Commentary: processes of disengagement – letting go from the wanted future, the missed-out past, and coping with inevitable endings

Oettingen, Gabriele; Gollwitzer, Peter M.

doi:10.1007/s11031-022-09986-7

Cited by 5 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Research into whether MCII encourages accommodative goal striving through goal adjustment has been scarce. As an independent intervention, the mental contrasting component of MCII has an intuitive appeal for promoting accommodative goal striving (Oettingen & Gollwitzer, 2022), due to the purported abilities of mental contrasting to modulate goal commitment based on attainability (Kappes et al, 2013). Implementation intentions can also reduce goal commitment when the costs of goal striving are excessive (Legrand et al, 2017; Riddell et al, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Motives and mental contrasting with implementation intentions predict progress and management of goals in parents.

Riddell¹,

Sedikides²,

Gucciardi³

et al. 2023

Motivation Science

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Parents must rapidly adapt goals from various aspects of their lives to accommodate the demands of the early stages of parenthood. According to the self-concordance model, having autonomous goal motives (based on enjoyment or personal goal value) should foster effective self-regulation (e.g., coping strategies), better goal management, and increase the likelihood of goal attainment, compared to controlled motives (goals driven by demands/pressures). Metacognitive techniques, such as mental contrasting with implementation intentions (MCII), can also facilitate goal regulation. We used experience sampling over 1 month to study goal striving in parents (N = 103). We investigated how motives and spontaneously occurring features of MCII (i.e., mental imagery, reflection on obstacles, implementation intention planning) predict three key self-regulatory coping strategies: exerting effort, disengaging, and modifying/adjusting goals to make them attainable. We examined whether these strategies influenced relations between motives and goal progress, intergoal facilitation, and interference between parenting/competing life goals. Autonomous motives and MCII-like features were positively associated with effort coping, which in turn was related to goal progress and facilitation. Additionally, in individuals with high controlled motives, MCII-like features positively predicted increased adjustment of competing life goals. Goal adjustment positively predicted differences in intergoal facilitation. Results indicate that exerting effort and adjusting goals are effective strategies for attaining and managing multiple goals. Both goal motives and MCII-like features are associated with the use of these strategies. The findings suggest that parents will benefit from selecting autonomously motivated goals and using MCII-like features to manage parenting and other competing life goals.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Motives and mental contrasting with implementation intentions predict progress and management of goals in parents.

Riddell¹,

Sedikides²,

Gucciardi³

et al. 2023

Motivation Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, level implies some kind of hierarchy and can also be confused with a dual perspective of the mind-body problem, which we do not want to evoke here. Oettingen & Gollwitzer (2022) use the term "components". This term refers to parts or elements of a larger whole and implies to a larger degree that all are actually necessary, mutually exclusive, and exhaustive to speak of disengagement.…”

Section: Conceptualizations Of Goal Disengagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Researchers have been approaching the goal concept from many different theoretical angles and with different measures and paradigms. These approaches have inspired a lot of research on how to select goals (e.g., Oettingen et al, 2001; Sheldon, 2014), on how to set and formulate goals (e.g., Locke & Latham 1990), on the relation of means and goals (e.g., Kruglanski et al, 2002), and on how to stick to one's goals (e.g., Gollwitzer 1999), to name but a few.The process from setting a goal to achieving it has been famously described in the Rubicon Model of action phases (Heckhausen & Gollwitzer, 1987), which focuses on the two fundamentally different processes (Lewin, 1926) The goal concept is central to motivation psychology (e.g., Gollwitzer 2018) as motivation orients, energizes, and selects behavior towards some type of goal or goal state -a notion that many motivation researchers share (e.g., Heck-…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, the aim of this special issue is to assemble diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to display the status quo of current research and identify future avenues for this rather neglected research topic. Moreover, we have invited several established goal researchers to comment on the empirical articles of this special issue and thereby to extend the scope of the considered theories (Heckhausen & Wrosch, 2022;Oettingen & Gollwitzer, 2022). In this introductory paper, we will first outline different conceptualizations of goal disengagement.…”

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confidence: 99%

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

Kappes

Schattke

2022

Motiv Emot

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While research on tenacious goal pursuit and persistence has evoked a myriad of research efforts, research on goal disengagement has rather been neglected and has been focusing mainly on positive consequences of individual differences in goal disengagement capacities. In recent years, however, research on goal disengagement has seen an upsurge in studies, specifically addressing the conceptualization of goal disengagement, the processes involved, and factors facilitating or undermining it. However, many questions remain unanswered or only partly answered providing numerous opportunities for further investigation.With this special issue of Motivation and Emotion, we aim to stimulate such progress in research on goal disengagement. To this end, this special issue includes empirical studies with cross-sectional, prospective, longitudinal, and experimental designs with a wide range of personal and experimentally induced goals as well as invited commentaries from scholars across different psychological sub disciplines.In this introductory essay, we provide a brief review of the current state of goal disengagement research. We also provide an overview about the contributions to this special issue with reflections related to the current state of research and areas where further advancement in conceptualization and empirical studies is needed.

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Using mental contrasting to promote flow experiences at work: A just-in-time adaptive intervention

Bartholomeyczik,

Knierim,

Weinhardt

et al. 2024

Computers in Human Behavior Reports

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Commentary: processes of disengagement – letting go from the wanted future, the missed-out past, and coping with inevitable endings

Cited by 5 publications

References 29 publications

Motives and mental contrasting with implementation intentions predict progress and management of goals in parents.

Motives and mental contrasting with implementation intentions predict progress and management of goals in parents.

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

Using mental contrasting to promote flow experiences at work: A just-in-time adaptive intervention

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