• Corpus ID: 45043064

Characteristics of Personal Strivings and Their Relationship with Life Satisfaction

@inproceedings{Kknyei2008CharacteristicsOP,
  title={Characteristics of Personal Strivings and Their Relationship with Life Satisfaction},
  author={Gy{\"o}ngyi K{\"o}k{\"o}nyei and Melinda Reinhardt and P{\'e}ter Pajkossy and B. Kiss and Zsolt Demetrovics},
  year={2008}
}

• G. Kökönyei, M. Reinhardt, +2 authors Z. Demetrovics
• Published 1 December 2008
• Psychology

ABSTRACT This study examined the applicability of broader thematic categories for coding personal strivings, and tested the relationship between both dimensions and contents of personal goals and life satisfaction. We also applied the psychosocial theory of Erikson (1963) to evaluate personal goals. These issues were explored on a Hungarian youth sample of 48 subjects (mean age 23.4). Participants generated 534 personal strivings and rated them along certain dimensions of Strivings Assessment Scales (Emmons, 1986), and two life satisfaction measures were used. Goals were grouped into broader thematic categories. For goal contents, coding system was used successfully. There were significant differences between avoidant and approach goals, between intrapersonal and interpersonal, and Eriksonian and non-Eriksonian goals on some strivings dimensions. The proportion of generativity strivings had positive, while the proportion of uncoded strivings (reflecting goals about daily routine) had negative association with life satisfaction. Our findings underscore the importance of using qualitative and quantitative mix method in analysing personal strivings. KEYWORDS: personal strivings, life satisfaction, Erikson's theory, generativity. INTRODUCTION Personal goals During the 1980's, research on motivation in personality psychology focused on the context of everyday life and experience, and studies emerged with an aim to reveal idiographic personal goals (King & Emmons, 2000), such as current concerns (Klinger, 1977), personal projects (Little, 1983), life-tasks (Cantor, 1990), personal strivings (Emmons, 1986), possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1984), future goals (Nurmi, 1989), or developmental task (Heckhausen, 1999). Goals are cognitive representations of desired states construed as either outcomes, events, or processes (Austin & Vancouver, 1996; Elliot, 2006; Fishbach & Ferguson, 2007), working as a proximal determinant of behavior (Elliot, 2006). Therefore, goals have a mediating function between specific behaviours and motivational dispositions of behaviors (Elliot, 2006; Elliot & Sheldon, 1997). On the basis of this special role, they are regarded as standards or reference points playing an important role in guiding action (Carver & Scheier, 1982; Powers, 1973). Personal strivings serve as a motivational organizing principle and have a very important role in self-regulation. After setting the goals, successful accomplishment may depend on implementation plans (Gollwitzer, 1999). Implementation intentions are subordinate to goals and specify possible ways of goal attainment. Goal implementations as self-regulation strategies define when, where and how a goal can be reached, so they define specific responses to certain situations (Gollwitzer, 1999). If there are no implementation plans to accomplish a goal, the expectable success is minimal. Goals reflect choices. Chosen goals reflect meaning making process of an individual, reflecting themes, activities, outcomes, processes that give meaning to life (Emmons, 2005). However, not all goals provide meaning or contribute to meaningful life. There are goals which are important for daily life, though they do not contribute to the sense that life is meaningful. We may hypothesize that higher proportion of these trivial goals in one's goal-system indicates lower well-being of the individual. Personal goals are not stable; they are expected to change throughout the developmental phases of an individual. A new developmental phase has new tasks, challenges and role constraints, thus personal goals must be restructured to help adjustment. In a prospective study of Salmela-Aro, Aunola, and Nurmi (2007) university students were followed through a 10-year period. During this period strivings related to education, friends and travelling were replaced by strivings related to work, family, and health. Young adulthood is a period when young people have to face new tasks. …