Goals as Excuses or Guides: The Liberating Effect of Perceived Goal Progress on Choice

Consumer choices are often driven by multiple goals (e.g., career and family), each of which if viewed in isolation may appear to suggest conflicting choices. This article examines the effect of initial goal pursuit on consumers’ interest in pursuing unrelated or even conflicting goals. Four studies were conducted to test whether perceived goal progress hinders the pursuit of the focal goal. These studies demonstrate that in the course of self-regulation progress along one goal liberates people to pursue inconsistent goals. Furthermore, merely planning to make goal progress in the future may facilitate incongruent choice of immediate action. P eople’s choices are usually driven by multiple underlying goals, each of which if viewed in isolation may appear conflicting. For example, individuals simultaneously believe in saving for retirement as well as taking luxurious vacations, doing well academically and socializing actively with friends, and so forth. Previous research has often portrayed the self-regulation processes as involving setting abstract goals that then motivate consistent choice of actions (Gollwitzer 1999; Higgins 1997; Locke and Latham 1990). The empirical work supporting this basic premise has focused mainly on situations where the individual has set a single goal. If individuals simultaneously hold multiple goals, an account of consumer behavior needs to address the manner in which consumers pursue sequential choices among these potentially conflicting goals. This article examines subsequent consumer choice following initial goal pursuit. We propose that when individuals hold multiple goals, the pursuit or the intention to pursue the initial goal (hereafter referred to as the focal goal) may liberate the individual to subsequently pursue unrelated or even conflicting goals (e.g., succumbing to temptation). For instance, the opening of a new savings account may suggest to the individuals that one’s goal of saving for the future is being actively pursued, and, as a result, new savers might become more willing to spend money on indulgences. Specifically, this article explores the hypothesis that actions that are used to infer goal progress act to liberate the individual and thereby increase the likelihood of pursuing incongruent actions, whereas the same actions interpreted in terms of