Various theories on personal goal striving rely on the assumption that failure raises doubts about the goal. Yet, empirical evidence for an association between objective failure experiences and doubts about personal long-term goals is still missing. In a longitudinal field study, applicants for a job as a police trainee (n = 172, Mage = 25.15, 55 females and 117 males) were accompanied across three measurement times over a period of five months. We investigated the effects of failure and initial expectation (...) of success (in the standardized selection process) on doubts regarding the superordinate goal of becoming a police officer. As hypothesized, both failure and low initial expectation of success as well as their interaction led to increased goal-related doubts over time. The findings provide first empirical evidence for the role of failure in the emergence of goal-related doubts in personal long-term goals and, therefore, the disengagement process as it is hypothesized in various theories on goal striving and life-span development. (shrink)

Boddez, Van Dessel, and De Houwer in their paper “Learned helplessness and its relevance for psychological suffering: A new perspective illustrated with attachment problems, burn-out, and fatigue complaints” advance the idea that failing to reach a goal of personal importance unleashes detrimental processes (i.e. learned helplessness) which spill over to other (similar) goals, in the long run resulting in passivity and psychological suffering. As the authors conceptualise learned helplessness in motivational terms (lack of reinforcement, dysregulation of goal-directed response) and attach (...) great weight to the concept of goal failure, I will comment on three issues inherent in their line of argument from a motivational perspective, that is, from the perspective of persistence and disengagement in personal goals. More specifically, first, I will address the distinction between motivational and functional helplessness, then elaborate on goal-related failure and its consequences, and finally cover the issue of generalising failure experience due to the similarity of goals. (shrink)