The Importance of Goals To understand the motivation to achieve, researchers today emphasize goals rather than inner drives: What you accomplish depends on the goals you set for yourself and the reasons you pursue them (Dweck & Grant, 2008). Not just any old goals will promote achievement, though. A goal is most likely to improve your motivation and performance when three conditions are met (Locke & Latham, 2002, 2006):

• The goal is specific. Defining a goal vaguely, such as “doing your best,” is as ineffective as having no goal at all. You need to be specific about what you are going to do and when you are going to do it: “I will write four pages of this paper today.”

• The goal is challenging but achievable. You are apt to work hardest for tough but realistic goals. The highest, most difficult goals produce the highest levels of motivation and performance, unless, of course, you choose impossible goals that you can never attain.

• The goal is framed in terms of getting what you want rather than avoiding what you do not want.Approach goals are positive experiences that you seek directly, such as getting a better grade or learning to scuba dive. Avoidance goals involve the effort to avoid unpleasant experiences, such as trying not to make a fool of yourself at parties or trying to avoid being dependent.

All of the motives discussed in this chapter are affected by approach versus avoidance goals. People who frame their goals in specific, achievable approach terms (e.g., “I'm going to lose weight by jogging three times a week”) feel better about themselves, feel more competent, are more optimistic, and are less depressed than people who frame the same goals in avoidance terms (e.g., “I'm going to lose weight by cutting out rich foods”) (Coats, Janoff-Bulman, & Alpert, 1996; Updegraff, Gable, & Taylor, 2004). Similarly, people who have sex for approach motives—to enjoy their own physical pleasure, to promote a partner's happiness, or to seek intimacy—tend to have happier and less conflicted relationships than those who have sex to avoid a partner's loss of interest or quarrels with the partner (Muise, Impett, & Desmarais, 2013). Can you guess why approach goals produce better results than avoidance goals? Approach goals allow you to focus on what you can actively do to accomplish them and on the intrinsic pleasure of the activity. Avoidance goals make you focus on what you have to give up.

In the case of work, defining your goals will move you along the road to success, but what happens when you hit a pothole? Some people give up when a goal becomes difficult or they are faced with a setback, whereas others become even more determined to succeed. The crucial difference between them is why they are working for that goal: to show off in front of others or learn the task for the satisfaction of it.

People who are motivated by performance goals are concerned primarily with being judged favorably and avoiding criticism. Those who are motivated by mastery (learning) goals are concerned with increasing their competence and skills and finding intrinsic pleasure in what they are learning (Grant & Dweck, 2003; Senko, Durik, & Harackiewicz, 2008). When people who are motivated by performance goals do poorly, they will often decide the fault is theirs and stop trying to improve. Because their goal is to demonstrate their abilities, they set themselves up for grief when they temporarily fail, as all of us must if we are to learn anything new. In contrast, people who are motivated to master new skills will generally regard failure and criticism as sources of useful information that will help them improve. They know that learning takes time. In business, education, and every other area of life, the lesson is clear: Failure is essential to eventual success.

Mastery goals are powerful intrinsic motivators at all levels of education and throughout life. Students who are in college primarily to master new areas of knowledge choose more challenging projects, persist in the face of difficulty, use deeper and more elaborate study strategies, are less likely than other students to cheat, and enjoy learning more than do students who are there only to get a degree and a meal ticket (Elliot & McGregor, 2001; Grant & Dweck, 2003). As usual, though, we should avoid oversimplifying: Olympic athletes, world-class musicians, and others who are determined to become the best in their field blend performance and mastery goals.

Another contributor to success is self-control (Duckworth & Gross, 2014). As the name suggests, self-control is the ability to regulate attention, emotion, and behavior in the presence of temptation. If you've been able to focus on your studying while the TV, telephone, Facebook, and text messages loom large, you've shown admirable self-control. In fact, you should keep it up. Researchers have demonstrated that higher levels of self-control early in life predict later academic achievement, enhanced physical health, better employment, and higher earnings (Duckworth & Carlson, 2013; Mischel, 2014; Moffitt et al., 2011).

More recent research also highlights the importance of grit, a sustained dedication to a passionate interest with determination and effort over a period of years (Duckworth & Gross, 2014). The performance of many experts from top violinists to chess masters to National Spelling Bee winners is often the result of thousands of hours of dedicated practice (Duckworth et al., 2011; Ericsson, 2001; Ericsson & Charness, 1994). That kind of grittiness, hanging in there over the long haul, contributes to success independent of the more focused efforts of self-control. In fact, grit predicts achievement outcomes such as graduating from high school on time, being an effective novice teacher, or making it through the grueling first year of West Point (Duckworth & Quinn, 2009; Eskreis-Winkler et al., 2014). Individuals who succeed in this task may show varying levels of self-control, but their grit carries them through to successful goal attainment.

The Many Motives of Accomplishment

Expectations and Self-Efficacy How hard you work for something also depends on your expectations. If you are fairly certain of success, you will work harder to reach your goal than if you are fairly certain of failure.

A classic experiment showed how quickly experience affects these expectations. Young women were asked to solve 15 anagram puzzles. Before working on each one, they had to estimate their chances of solving it. Half of the women started off with very easy anagrams, but half began with insoluble ones. Sure enough, those who started with the easy ones increased their estimates of success on later ones. Those who began with the impossible ones decided they would all be impossible. These expectations, in turn, affected the young women's ability to actually solve the last 10 anagrams, which were the same for everyone. The higher the expectation of success, the more anagrams the women solved (Feather, 1966). After they are acquired, therefore, expectations can create a self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1948): Your expectations make you behave in ways that cause the expectation to come true. You expect to succeed, so you work hard—and succeed. Or you expect to fail, so you don't do much work—and do poorly.

Your expectations are further influenced by your level of confidence in yourself and your abilities (Dweck & Grant, 2008; Judge, 2009). No one is born with a feeling of confidence, or self-efficacy. You acquire it through experience in mastering new skills, overcoming obstacles, and learning from occasional failures. Self-efficacy also comes from having successful role models who teach you that your ambitions are possible and from having people around to give you constructive feedback and encouragement (Bandura, 2013).

People who have a strong sense of self-efficacy are quick to cope with problems rather than stewing and brooding about them. Studies in North America, Europe, and Russia find that self-efficacy has a positive effect on just about every aspect of people's lives: how well they do on a task, the grades they earn, how persistently they pursue their goals, the kind of career choices they make, their ability to solve complex problems, their motivation to work for political and social goals, their health habits, and even their chances of recovery from a heart attack (Bandura et al., 2001; Maddux, 1995; Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998). Meta-analyses of decades of research find that self-efficacy and the setting of ambitious but achievable goals are indeed the strongest predictors of learning and accomplishment (Lanaj, Chang, & Johnson, 2012; Sitzmann & Ely, 2011).

Working Conditions Imagine that you live in a town that has one famous company, Boopsie's Biscuits & Buns. Everyone in the town is grateful for the 3B company and goes to work there with high hopes. Soon, however, an odd thing starts happening to many employees. They complain of fatigue and irritability. They are taking lots of sick leave. Productivity declines. What's going on at Boopsie's Biscuits & Buns? Is everybody suffering from sheer laziness?

Most observers would answer that something is wrong with those employees. But what if something is wrong with Boopsie's? Psychologists want to know how conditions at work nurture or crush our motivation to succeed. After people are in a job, what motivates some to do well? Why do others lose their motivation altogether?

To begin with, achievement depends on having the opportunity to achieve. When someone does not do well at work, others are apt to say it is the individual's own fault because he or she lacks the internal drive to make it. But what the person may really lack is a fair chance to make it, and this is especially true for those who have been subjected to systematic discrimination (Sabattini & Crosby, 2009). After they have entered a career, people may become more motivated to advance up the ladder or less so, depending on how many rungs they are permitted to climb. Women used to be rare in politics, but today it's not news that they are governors, senators, congresswomen, or presidential candidates.

Several other aspects of the work environment are likely to increase work motivation and satisfaction and reduce the chances of emotional burnout (Bakker, 2011; Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001; Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002):

• The work feels meaningful and important to employees.

• Employees have control over many aspects of their work, such as setting their own hours and making decisions.

• Tasks are varied rather than repetitive.

• Employees have supportive relationships with their superiors and coworkers.

• Employees receive useful feedback about their work, so they know what they have accomplished and what they need to do to improve.

• The company offers opportunities for its employees to learn and advance.

Companies that foster these conditions tend to have more productive and satisfied employees. Workers become more creative in their thinking, more engaged in their work, and feel better about themselves than they do if they feel stuck in routine jobs that give them no control or flexibility over their daily tasks.

Conversely, when people are put in situations that frustrate their desire and ability to succeed, they often become dissatisfied, their motivation declines, and they may drop out. For example, a study of nearly 2,500 women and men in science, engineering, and technology explored the reasons that many of the women eventually left their jobs, with some abandoning science altogether. The women who lost their motivation to work in these fields reported feeling isolated (many said they were the only woman in their work group), and two-thirds said they had been sexually harassed (Hewlitt, Luce, & Servon, 2008). Other reasons included being paid less than men for the same work and having working conditions that did not allow them to handle their family obligations. Mothers are still more likely than fathers to reduce their work hours, modify their work schedules, and feel distracted on the job because of childcare concerns (Sabattini & Crosby, 2009). What do you think might be the “working conditions” today that are causing many men to lose their motivation to enter the careers they previously dominated, as well as creating the lopsided sex ratio on so many campuses?

In sum, as you can see, work motivation and satisfaction depend on the right fit between qualities of the individual and conditions of the work.