Planfulness: A Process-Focused Construct of Individual Differences in Goal Achievement

Abstract

Goal pursuit outcomes are partly caused by the way people think about goals. Specific patterns of thought can increase the likelihood of goal achievement, such as generating heuristics to automate goalrelated decision making, orienting present-moment attention to the future to increase the salience of a distal goal, and contrasting the anticipated enjoyment of an achieved goal with the progress required to complete it. However, it is unknown whether there are stable individual differences in the tendency to deploy particular meta-cognitions during goal pursuit. A tool to assess such differences would help to identify and intervene on personal barriers to goal progress. Here, we define a new construct within the conscientiousness domain-planfulness-that captures a person's proclivity to adopt efficient goal-related cognition in pursuit of their goals. We hypothesize that planfulness consists of three interrelated facets representing distinct mental processes, temporal orientation (TO), cognitive strategies (CS), and mental flexibility (MF), and that planfulness predicts goal achievement on an individual basis. We developed a 30-item Planfulness Scale with three subscales tested and refined across 5 studies and 10 samples (total unique N = 4,318) using iterative exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis on data collected from both student and on-line samples. The Planfulness Scale demonstrated both convergent and discriminant validity when compared to other measurements, and scale scores predicted goal progress in a longitudinal study. We find that planfulness is a useful new construct for self-regulation research, and the 30-item Planfulness Scale to be a valid and reliable measurement of real-world goal achievement.

The Support for Economic Inequality Scale: Development and adjudication

“…As mentioned previously, past work has demonstrated that attempting to control for other variables using linear regressions can result in inflated Type I errors [56]. Thus, in order to accurately assess whether the SEIS is distinct from the conceptually related constructs, we utilized a structural equation modeling approach [57].…”

“…Therefore, we followed the structural equation modeling procedures laid out by Westfall and Yarkoni [56] in order to explore whether the SEIS is separable from these related psychological constructs. If the SEIS is indeed distinct from each of the conceptually related measures listed above, we would expect that the SEIS explains more of the latent variance in donation amount relative to the five other predictors [57].…”

Predicting Exercise With a Personality Facet: Planfulness and Goal Achievement

“…Planfulness is a facet of conscientiousness that describes the degree to which individuals engage in goal-promoting cognition and behavior (Ludwig, Srivastava, & Berkman, 2018). Its hypothesized three-facet structure derives from the evidence in the experimental-psychology literature on processes that, when manipulated, are causally linked to goal attainment.…”

“…The Planfulness Scale is a 30-item measure that assesses individual differences in planfulness (Ludwig et al, 2018). In contrast to other measures of conscientiousness facets, items on the Planfulness Scale reflect psychological processes validated in experimental research rather than lexical development.…”

Support for Economic Inequality Scale: Development and Adjudication

“…As mentioned previously, past work has demonstrated that attempting to control for other variables using linear regressions can result in inflated Type I errors [56]. Thus, in order to accurately assess whether the SEIS is distinct from the conceptually related constructs, we utilized a structural equation modeling approach [57]. Separability of constructs.…”