Dr. Kathleen C. McCulloch on “The role of motivation for rewards in vicarious goal satiation.”

Psychological Research Stories

In today’s Episode, I speak with Dr. Kathleen C. McCulloch about her article titled “The role of motivation for rewards in vicarious goal satiation.” The abstract to this article is provided below for your convenience. Dr. McCulloch is a lecturer at Lancaster University, and she studies “how nonconscious goals operate throughout the goal trajectory and how these goals are managed,” and “in the effects of the social milieu on an individual’s goal strivings.” Please either share any comments or feedback below, or send me a message by going to methodologyforpsychology.org/contact. Thank you for listening.

Suggested Resources

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales – Oliver Sacks

Abstract

A signature feature of self-regulation is that once a goal is satiated, it becomes deactivated, thereby allowing people to engage in new pursuits. The present experiments provide evidence for vicarious goal satiation, a novel phenomenon in which individuals experience “post-completion goal satiation” as a result of unwittingly taking on another person’s goal pursuit and witnessing its completion. In Experiments 1 and 2, the observation of a goal being completed (vs. not completed) led to less striving by the observer on the same task. Given that an actor’s strength of commitment affects goal contagion, we hypothesized that such commitment would be an important boundary condition for vicarious goal satiation. The results of Experiment 2 showed that observing stronger (vs. weaker) goal commitment lowered accessibility of goalrelated words, but only when the goal being observed was completed. Implications of vicarious goal satiation for goal pursuit in everyday environments are discussed.

The post Dr. Kathleen C. McCulloch on “The role of motivation for rewards in vicarious goal satiation.” appeared first on The Methodology for Psychology Podcast - Social Psychology - Cognitive Psychology - Experimental Psychology - Psychology of Religion.