دانلود رایگان مقاله آسیب برنامه پشتیبان برای دستیابی به هدف: ناکامی غیر منتظره از آماده شدن برای شکست

abstract

When pursuing a goal, making a backup plan has many benefits, including reducing the psychological discomfort associated with uncertainty. However, we suggest that making a backup plan can also have negative effects. Specifically, we propose that the mere act of thinking through a backup plan can reduce performance on your primary goal by decreasing your desire for goal achievement. In three experimental studies, we find that individuals randomly assigned to think through a backup plan subsequently performed worse on their primary goal (Studies 1–3). We further show that this effect is mediated by study participants’ decreased desire to attain their primary goal (Study 3). This research provides a fresh perspective on plan-making, highlighting an important yet previously unexplored negative consequence of formulating plans.

10. General discussion

Across three studies, we find that making a backup plan can indeed have harmful effects on goal pursuit (Studies 1–3). In Study 1, we find that making a backup plan leads to reduced primary goal performance. In Study 2a and 2b, we replicate the main effect from Study 1, while ruling out alternative explanations for this effect. Results from Study 2a rule out the possibility that our backup plan manipulation reduces primary goal performance by dampening the appeal of the superordinate goal, and results from Study 2b show that mere fatigue from brainstorming cannot explain our main effect. In Study 3, we find evidence that the mediating mechanism driving the backup plan effect is a dampening of the desire for goal success, and we further rule out distraction as an alternative mediating mechanism.