magazine issue 6 2011 / Issue 12

General action and inaction goals: Definitions & effects

• written by Melanie B. Tannenbaum, Justin Hepler & Dolores Albarracin
• edited by Ashley Waggoner Denton

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.