Self-concordant goals breed goal-optimism and thus well-being
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Self-concordant goals breed goal-optimism and thus well-being Kennon Sheldon 1,2 & Tamara Gordeeva 2,3 & Oleg Sychev 4 & Evgeny Osin 2 & Liudmila Titova 1,5 Accepted: 28 October 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Self-concordant goals are goals which represent a people’s enduring interests and self-defining values (Sheldon, 2002). People pursuing more self-concordant goals evidence higher subjective well-being, as shown in participants from both Western and nonWestern cultures (Sheldon et al., 2004). In a different literature, attributional style research has found that tendencies to provide optimistic explanations of life events also predict well-being. We hypothesized that people pursuing self-concordant goals would make more optimistic attributions about goal-specific outcomes, and that this tendency would help explain the link between selfconcordance and well-being. Structural equation and multiple group modelling of 253 American and 230 Russian university students found support for these hypotheses. Self-concordance primarily predicted optimism following positive outcomes (that they will recur), not following negative outcomes (that they will end), and also, the mediational pattern was slightly different in the Russian than in the American sample. The results suggest that when people choose life-goals that fit their interests and values, they derive resources including the ability to interpret positive goal-outcomes in an optimistic way. This helps to explain why pursuing such goals makes them happy. Keywords Self-concordant goals . Optimistic attributions . Well-being . Optimism
According to the Self-Concordance Model of optimal goalstriving (SCM; Sheldon & Elliot, 1999; Sheldon, 2014), personal goal setting is a difficult skill. Should we pursue love, or money? A career as a scientist, or as an artist? A relationship with person X, or person Y? In this view life is a blank canvas, upon which we paint via our attempts to achieve the broad life goals that we select. But what if we choose goals that do not suit and express us, and/or do not allow our true potentials to be developed? Unfortunately, people can and do pursue unfulfilling goals for years or even decades, seemingly unaware of alternative avenues of striving which might fit them better. In contrast, selecting goals that directly express our deep interests, values, and potentials can yield a lifetime of benefits. Early SCM research (Sheldon & Elliot, 1999; Sheldon & Kasser, 1998) operationalized goal self-concordance using
* Kennon Sheldon [email protected] 1
University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA
2
Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
3
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
4
Altai State University for Humanities, Barnaul, Altai Krai, Russia
5
Elon University, Elon, NC 27244, USA
Self-Determination Theory’s relative autonomy continuum (Ryan & Connell, 1989; Sheldon, 2014), assuming that goals that fit well with underlying personality are characterized by feeli
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