Daly and Wiemann 1994; Greene 1997; Tracy 1991) that showcase the construct. The goal construct has been employed in at least three consequential domains of interpersonal communication.
First, goals influence communicative behavior in general (Wilson 2002) and lead to plans, which result in conversational actions (Dillard 2004). For instance, integrative and distributive tactics in serial arguments depend on the goals people pursue in conflict episodes (Hample, Richards, and Na 2012). The level of politeness employed in messages varies across relationship initiation, intensify, and disengagement goals (Wilson et al. 2009); and during computer-mediated communication, people with affinity goals agree more, whereas those with disaffinity goals tended to disagree (Walther et al. 2010). Second, relational processes are also goal contingent. For example, when an achievement goal was primed, people liked their study friends more than their party friends, but when a socializing goal was primed, they liked their party friends more (Fitzsimons and Fischbach 2010). Goals have been found to be indirectly associated with increased relational satisfaction through tactic use (Hample et al. 2012), and marital satisfaction depends on whether prioritized marriage goals are reached (Li and Fung 2011). Third, goals play a role in personal well-being (Wiese 2007). For instance, self-esteem decreased upon goal failure but increased with goal achievement (Bongers, Dijksterhuis, and Spears 2009). Likewise, people with an achievement goal were in a relatively better mood when confronted with a situation conducive to fulfilling the goal (Chartrand and Bargh 2002). Also, people unable to obtain an important goal experienced more negative affect than those who reached their goal (Moberly and Watkins 2010). Having conflicting goals is associated with depression (Kelly, Mansell, and Wood 2011). Message production, personal relationships, and well-being are understood with reference to goals.
Although the goal construct adds explanatory and predictive utility in efforts to understand various communicative phenomena, such as those described above and others (Liu in press; Park et al. 2011), difficult to pin down is a concise, consistent, and comprehensive answer to a seemingly simple question – what is a goal? Surprisingly, much work a) does not define goals but leaves the construct as a given or a primitive term, b) implicitly suggests a definition, or c) provides only a partial or basic definition. What is more, goals are often conflated with related but conceptually distinct constructs. Thus, whereas the goal construct is prominent in interpersonal communication, without a clear and consensual conceptualization of what constitutes a goal and what does not, contributions of the goal construct are limited.
The current chapter addresses this concern. First, the goal construct is explicitly and thoroughly defined. Next, goals are differentiated from related constructs. Finally, three ways in which the goal construct currently resides in interpersonal theory and research are demonstrated. In doing so, the focus of the current chapter is on the goal construct as it pertains to the interpersonal communication literature from the last decade or two. The chapter occasionally draws on work outside interpersonal communication and beyond the time frame, but it primarily does so to facilitate an understanding of the goal construct within the previously delineated scope. The reason for these scope criteria is twofold. First, conceptualizations of the goal construct exist in other disciplines (Aarts 2012; Elliot and Fryer 2008; Fishbach and Ferguson 2007; Moskowitz 2012; see also Aarts and Elliot 2012; Moskowitz and Grant 2009). These explications provide an understanding of the psychological foundations and cognitive mechanisms of goals, but parallel conceptualizations that explicitly articulate a thorough definition from a communication science perspective are virtually nonexistent, although Dillard’s (1997) explication of several questions pertaining to goals is a notable exception. Second, although highly useful and informative accounts of the message production and conversation goals literature exist from interpersonal communication scholars (Berger 1997, 2002; Daly and Weiman 1994; Greene 1997; Tracy 1991; Wilson 2002), these accounts vary in the extent to which they explicitly and thoroughly define goals. Thus, the current chapter provides a thorough conceptualization of the goal construct by explicitly articulating a definition, differentiating it from related constructs, and demonstrating its use.
2 The goal construct defined
Most definitions of the goal construct include, to varying degrees, some mention of an end-state. For example, goals are “desired states of affairs” (Dillard, Segrin, and Harden 1989: 19), “an individual’s desire about what state of affairs he or she wishes to possess or acquire in the future” (Bates and Samp 2011: 208), “desired end states that motivate participants’ actions” (Wilson et al. 2009: 34), “desired end states” (Caughlin 2010: 826), “ends individuals secure” (Kellermann and Park 2001: 41), or “states of affairs that people wish to attain” (Romo and Donovan-Kicken 2012: 408). Other definitions are less explicit in their reference to an end-state but nonetheless imply a similar focus on end states: “what people want to accomplish in a situation” (Burleson et al. 2006: 42); “general concerns about accomplishing a task, keeping a relationship together, or pursuing self-interests” (Samp 2013: 87); “a linguistic goal to say a message that will be understood by the hearer as having a particular communicative ‘intent’” (Meyer 2011: 378); a “desired outcome” (Greene and Lindsey 1989: 122); and “highly proximal generative mechanisms for the messages people produce” (Burleson and Gilstrap 2002: 44). Clearly, the goal construct contains some mention of obtaining an end-state or outcome.
Simply defining goals as end-states is problematic; goals must have some connection to the psychological processes of the mind, which necessitates defining goals as mentally represented end-states. A longstanding tradition of scholarship is actually consistent with the definition of goals as mental representations of end-states and conceptualizes a goal as a cognitive construct (Berger 1989; Greene and Lindsey 1989; Tolman 1932; Wilson 1990). Unfortunately however, many definitions disregard this and do not explicitly state that goals are mentally represented and therefore reside in memory. With a cognitive conceptualization, the goal construct becomes a mentally represented end-state that agents pursue, maintain, abandon, etc. with intent, which means goals fundamentally exist in memory.
Data employing neuroscience techniques are consistent with this conceptualization (Berkman and Lieberman 2009). For example, activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex assessed via EEG was lower when a routine plan to achieve a goal was enacted successfully than when the plan failed and required modification to continue pursuit (Beatty and Heisel 2007); a finding consistent with the proposition that reusing a plan for a goal requires less cognitive effort than altering an existing plan (Berger 1997). Research using fMRI found that priming promotion goals (e.g., excel in school) activated an area in the brain associated with dispositional approach/appetitive tendencies and positive affect but is not inherently associated with goal pursuit (Eddington et al. 2007). That goals exhibit signs in brain studies is not surprising in light of evidence that goal processes are likely the result of evolution (Southgate, Johnson, and Csibra 2007; Uller 2004). These and other studies support a conceptualization of goals as mentally represented end-states that have corresponding neural correlates.
One implication of this conceptualization is that they can operate consciously, implicitly without awareness of their presence, or somewhere in between (Ferguson and Porter 2010). The extent to which goals can function automatically outside conscious awareness from activation through completion varies (Chartrand and Bargh 1996). People unconsciously primed with, and therefore unaware of, a goal to achieve performed better on an intelligence test than those not primed with the goal (Bargh et al. 2001); however, goals can enter consciousness. People can leave their office and arrive at home deep in thought about unrelated activities and without remembering much of the journey, especially if the path is routinized; on the other hand, travelling home can require conscious thought when a novel path is required. In fact, unconsciously activated goals entered active thought when goal pursuit became difficult or problematic (Bongers, Dijksterhuis, and Spears 2010).
That goals are mentally represented also suggests they function like other mentally represented cognitive constructs (Fishbach and Ferguson 2007), such as stereotypes (Sherman 1996), scripts (Schank and Abelson 1977), and relational schemata (Planalp 1985). Goals, therefore, vary in their level of activation or accessibility (Higgins 1996). At any given moment, some goals may be more or less likely to become activated than other goals given the specific circumstances of the situation. Furthermore, goals are connected to other mentally represented constructs. This interconnectivity suggests that the activation of a goal can trigger the activation of other constructs and that other constructs can trigger goals (Collins and Loftus 1975). For example, a professor might pursue an instruct goal with students relatively more than the professor seeks to provide guidance/advice with offspring. Likewise, ordering food is pursued in restaurants more than in offices. As a result, a professor’s contact with children will likely excite different goals than contact with students, just as restaurants trigger ordering food more than do offices.
Goals can also be associated among themselves in that goals are hierarchically represented (Dillard 1997). Goal hierarchies are organized collections of superordinate and subordinate goals that are cognitively interconnected to facilitate the achievement of higher-order goals through the precursory achievement of lower-order goals. Achieving one goal can facilitate another goal. For example, getting to know someone can promote establishing a close friendship, just as securing a date can encourage finding a mate or being humorous can facilitate making a good impression. Goal hierarchies can have more than two-levels. For example, purchasing grocery items facilitates cooking a roast, which facilitates eating food, which promotes survival. These goals can have additional subordinate goals; for instance, to cook a roast one must prepare meat and vegetables, get pan, preheat oven, place items into pan, etc. Hierarchies of end-states are a relatively under-studied aspect of goals; yet, they are pervasive in social interaction (Berger 2002).
Goal hierarchies should not be confused with goal specificity. Goal specificity is the level of precision with which a goal is set (Locke et al. 1981). A goal’s specificity can increase as it is set at progressively finer levels of detail (e.g., find information, find background, find hometown; or cook meal, cook beef, cook chuck roast with potatoes). Goal specificity does not refer to different goals that have facilitative relationships, as hierarchies do. A compliance-gaining goal, for instance, garners specificity as it moves from gain compliance to obtain favor to borrow money to borrow five dollars; each instantiation of the compliance-gaining goal has a greater level of precision or exactitude but the four goals do not reside in a hierarchy. Despite some scholars using concrete and abstract as respective synonyms for subordinate and superordinate, specificity does not imply facilitative relationships among goals. For example, borrow-five-dollars does not promote borrow-money because the goals, in a sense, are one and the same; when one successfully borrows five dollars, in other words, the person can also be said to gain compliance, obtain a favor, or borrow money depending on the level of specificity. Yet, borrow-five-dollars can facilitate buy-lunch, which promotes survival, all of which are distinct goals that reside in a hierarchy. Goal specificity seems to have meaningful effects (e.g., Palomares 2009a). Indeed, goal achievement is more likely for specific than abstract goals (e.g., study for exam two hours a day for week versus study for exam; Locke et al. 1981). Nonetheless, goal specificity is mostly neglected.
Up to this point, goals have been conceptualized as mental representations of end-states. Yet, another component is needed. Goals are mentally represented end-states that people desire, which is no surprise given the cited definitions. A motivational element resides in goals (Fishbach and Fersuson 2007). Knowing how to do something does not mean a goal exists to put the procedural knowledge into action (e.g., parents know how to humiliate their children in front of classmates but they usually do not pursue the goal). Positive affect must be associated with the end-state to enlist the knowledge and transition the end-state into a desired outcome. Desire confers goal status onto end-states because people are motivated toward pleasurable and away from unpleasant experiences (Lazarus 1991). The positive affective component of a goal drives people toward the end-state.
Goals are mental representations of a desired end-state. These mental representations function similarly to most cognitive structures in terms of their accessibility and interconnectedness with other cognitive representations. Goals can reside in hierarchies and be set at various levels of specificity. Positive affect associated with an end-state is what impregnates a goal with its motivational force. Having defined the construct, the next section distinguishing goals from related interpersonal communication constructs.
3 The goal construct differentiated
The goal construct is distinct from other constructs that are often theoretically related to goals. Given these ties, confusion often exists between goals and other constructs.
3.1 Goals ≠ behavior
Goals are not behavior. When someone tries to initiate a relationship by asking questions and disclosing information, the verbal behavior is goal-directed but not a goal in and of itself. The mental representation of a goal can generate behavioral indicators of goal pursuit. Nonetheless, because goals reside in cognition, they cannot be directly observed in behavior. To say that a goal can be found within a verbal utterance or a written statement is inaccurate. Goals influence behavior, and their influence can be observed in utterances or statements. Many message production theories argue that goals give rise to goal-directed behavior but nonetheless maintain a distinction between goals and behavior (Berger 2002; Dillard 2004; Wilson 2002). For example, when disengaging a relationship, people reported complimenting their partners (Wilson et al. 2009). Compliance gaining goals (e.g., stop annoying habit, get advice) affected the employment of compliance-gaining behaviors (Kellermann 2004). Goals influence behavior, but they do not reside in behavior.
Because the goal construct is separate from behavior, assessing goals from behavior is “risky business. In fact, some would call it just plain bad business” (Dillard 1997: 61). Despite this warning, many recent operationalizations use behavior as a surrogate for goals. A study of advice-giver goals measured goals as the amount of effort expended. Focusing on behavior, the goal measures consequently fostered behavior-based conclusions such as, “when advice givers put more effort into certain goals (such as giving advice that is polite), recipients recognize these efforts and rate aspects of the advice accordingly” (Guntzviller and MacGeorge 2013: 96). A study on women’s goal of refusing unwanted sexual advances also conflated goals with behaviors by operationalizing goals as features of messages: “Coders assessed the degree to which the primary goal of clearly refusing the unwanted advance was evident in the women’s refusal messages” (Lannutti and Monahan 2004: 158). Fortunately though, the researchers effectively mitigated this concern with open-ended goal reports to ensure “goals were on women’s minds while refusing” (165). A third example states, “the relational and identity considerations that supplemented the topic avoidance were secondary goals that were simultaneously present in some topic-avoidance messages” (Donovan-Kicken et al. in press: 5).
In all three examples, goals are, at least implicitly, conceptualized as mental representations, but at times the researchers nonetheless contradict that notion and treat goals as somewhat interchangeable with communicative behavior. The distinction, however, should not be glossed over because even if a goal was accessible enough to generate high levels of goal-directed behavior, it was the mental representation of the goal that produced the overt behavior. Burleson and Gilstrap (2002: 44) argued that in support situations people tend to employ four general message strategies when confronting a distressed other so much so that the “typology of behavioral strategies rather directly suggests a complementary typology of interaction goals.” Nonetheless, the conceptualizations of support strategies and corresponding support goals are distinct and thus consistent with the idea that goals are mental representations that can produce goal-directed behavior. Sometimes a strong, direct relationship exists between goals and behavior; yet at other times, goals are not manifested in overt behavior. Hence, maintaining this theoretical distinction is paramount.
Preserving a separation between goals and goal-directed behavior mandates that goals can influence behavior but do not necessarily lead to behavioral changes. For example, someone can have a goal to come out of the closet that is highly accessible and for which the person is expending much cognitive energy to achieve; this same individual, however, could likewise exhibit virtually no behavioral indicators of the goal because the to-be-revealed information is extremely sensitive and difficult to articulate. Thus, goal pursuit might exhibit no behavioral indicators whatsoever. In fact, people can experience unintentional (i.e., non-strategic) speechlessness for reasons such as stress, extreme emotions, or the fear of being judged; despite their goal, people can have difficulty finding the right words and involuntarily remain silent (Berger 2004). Unintentional speechlessness does not imply the person has no goal active in cognitive processes; it merely implies the person sought the goal in a highly inefficient manner.
A related construct, therefore, is goal pursuit efficiency (Kellermann 2004; Palomares 2009a), which is the expediency of behaviors executed for goal pursuit. Efficiently pursuing a goal results in delivering a quick succession of straightforward, direct, succinct, persistent, and effortless means of goal achievement; whereas, inefficient goal pursuit exhibits wasteful, roundabout, and infrequent means of goal achievement. Efficiency is not effectiveness, which is the success at achieving a goal (Wilson 2002). A person can efficiently achieve the goal or efficiently fail to reach it. Efficiency, therefore, is not the common understanding found in dictionaries focusing on a ratio between expended effort and outcome. Rather, efficiency is how expeditious people pursue a goal regardless of how successful they are at securing it.
Goal pursuit efficiency is a meaningful construct that helps differentiate goals from goal-directed behavior. A male, for example, with a goal to secure a date with a friend can do so inefficiently by asking about weekend plans. In contrast, a more efficient male might directly ask to go to dinner on a date. The goal could be strongly activated in both scenarios despite differences in goal pursuit efficiency. Although the goal can be strongly, equally activated in both situations, some might erroneously reach the conclusion that the reduced behavioral goal signals in the former scenario suggest lower goal activation than the latter situation with the efficient goal-directed behavior. This conclusion, however, is not necessarily warranted because there may be separate behavioral constraints limiting the extent to which the goal is efficiently sought. These constraints, which are often confounded with goals, are the focus of the next section.
3.2 Goals ≠ constraints
Constraints are not goals; they are ongoing concerns, considerations, and expectations of behavioral or tactical choice that occur across conversations and to which people pay heed when pursuing their goals (Dillard et al. 1989; Kellermann 2004). These concerns, considerations, and expectations “function to shape, and typically to constrain, the behaviors” (Dillard et al. 1989: 21) employed to obtain a goal. For example, regretted messages often conflict with constraints, suggesting that people wish not having said utterances that violated constraints during goal pursuit (Meyer 2011). Constraints are different than goals because goals are end-states that individuals secure, whereas constraints are behavioral expectations. As such, people do not fail to reach constraints, as they can fail to reach a goal. Likewise, people do not satisfy goals, as they satisfy constraints. Goals and constraints also differ in a temporal sense. Goals are end-states that people work to achieve and complete at particular moments in time during conversations, whereas people continuously work to satisfy constraints over time and across conversations. Goal activation can be fleeting; and, depending on the circumstances, an active goal might be replaced with another. Constraints, in contrast, are long lasting and permeate social interaction and goal pursuit. Constraints do not compete with goals; rather, they influence the behaviors enacted in pursuit of a goal.
Despite the theoretical distinction between goals and constraints, constraints are often referred to as secondary goals, and primary goals are mental representations of a desired end-state (i.e., goals). Dillard et al., for example, stated that secondary goals “are recurrent in a person’s life” (1989: 20) and argued “the primary goal serves to initiate and maintain the interaction, while the secondary goals act as a set of boundaries which delimit the verbal choices available to sources” (32). Clearly, secondary goals are conceptually identical to constraints, but because constraints are not goals (i.e., mental representations of desired end-states), calling a constraint a goal (secondary or otherwise) is theoretically inaccurate and semantically confusing. The core problem is semantics. Even recent work makes a conceptual distinction between goals and constraints under the guises of primary and secondary goals: “Goals frameworks also identify…secondary goals, which constrain the pursuit of primary goals” (Donovan-Kicken et al. in press: 4). Nonetheless, maintaining a conceptually accurate and consistent distinction between goals and constraints and employing semantically straightforward terminology are integral for interpersonal communication theory.
Constraints can take a variety of forms (Wilson 2002). One constraint is appropriateness or one’s concern with the level of behavioral politeness that should be used in pursuit of goals (how proper, fitting, and courteous versus uncivil, unmannerly, and rude). Appropriateness corresponds to the “interaction” and “relational resources” secondary “goals” of Dillard et al. (1989) and to Kim’s (1994) “feelings,” “avoid negative evaluation,” and “avoid imposition” conversational constraints. Appropriateness constraints are concerned with interaction partners’ face. For example, people tend to find arguing and criticizing as inappropriate means to secure a date and to stop an annoying habit, whereas they find asking and approving appropriate means for the secure-date goal and advising and forgiving appropriate for the stop-habit goal. Similarly, apologizing is polite to end a relationship, but relatively less polite to change someone’s opinion (Kellermann 2004). Appropriateness is a constraint focused on expectations for behavioral politeness that influence peoples’ concern with the degree to which their goal-directed behavior is courteous.
Another common constraint is efficiency, which is a concern or need to be expeditious, direct, and straightforward in goal pursuit. The efficiency constraint is similar to, but distinct from, goal pursuit efficiency. As a constraint, efficiency is a concern with being expeditious, persistent, and not wasteful; whereas goal pursuit efficiency is an attribute of goal-directed behavior regarding the extent to which goal striving is expeditious. A strong concern for the efficiency constraint leads to efficient goal pursuit, similar to the way in which a salient appropriateness constraint will lead to appropriate behavior. Efficiency corresponds to the “personal resources” secondary “goal” (Dillard et al. 1989) and “clarity” constraint (Kim 1994). The efficiency constraint affects behavioral choices for goal pursuit by favoring efficient behaviors over inefficient ones. When trying to obtain a favor, for example, the efficiency constraint leads people to ask and suggest but causes them to avoid insulting and blaming (given the former tactics’ high and the latter tactics’ low efficiency for obtaining a favor); whereas suggesting is only moderately efficient but asking is highly efficient to get a date and confessing and apologizing are highly efficient but insulting and blaming are moderately efficient means to end relationship (Kellermann 2004). Efficiency is a constraint focused on expectations for behavioral expediency and directness that influence peoples’ concern with the degree to which their goal-directed behavior is expeditious.
Two additional constraints are arousal management and ethical standards. Arousal management deals with behavioral choice restrictions prompted by uncomfortable negative arousal (Dillard et al. 1989). For example, if pursuing an information-seeking goal with excessive questioning increases one’s negative affect (e.g., anxiety), then that might limit the extensiveness of queries. A fourth constraint is ethical standards and parallels the “identity” secondary “goal.” These concerns are restrictions placed on tactical selection due to a violation of what is deemed just and right. For example, people might not lie or threaten in pursuit of a goal because they find it morally reprehensible. Arousal management and ethical standards are constraints respectively focused on expectations for negative affect and morals that influence peoples’ concerns with how to achieve their goal comfortably and ethically.
These four major constraints are conceptually separate dimensions that influence tactical choice or acceptability. If a means of goal pursuit fits or is suitable for a given situation; if people deem a means of goal achievement as socially legitimate for or approve of its use in a situation, then it is acceptable (Kellermann and Park 2001). As constraints increasingly tighten, the range of acceptable behaviors for goal pursuit narrows. For example, if appropriateness and efficiency constraints are high when trying to obtain a date, then only two behavioral tactics (i.e., ask, compliment) are acceptable for the goal; whereas with looser constraints, more behaviors are acceptable (Kellermann 2004). At times, constraints are orthogonal and function independently, whereas at other times they are correlated. For example, appropriateness is more important than efficiency in nonurgent situations when trying to unilaterally withdraw from conversation, but they are equally important in urgent situations (Kellermann and Park 2001). Regardless, constraints are distinct from goals and influence behavioral acceptability in goal pursuit.
4 The goal construct demonstrated
Having defined and differentiated the goal construct, this section demonstrates the significant roles that goals have played in interpersonal communication by highlighting three major research areas.
4.1 Goal activation
Goal activation deals with the processes by which goals gain accessibility to the point that they are cognitively operative and will potentially influence behavior. By definition, goals reside in memory, lying dormant until activation; or they are adopted and then stored in memory until activation (Fishbach and Ferguson 2007). Regardless of their origin and length of existence in memory, goals only become active under certain conditions. A fundamental distinction for goal activation deals with individuals’ level of awareness. Sometimes goals are consciously or explicitly set and pursued, whereas at other times goals are automatically or implicitly triggered (Moskowitz 2012). Conscious goal activation usually occurs because basic needs and general motives trigger goals (Austin and Vancouver 1996). For example, a need for survival will cause people to seek or maintain employment. A discrepancy between one’s actual and idealized selves can also lead to goal activation. Someone who is unhappy with being overweight, for example, can desire to cycle for exercise. Similarly, a lonely individual can seek a friend’s company. Automatic activation, alternatively, occurs when stimuli (e.g., context, person, article, object) trigger a goal. Such stimuli will be associated with the mental representation of a desired end-state, which when exposed to the stimulus results in goal activation if a certain threshold is met. Exposure to the stimulus does not depend on conscious awareness. Undetected stimuli can unconsciously trigger a goal. Subliminally showing names of relational partners to participants activated associated goals and subsequent pursuit (Shah 2003). Likewise, detected stimuli can unconsciously trigger a goal. Compared to a backpack for example, a briefcase in an office increased pursuit of competitive goals without participants’ awareness of the activated goal (Kay et al. 2004). Goal activation can occur at various levels of awareness, and stimuli responsible for triggering a goal can be perceived either implicitly or explicitly.
Explicitly activated goals can retain activation even when peoples’ conscious awareness of the goal dissipates. For example, implementation intentions are consciously generated plans that strongly associate a critical cue for the goal with the needed behavior to secure the goal (Bayer et al. 2009). Implementation intentions typically take the form of if-then statements such as, “If I encounter a generous friend, then I will ask for money,” which can serve a borrow-money goal. Compared to people with no goal, people with a goal who consciously generated implementation intentions generated more goal-directed behavior upon subliminal exposure to the stimulus in an ostensibly unrelated setting (Bayer et al. 2009). People who consciously activate a goal and plan a means to achieve the goal can unconsciously seek the goal when certain conditions are met.
Chronic accessibility can influence goal activation in at least two ways (Chartrand and Bargh 1996). First, implicit goal activation can occur for people with chronic goals. Chronic goals are those that maintain a relatively high level of activation across contexts because of frequent pursuit, personality or individual differences, cognitive schemata, and other factors. When confronted with situational triggers, for example, people pursued chronically accessible learning or performance goals (Kawada et al. 2004; also see Wilson 1990). Second, goals (chronic or otherwise) can become chronically linked to stimuli in one’s environment. When goals become chronically associated with stimuli, their activation is easily triggered via the stimuli. For example, goals can become chronically associated with relational partners to such an extent that activating mental representations of partners, even if they are absent, triggers the goals and goal-directed behavior (Fitzsimons and Bargh 2003).
Factors other than accessibility can activate goals. First, particular social contexts can activate goals. For example, first dates tend to trigger the goals of seek information, have a good time, determine romantic potential, develop friendship, and have sex (Mongeau, Jacobsen, and Donnerstein 2007). Features or circumstances of social contexts, such as time, clothing, physical appearance, and location, can also activate goals (Magliano et al. 2008). When alcohol was not available on a first date, a friendship-initiation goal was less important than when alcohol was available (Mongeau, Serewicz, and Therrien 2004). Further, men wanted to have sex on a first date more than women did when they were acquaintances or friends and the male initiated the date regardless of alcohol availability; yet, if the female initiated the date, they were friends, and alcohol was available, then both males and females desired sex. Social contexts and their features can activate goals and produce goal-directed behavior.
Second, tactics uttered by conversation partners can activate goals for message recipients. A single word, for example, can trigger a goal given strong associations (Aarts, Custers, and Veltkamp 2008). Because revealing a secret is strongly associated with an information-giving goal, hearing a secret can activate that goal, just as making a claim can activate an information-giving goal or thanking can activate a compliance-gaining goal given strong tactic-goal links (Palomares 2008). As a result, when exposed to utterances containing goal-related words, goals are activated and goal pursuit can commence. Subsequent goal-directed behavior, however, depends on the current situation. In initial conversations between a confederate and a participant, for example, the goal-directed verbal behavior of the confederate who efficiently sought to obtain personal information activated that information-seeking goal for the participant who subsequently also pursued the goal; this effect, however, did not occur for other information-seeking goals because the context was not conducive to goal pursuit (Palomares 2013).
Goal activation is a significant consideration for the goal construct because it accounts for how a goal gains excitation, influences cognitive processing, and ultimately affects communicative behavior (Berger 2002; Berger and Palomares 2011). Although recent research found conversation goals evolved over time (minute to minute) in response to interactants’ behavior and thoughts (Samp 2013), most research focuses on fixed points or global assessments, warranting research on how goals adapt to the flow of discourse.
4.2 Goals and interpersonal relationships
Communication is primarily goal directed (Berger 2002; Wilson 2002); thus, ignoring the goal construct in personal relationships research would be remiss. Because relational processes are related to goal processes, employing the goal construct to study relational communication can cultivate a better understanding of both relationships and goals. Unfortunately however, relationship research employs the goal construct infrequently (see Caughlin 2010). The following points out ways in which the goal construct has been successfully integrated into relationship research.
First, relational partners can affect goal pursuit given goals’ cognitive associations with the mental representations of specific relationships and abstract/general relational types (Fitzsimons and Bargh 2003). Goals, the means to achieve them, and various aspects of relationships are cognitively linked because goals are frequently sought in interactions with, in reference to, or with the assistance of relational partners (Shah, Kruglanski, and Friedman 2003). The frequent coactivation of goals and relational partners, for example, fosters associations. The activation of a mental representation of relational information can trigger associated goals, which can generate goal-directed behavior. For instance, when a representation of a friend was activated, participants were more likely to pursue the goal of helping than when the representation of a coworker was activated, even in the absence of the friend, because the help goal is more strongly connected to their friends than coworkers. Parallel effects were found for participants’ mother compared to a friend and a succeed-in-school goal (Fitzsimons and Bargh 2003). Activating a general relational type or category (e.g., parents) can trigger associated goals in ways similar to activating a specific relationship (e.g., someone’s particular parent; Shah 2003).
Relationships can also lead to ironic goal pursuit wherein an opposing goal is activated and pursued. This contradictory goal activation usually occurs because the goal is associated with a relational partner who has unpleasant or negative characteristics. For example, upon activating a controlling significant other who wanted participants to pursue a particular goal, participants rejected the goal and instead sought an opposing goal, especially when participants preferred autonomy (Chartrand, Dalton, and Fitzsimons 2007). In other words, a person’s controlling relational partner triggered a goal that directly opposed the partner’s wishes because the person viewed the partner as a threat to freedom.
Second, goal pursuit influences perceptions of relational partners. Social categorizations depend on goal instrumentality or the extent to which people facilitate goal achievement (Fitzsimons and Shah 2009). Partners who facilitate goal pursuit are qualitatively distinct from those who are irrelevant to or discourage goal pursuit. This difference in categorization influences relational perceptions beyond instrumentality. For instance, affinity toward relational partners depends on goal instrumentality. Participants with a goal to perform well academically liked their study friends more than their party friends, whereas the reverse was true when they wanted to socialize (Fitzsimons and Fischbach 2010). This effect is sensitive to goal progress because as participants successfully achieved their academic goal they ceased to prefer and feel closer to study friends, whereas poor goal progress increased closeness to study friends. Other goal effects on relational perceptions include satisfaction, conflict rumination, perceived resolvability of conflicts, and the likelihood of recurring conflicts (e.g., Hample et al. 2012; Merrill and Afifi 2012). Goal-directed behavior mediates many of these effects, wherein goals generate communicative behavior, which in turn affects relational perceptions.
One’s sense of time and what goals are most critical at different stages of life can influence the value placed on relationships. Young people usually perceive time as open-ended and the future as expansive; yet as people age, time is increasingly viewed as finite and the future as constrained (Carstensen 2006). These perspectives affect goal priorities with broad time horizons encouraging goals focused on expanding knowledge and experiences (e.g., gain education, begin career, attend concerts) and constrained horizons emphasizing emotions and psychological well-being (e.g., spend time with family, retire, avoid conflict, volunteer; Charles and Carstensen 2009). The importance people place on goals to engage with and focus on personal relationships is greater in older adulthood, and the significance placed on goals to achieve and prepare for adventurous pursuits is greater at younger ages.
Differences in goal priorities do not always vary by age, however. When the fragility of life was made salient, as in the case of global crises (e.g., 9/11 or a flu pandemic), young people prioritized emotional goals at a level similar to older individuals (Carstensen 2006). Likewise, older individuals’ priorities reflected gain-knowledge/experience goals when their time horizons were experimentally broadened (e.g., new medical advance increases longevity). Similar effects occurred without changing perceptions of death or age: Young people with impending major life changes (e.g., geographical move, graduation) prioritized emotional goals because of a change in time horizons. Perceptions of time affect goal priorities, which influence the significance of and how people engage in personal relationships.
Third, goal pursuit can affect relational quality. The extent to which people can attain goals in committed romantic relationships, for example, is a significant factor for relational quality. Throughout a marriage, people have multiple goals they wish to achieve and goal priorities evolve: Younger married adults prioritize personal growth goals to improve themselves; mature married couples focus on companionship goals to address needs for belonging; and middle-adulthood couples primarily want to secure goals that address the practical aspects of marriage like childrearing, with the other two sets of goals also active but to lesser extents (Li and Fung 2011). Because couples’ effectiveness at achieving goals is not constant, marital quality correspondingly fluctuates. As success for prioritized goals in marriage increased, relational satisfaction increased, for example.
Of course, relational partners’ communication patterns (e.g., openness, compromise) will influence goal success, which in turn can influence relational quality. This outcome is especially likely, for example, if partners work together to obtain mutually held goals or they find effective solutions to secure both partners’ unique and incompatible goals. However, relational partners who do not overcome goal conflict typically experience lower relational quality than those who effectively confront conflicting goals (Gere et al. 2011). Putting one’s goals and self-interests ahead of a partner’s goals creates a situation in which the partner may experience resentment and low levels of closeness; in contrast, prioritizing a partner’s goals over one’s own goals can demonstrate commitment and lead to beneficial outcomes for the relationship (Gere and Schimmack 2013).
A final example of how the goal construct has been effectively used to study relational communication is topic avoidance. A study of friends reported that the tactics employed when pursuing a topic-avoidance goal affected recipients’ perceptions of message quality and emotional reactions (Donovan-Kicken et al. in press). These effects depended on various conversational constraints. For example, a partner seeking to avoid a topic was rated as more competent when tactics addressed appropriateness concerns (e.g., “Thanks for asking, but let’s talk about something else”) than when tactics violated the constraint. Similarly, topic avoidance tactics that attend to appropriateness concerns caused recipients to experience less hurt than if tactics neglected appropriateness to focus on avoiders’ privacy (e.g., “That’s personal.”). In general, this and other research demonstrates a new trend to cast light on goal dynamics in personal relationships; however, an untested assumption is that recipients generate inferences about goal processes in their conversations with relational partners and these inferences lead to different relational perceptions, message quality, or other outcomes. Thus, the next section focuses on how people understand and make inferences of others’ goals.
4.3 Goal inference processes
Goal inferences occur when a person considers or understands someone’s objective. Answers to “What is he/she trying to do?” are typically goal inferences (Reeder 2009). Goal inferences are part of a larger set of constructs collectively referred to as goal detection or the processes by which people infer the goals that others pursue (Palomares 2008). Many of the same mechanisms responsible for goal activation play a role in goal inferences (Berger and Palomares 2011). The major symmetry between detection and activation is that goals are cognitively associated with various mentally represented constructs. When a stimulus triggers a construct, associated goals are activated (Chartrand and Bargh 1996). In the case of goal detection, this goal activation populates goal inferences – either explicitly with awareness or automatically outside consciousness (Hassin, Aarts, and Ferguson 2005; Kawada et al. 2004). In other words, the goals people generate to understand others’ behavior are a product of the goals activated in interactions (Palomares 2008).
For example, because social settings (e.g., classroom, store, park, plane) are strongly connected to goals, a setting can increase the accessibility of linked goals when interacting with someone in the particular setting, which will increase the likelihood that people infer the activated goals. A scenario set at a job fair, for example, led to frequent inferences of a linked provide-information goal compared to other goals, whereas scenarios within other social settings (e.g., cathedral) generated inferences of different goals linked to the settings (Palomares 2008). Further, initial interactions tend to produce inferences of get-to-know-you goals (Palomares 2009a). Social settings are not the only mentally represented constructs that foster particular goal inferences. Relational types (e.g., close friends) lead to inferences of some goals more than others (Fitzsimons and Bargh 2003; Palomares 2009b), just as specific situational cues or circumstances (e.g., nighttime) can generate inferences of certain goals (Magliano et al. 2008). Thus, a contextual factor (e.g., settings, cues, relational types, roles) can encourage an inference of a particular goal because of the strong connection between the two (Aarts 2012; Palomares 2011).
Another major determinant of goal inferences is goal-directed behavior (Dik and Aarts 2007). For example, a pursuer’s reveal tactic led to frequent inferences of a provide-information goal more than other goals because the goal and the mental representation of the tactic are strongly associated (Palomares 2008). Communicative behavior is often a strong indicator of people’s objectives because goals are the fundamental driver of such behavior. Yet, contextual factors can be a stronger influence on goal inferences than behavior. That behavior and contextual factors can activate goals and affect goal inferences is clear. Less obvious is determining when goal-directed behavior is a primary influence on goal inferences versus when tactic are less important than or perhaps even superfluous to contextual factors.
The integration principle of goal detection provides one explanation (Palomares 2009a, 2009b, 2011). The extent to which tactics predict goal inferences depends on the extent to which contextual factors activate goals. If the context activates an adequately low number of goals so that a goal inference can be generated, then tactics likely have little influence on goal inferences. For example, in highly routinized social settings (e.g., supermarket) goals can be inferred with very little or virtually no goal-directed communicative behavior (Berger 2000). If too many goals are activated or if no goals are activated by the context, then generating goal inferences based on contextual factors alone is problematic such that tactics and the goals they activate will be integrated into the goal inference process (Palomares 2008). For example, when a relational type did not activate the relational partner’s goal, tactics became integral and goal inferences were based on the goal(s) that tactics activated (Palomares 2009b).
Another aspect of the integration principle focuses on when the goals activated by the context are different than the goals activated by the tactics. Based on the integration principle, goals mutually activated by a contextual factor and a tactic are more likely inferred than goals activated by either a factor or a tactic alone because the joint activation increases goal accessibility. For example, when a job-fair scenario activated a provide-information goal and a reveal tactic suggested the same goal, inferences of the provide-information goal were highly frequent (Palomares 2008). However, if tactic-activated goals are inconsistent with context-activated goals, then tactics primarily influence goal inferences. For example, if someone sought a political-information-seeking goal in an initial interaction between fellow students, which is a context associated with other goals but not the political goal, then pursuer’s communicative behavior was a strong determinant of goal inferences (Palomares 2009a). Similar effects were demonstrated between close friends (Palomares 2009b). The integration principle is an effective explanation for how contextual factors in relation to communicative behavior affect goal inferences (Palomares 2011).
Goal contagion – a perceiver’s adoption of a goal that another person is seeking – is a related process. Goal contagion occurs during negotiations (Liu 2011), in initial interactions (Palomares 2013), when watching videos of others’ competing (Loersch et al. 2008), when reading scenarios of people trying to earn money or woo a potential mate (Aarts, Gollwitzer, and Hassin 2004), and in other settings (e.g., Bouquet et al. 2011). Goal contagion also seems to occur between parents and their school-age children and between teachers and their students; the contagious goals are how students approach school and learning (Friedel et al. 2007). Students with parents and teachers who prioritized learning goals to acquire knowledge reported pursuing similar goals, whereas those students with parents and teachers who valued performance goals to outperform peers were also likely to seek those objectives; goals to learn promote success more than do goals to perform. Whatever the goal, the general contagion process is that a stimulus, which is usually someone else’s goal-directed behavior, activates a goal for a perceiver. This activation leads to an accurate goal inference for the perceiver who subsequently pursues the same goal if certain conditions are met, such as the situation is conducive to goal pursuit (Palomares 2013).
Goal inferences and contagion demonstrate how the goal construct is central to interpersonal communication. In fact, goal inferences are consequential. In initial interactions between peers, for example, people who accurately inferred a partner’s goal judged the partner higher in communication competence than those who were relatively inaccurate (Palomares 2009a). Related research confirmed that individuals’ inference accuracy predicted increased ratings of partners’ communication competence but only for highly confident inferences because uncertainty allowed for alternative influences on competence judgments (Palomares 2011).
5 Conclusion
Goals are mental representations of desired end-states that are distinct from behavior and constraints. Whereas much is known about goals, much more is yet to be known. Three examples close the chapter. First, goal inference processes are undeniable; yet, whether people infer others’ constraints is unknown. People seem to indicate implicit understandings of constraints (e.g., “Why are you being extra nice?”), but research has not examined if people generate inferences for constraints. Given the distinctions between goals and constraints, goal inference processes might be different than possible processes of inferring constraints.
A second yet-to-be-studied aspect is the distinction between goals primarily pursued in conversations (e.g., loan money) versus goals that do not require social interaction (e.g., save money). Interpersonal scholars usually and justifiably focus on interaction goals, whereas other scholars do not necessarily emphasize conversation. Arguably, interaction goals are just a specific manifestation of goals, and what we know about one is applicable to the other; research is consistent (Berger and Palomares 2011; Palomares 2013). However, directly comparing interaction goals with other goals might be fruitful. In fact, because goal taxonomies are rare (Chulef, Read, and Walsh 2001), constructing organized lists of goals pursued with and without interaction would be valuable, especially at a level of detail finer than broad swaths (Clark and Delia 1979).
Finally, research can continue to examine how goals function in personal relationships. Goal tendencies are of particular interest for relational communication research because most isolated instances of goal pursuit or failure are unlikely consequential for a long-term relationship. Yet, habitually pursuing certain goals (e.g., avoiding a topic, spending time together) are likely greater influences and have more entrenched consequences. The inferences and associated attributions for partners and their goals is likely significant as well (cf., Lakey and Canary 2002).
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