What motivates a person to go out and do the things that they do? This is a deceptively simple question that has kept scientists and philosophers busy for thousands of years. We discuss the role of activity and inactivity in goals.
What motivates a person to go out and do the things that they do? This is a deceptively simple question that has kept scientists and philosophers busy for thousands of years. If I vote for Politician A in a local election, was I motivated by my strong commitment to political participation? Was I motivated by a preference for Party X over Party Y? Or could I simply have been generally motivated to “do something” on Election Day? With the birth of Psychology in the late 1800s, many scientists turned a careful eye to the topic of what motivates people to do what they do. After all, knowing why people act in certain ways could allow us to predict what they will do in the future, positioning us to intervene and potentially change that behavior if necessary. To sum up a great deal of important research in a single sentence, psychologists typically accept that specific attitudes, intentions, and goals are the best predictors of related behavior. In other words, the best way to predict if I will vote for Politician A is to measure my attitudes, intentions, and goals related to “voting for Politician A,” rather than the broader targets of “voting” or “Politician A.” After all, my attitude toward “voting” in general may be somewhat moderate, and my attitude toward “Politician A” may be neutral. However, if I greatly dislike Politician B, then my attitude and intention to “vote for Politician A” may be very strong.
Although this focus on specific attitudes, intentions, and goals has proven to be extremely useful, it has diverted attention away from broad motivational constructs that may influence more than one behavioral domain. Specifically, recent work has shown that behavior can be guided by general goals to be active or inactive. Goals are motivational end states, and can also be thought of as outcomes, targets, or objectives that people set and then pursue through any number of different paths. For example, a goal to be healthy could motivate someone to diet or exercise. Either one (or both) of these behaviors is a reasonable and useful way to achieve the objective of becoming healthier. Recent work from our lab has demonstrated that goals are not necessarily limited to specific behavioral domains (e.g., “health”) but can relate to general aspects of behavior (e.g., activity level). When people hold this type of general goal (e.g., the goal to be active), it can influence any and all subsequent behaviors, no matter how unrelated these behaviors might be.
What Are General Action and Inaction Goals?
Before addressing some of the origins and consequences of general action and inaction goals, it is important to clarify what exactly they are and are not. General goals for action and inaction regulate how people pursue overall levels of active or inactive behavior, and they are not specific to any particular behavioral domain (Albarracin et al., 2008; Albarracin, Leeper, & Wang, 2009; Gendolla & Silvestrini, in press; Laran, 2009). General action/inaction goals can be triggered and studied within the lab through priming. Priming involves using pictures, words, or behaviors to ‘activate’ certain concepts in people’s minds. For example, people can be primed with concepts linked to general action or inaction by subliminally being exposed to words like ‘active’ or ‘rest.’ When people are primed with concepts that are linked to general action or general inaction with no reference to any specific behavioral target, they still demonstrate significant differences on subsequent tasks that assess relative levels of activity. For example, after participants in one study were primed with action or inaction using a word completion task (e.g. ‘Fill in the missing letter(s): ac_ive’) and then given the option to be active (drawing on a piece of paper) or inactive (resting with eyes closed), 62% of the action-primed participants chose to draw (compared with 36% of inaction-primed participants) (Albarracin et al., 2008). This effect is not only limited to this one particular behavior. General action/inaction goals have also been shown to impact eating; when subjects were exposed to exercise messages or subliminally primed with words related to action, they ate more kilocalories than control participants (Albarracin et al., 2008; Albarracin, Leeper, & Wang, 2009). General action/inaction goals also impact overall cognitive abilities – when participants in a study were primed with action or inaction and then asked to perform a variety of cognitive tasks, those who were primed with action answered significantly more questions about a reading comprehension passage correctly than the inaction-primed participants (58% vs. 45%). In another study, action-primed participants solved significantly more SAT-style verbal and math problems (Albarracin et al., 2008). All of these priming studies demonstrate that even when these general goals are temporarily manipulated, they can still have profound impact on behavior across different domains.
It is important to note the distinction between the activation of general action/inaction goals versus general action/inaction concepts. Action or inaction concepts become activated as a direct result of priming, meaning that the idea of ‘activity’ (or ‘inactivity’) has been triggered in one’s mind. Any impact that mere concept activation has on behavior is a direct effect of the mere motor representations linked to the concept. For example, the notion of rest may produce relaxation, even in the absence of any particular goal or desire to rest. Alternatively, priming an action concept may lead to activation of an action goal that is ultimately responsible for the effects on overt behavior. Instead of just being more active as a result of having ideas about action triggered in your mind, you engage in behavior to satisfy the action “goal” stimulated by the action concept. General action and inaction goals display typical goal properties, such as stimulating behavior until the goal is met. This means that the effects of the goals become stronger (a) when participants are prevented from immediately pursuing them, (b) when there are no goal-relevant behaviors available that serve to meet the goal, and (c) when incompatible goals are inhibited (Albarracin et al., 2008; Laran, 2009). It is crucial to note that this theory stresses that action and inaction can truly be goals, not just tendencies, preferences, or automatic associations (e.g., someone seeing the word ‘active’ and automatically becoming more active). Environmental cues (e.g., primes), norms, and demands can prompt the formation of an activity or inactivity goal, which subsequently impacts the selection, evaluation, and performance of future behavior.
Immediate behaviors associated with active goal pursuit also may or may not seem congruent with the goal itself despite being congruent in the long run. When individuals have goals to be active (or inactive), their objective is to increase (or decrease) overall behavioral and cognitive output. Most of the time, achieving an action (inaction) goal will entail choosing behaviors that are active (or inactive). However, goal achievement may require choosing behaviors that effectively pursue the goal in the long run, even if they seem to be immediately incongruent with the goal. For example, someone with a goal for action may decide to take a quick nap (the ultimate inactive behavior) right now because being well-rested will allow that individual to be even more active later in the day. Alternatively, someone with a goal for inaction may decide to quickly rush through any remaining work right now, so that the rest of the day can be spent relaxing (e.g., see Study 6 in Albarracin et al., 2008). In the end, because these are goals, any behaviors that are chosen in the interest of goal fulfillment will serve overall endstates, rather than motivate people to be immediately active or inactive.
Distinction between ‘Action’ and ‘Effort’
Energization is a term that is used to describe how the body responds when faced with the difficulties of goal pursuit. Research in this area is generally concerned with how activity in the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), such as heart rate, responds to task-related requirements to produce behavioral effort (Brehm & Self, 1989). Recent work has demonstrated that energization can be the direct result of processing environmental cues that promote goals (Gendolla & Silvestrini, in press). Specifically, participants subliminally primed with general action words showed increased energization, whereas participants primed with general inaction words showed decreased energization. This suggests that general action goals may promote behavior by increasing physiological resources that promote effortful behavior.
However, action and effort are not equivalent. This point is clearest when considering behavioral inhibition, a concept that is typically conceptualized as behavioral inaction yet requires a great deal of energy, effort, and resources for successful execution (Gailliot et al., 2007). Although people naturally vary in the degree to which they consider specific behaviors to be active (McCulloch, Hong, Li, & Albarracin, 2010), they typically view ‘inhibition’ words (e.g. abstain, restrain) as inherently more active than pure ‘inaction’ words (e.g. lazy, idle). Therefore, future work should explore how action and inaction goals interact with effort to ultimately produce active behavior, inactive behavior, or behavioral inhibition.
The Origins and Resources of General Action and Inaction Goals
Regional/Cultural Differences
There are several factors that can influence the formation of a general goal for action or inaction. Although these goals can be activated and studied within the lab, people can also be chronically predisposed to adopt action or inaction goals in their everyday lives. As an example, there are overall regional- and individual-level variations in general activity levels. Whereas Latin American and Mediterranean geographical regions endorse afternoon naps as a cultural norm (Masa et al., 2006), the United States has experienced a decrease in average sleep hours and a possible increase in clinical levels of hyperactivity (for a review, see Albarracin et al., 2008). Religious affiliation is one cultural factor that may influence the origins of action/inaction goals. A number of religious doctrines (such as Protestantism) moralize action and socialize their members to prefer active, productive behaviors (Sanchez-Burks, 2002; Weber, 1904/1992). Conversely, many Eastern religions (such as Buddhism or Taoism) strongly value meditation and other behaviorally inactive practices. This suggests that people’s general levels of action and inaction may be, in some part, a byproduct of where they were raised, where they currently live, and the value system under which they grew up.
Sure enough, empirical data supports the claim that general action and inaction goals are influenced by cultural and regional factors such as religion and geographic location. In a study that examined college students’ attitudes towards action and inaction in nine different countries, endorsement of Christian religious beliefs was related to more positive general attitudes towards action (vs. inaction), whereas higher endorsement of Buddhist beliefs was positively correlated with general attitudes towards inaction (vs. action) (Li & Albarracin, unpublished data). To examine regional variation in action/inaction goals, Noguchi and colleagues (in press) analyzed archival data. The team used a variety of different “action-related” outcome variables to create “action-tendency indices” for various countries and U.S. states. For the United States study, the researchers looked at four key variables: the percentage of people in each state who exercised moderately 5+ days per week (or vigorously 3+ days per week) in the past month, the percentage of people in each state with diabetes, the percentage of obese people in each state, and the average amount of stimulant use throughout each state. States that had higher percentages of people who exercised and/or used stimulants (and lower percentages of diabetic or obese people) would have higher scores on the “action-tendency” index, even though the action being measured could either be considered good (exercise) or bad (stimulant use). The states (plus Washington D.C.) were then ranked from 1 to 51, with states that had higher “action-tendency” indices (such as Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, Nevada, and Vermont) at the top, and states with lower “action-tendency” indices (such as Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Mississippi) at the bottom. When the researchers correlated these indices with various measures of political participation and controlled for political interest, they found that states with higher “action tendencies” also demonstrated higher rates of voter turnout, campaigning, working for a political party, wearing campaign buttons/stickers/signs, political donations, and letter-writing to government officials. This suggests that activity in any given domain (such as stimulant use or exercise) is related to one’s likelihood of participating actively in a totally different arena, such as politics. When the same team of researchers conducted a similar study examining these variables in different countries across the world, the result was the same. They created another “action-tendency” index, this time involving measures of impulsivity, pace (based on average walking speed, postal speed, and clock accuracy), stimulant use, newspaper/movie production, and phone/internet prevalence, and ranked 69 different countries based on these index scores. Countries at the top of the list (such as Australia, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and New Zealand) had higher voter turnout and higher percentages of citizens who signed petitions, joined boycotts, attended lawful demonstrations, and/or joined unofficial strikes than countries at the bottom of the list (such as Kyrgyzstan, Uganda, Vietnam, and Bangladesh). It may be that general cultural norms dictate whether members are encouraged to take action in response to events or be passive and accommodating (Cohen & Leung, 2011). Cultures that prescribe action at the expense of inaction should have members that are more likely to pursue action goals more frequently and intensely than inaction goals. This may lead to healthy and desirable forms of action, such as exercise and political participation, but might also lead to undesirable, unexpected behaviors, such as binge eating or drug abuse.
Individual Differences
There are several other resources and variables that may impact whether people adopt general action or inaction goals. One individual-level factor is a person’s baseline level of impulsivity. Approximately 40 to 60% of the variance in impulsive traits is inherited (Bouchard, 1994), suggesting that impulsivity is genetic. Highly impulsive individuals tend to exhibit greater activity across domains (e.g. movement, speech) and will frequently switch between tasks, even before the focal task is completed. Therefore, highly impulsive individuals are more prone to adopt activity goals, since they are naturally predisposed to being active all of the time. Affect or mood is also a crucial resource that impacts general goal pursuit. In one study, when subjects were primed with action and then given a decision-making task, their post-decision affect was most positive when they received complex information (Laran, 2009). Conversely, when primed with inaction, participants felt most positive when they received simple information. Most importantly, the participants’ levels of positive affect predicted future intentions to engage in the described behaviors. Basically, it seems that positive affect can motivate people to pursue certain goals (e.g., Aarts, Custers, & Holland, 2007) or be more generally active, which could impact adoption of general action or inaction goals. Another potential resource is a person’s level of power. Higher levels of power have been linked to general action tendencies (Anderson & Galinsky, 2006; Galinsky, Gruenfeld, & Magee, 2003), whereas powerlessness has been linked to inhibited speech, emotional inexpressiveness, and lowered expression of ideas (Keltner et al., 1998; Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003). Capital resources (such as wealth or lack thereof) may also impact individual goal setting by allowing an individual to access certain restricted behavioral opportunities or preventing an individual from resting (if he/she must work long hours to maintain a given salary). Finally, physical space can impact activity levels in various ways. Living in a city where there are more behavioral opportunities than there are in the country may provide more options when it comes to setting active goals. However, cramped living quarters may also lead individuals to feel more restricted, which could alternatively constrain active physical or cognitive behavior.
Implications of General Action and Inaction Goals
Having a general motivation for action or inaction can impact important and disparate types of behavior. One culturally salient example, as mentioned earlier, is political participation. In addition to the regional-level differences in political participation discussed above, participants who were experimentally primed with action reported stronger intentions to vote in an upcoming election and volunteer to lobby for a proposed university policy (Noguchi, Albarracin, & Handley, in press). Also, the effect of action priming via an exercise campaign had a shockingly undesirable effect on the amount of food that participants consumed after seeing the message (Albarracin et al., 2009). This effect could have dramatic and far-reaching consequences for everyday life. If policymakers wish to improve the health of their constituents, vaguely promoting “action” or “exercise” may not be the best tactic. Rather, they should suggest which particular exercise behaviors are desirable and ensure that ‘action’ is interpreted in the specific, desired way. Politicians who want to encourage certain constituencies to vote would also benefit from considering this research when brainstorming ways to increase voter turnout.
It is also interesting to consider our research in light of the recent In-Mind article “Successful dieting in tempting environments: Mission impossible?” (van Koningsbruggen, Stroebe, & Aarts, 2010). This article suggests that successful and unsuccessful dieters differ in the goals that are activated in response to tempting environments; for unsuccessful dieters, temptation activates an enjoyment goal, whereas for successful ones, temptation is strongly linked to activation of the diet goal. The authors go on to suggest that dieters can be more successful if they work to increase diet goal accessibility, positing that the key to success is the formation of implementation intentions and frequent reminders of the diet goal in tempting situations. This work has some clear parallels with our concept of general action/inaction goals. As previously discussed, Albarracin and colleagues (2009) found that immediately after exposure to either exercise messages or subliminal “action” words, participants consume a greater amount of calories, which suggests that priming an “action goal” leads to more activity even when that activity counteracts the more specific goal of weight loss. Although purely conjectural, it is possible that an alternative explanation for van Koningsbruggen and colleagues’ findings lies in the action/inaction domain; while the enjoyment of eating is an action, dieting is behavioral inaction. Therefore, it is possible that the difference between successful and unsuccessful dieters lies not in the specific activation of “enjoyment” vs. “diet” goals, but rather the general activation of “activity” or “inactivity” goals in response to temptation. If this is the case, than activating “inactivity” may also help dieters be more successful in the quest to battle temptation and restrict calorie consumption. Further clarification of these issues will be an important future direction of research in this area.
Conclusion
In the past, most of the research dealing with goals and motivation has addressed specific ways in which certain attitudes, intentions, and goals impact directly relevant behaviors. However, recent research demonstrates that it is crucial to focus on how general goals to “be active” or “be inactive” may impact people’s behavior across domains. As previously mentioned, there is a strong possibility that many current exercise campaigns could subconsciously motivate people to overeat, engage in drug use, or participate in active, risky behavior. As this is still a burgeoning line of research, there are many more connections that still need to be examined, such as the relations between action/inaction goals and power, genetic/cultural precursors, specific goal pursuit, mindsets, and the influence of material resources on behavior. It is also interesting to consider the previously discussed religious, cultural, and regional-level differences, and how these are rich environmental goal sources. Future research should flesh out these connections to fully understand how broad, general-domain goals can influence specific human motivation and behavior.
References
Aarts, H., Custers, R., & Holland, R. W. (2007). The nonconscious cessation of goal pursuit: When goals and negative affect are coactivated. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 165-178.
Albarracin, D., Handley, I., Noguchi, K., McCulloch, K., Li, H., Leeper, J., Brown, R., Earl, A. & Hart, W. (2008). Increasing and decreasing motor and cognitive output: A model of general action and inaction goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 510-523.
Albarracin, D., Leeper, J., & Wang, W. (2009). Immediate increases in eating following exercise promotion messages. Obesity, 17, 1451-1452.
Anderson, C. A., & Galinsky, A. D. (2006). Power, optimism, and the proclivity for risk.
European Journal of Social Psychology, 36, 511-536.
Bouchard, T. L. Jr. (1994). Genes, environment and personality. Science, 264, 1700-1701.
Brehm, J. W. & Self, E. A. (1989). The intensity of motivation. Annual Review of Psychology,
40, 109-131.
Cohen, D. & Leung, A. K. (2011). Violence and character: A CuPS (culture x person x situation) perspective. In P. R. Shaver & M. Mikulincer (Eds.), Human aggression and violence: Causes, manifestations, and consequences (pp. 187-200). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Förster, J., Liberman, N., & Higgins, E.T. (2005). Accessibility from active and fulfilled goals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 220-239.
Gailliot, M.T., Baumeister, R.F., DeWall, C.N., Maner, J.K., Plant, E.A., Tice, D.M., Brewer, L.E., & Schmeichel, B.J. (2007). Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source: Willpower is more than a metaphor. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 325-336.
Galinsky, A.D, Gruenfeld, D.H. & Magee, J.C. (2003). From power to action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 453-466.
Gendolla, G.H.E., & Silvestrini, N. (in press). The implicit “go”: masked action cues directly
mobilize mental effort. Psychological Science.
Keltner, D., Gruenfeld, D. H, & Anderson, C. (2003). Power, approach, and inhibition. . Psychological Review, 110, 265-284.
Keltner, D., Young, R.C., Heerey, E.A., Oemig, C., & Monarch, N.D. (1998). Teasing in
hierarchical and intimate relations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1231-1247.
Laran, J. (2009). The influence of information processing goal pursuit on postdecision affect and behavioral intentions.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 16-28.
Li, H., & Albarracin, D. The role of Christian and Buddhist beliefs in general action and inaction goals. Unpublished data.
Masa, J. F., Rubio, M., Perez, P., Mota, M., de Cos, J. S., & Montserrat, J. M. (2006). Association between habitual naps and sleep apnea. Sleep, 29, 1463-1468.
McCulloch, K. C., Hong, S., Li, H., & Albarracin, D. (2010). Naïve definitions of action and
inaction: The continuum, spread, definition, and valence of behaviors. Manuscript under review.
Noguchi, K., Albarracin, D., & Handley, I. M. (in press). When participating in politics is closer to physical activity than to political interest and partisanship: General action patterns in international archives, US archives, and experiments.Psychological Science.
Sanchez‐Burks, J. (2002). Protestant relational ideology and (in)attention to relational cues in work settings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 919–929.
Shah, J.Y., Friedman, R., & Kruglanski, A.W. (2002). Forgetting all else: On the antecedents and consequences of goal shielding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1261-1280.
Slabu, L., & Guinote, A. (2010). Getting what you want: Power increases the accessibility of active goals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 344-349.
Van Koningsbruggen, G. M., Stroebe, W., & Aarts, H. (2010). Successful dieting in tempting environments: Mission impossible? In-Mind Magazine, 11.
Weber, M. (1992). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. London: Routledge.
(Original work published 1904).
