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In 6 studies, the authors tested whether the effect of mood on self-control success depends on a person’s accessible goal. We propose that positive mood signals a person to adopt an accessible goal, whereas negative mood signals a person to reject an accessible goal; therefore, if a self-improvement goal is accessible, happy (vs. neutral or unhappy) people perform better on self-control tasks that further that goal. Conversely, if a mood management goal is accessible, happy people abstain from self-control tasks because the tasks are incompatible with this goal. This pattern receives consistent support across several self-control tasks, including donating to charity, demonstrating physical endurance, seeking negative feedback, and completing tests.

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People rarely desire one thing at a time. Rather, the process of goal pursuit involves constantly prioritizing the many goals that a person wishes to pursue and resolving goal conflicts (e.g., navigating career, leisure, and family activities). In this chapter we focus on a specific type of goal conflict: the self-control dilemma. People face a self-control dilemma whenever the attainment of a high-order goal would come at the expense of a low-order, yet alluring

This paper extends the familiar multi-stage framework for choice by explicitly describing the role that goals play at each stage. We first present a typology of goals, ranging from content to process and from immediate to long-term illustrating it in the context of two examples-- Purchasing a New Car and Earthquake Retrofitting. We then delineate each stage of the choice process based on recent advances from the descriptive literature on the influence of the various goals. Finally, we draw the prescriptive implications as to how goals can inform what we know, or need to know, about the choice process. Key Words: goals, choice process, prescription. 2 In contrast to most formal theories of consumer choice, we propose a framework based on goals. Decision makers attempt to satisfy numerous goals of different types (e.g., consumption, emotion, learning, process, social), given a variety of constraints (e.g., financial, cognitive, affective, temporal). In our view a goal-based theory of choice offers a useful bridge between prescriptive and descriptive consumer decision making.

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Findings from 3 experiments suggest that participants who were actively engaged in goal pursuit, compared with those who were not pursuing the goal, automatically evaluated goal-relevant objects as relatively more positive than goal-irrelevant objects. In Experiment 3, participants ’ automatic evaluations also predicted their behavioral intentions toward goal-relevant objects. These results suggest the functional nature of automatic evaluation and are in harmony with the classic conceptualization of thinking and feeling as being in the service of “doing ” (e.g., S. T. Fiske, 1992; W. James, 1890; K. Lewin, 1926) as well as with more recent work on the cognitive mechanics of goal pursuit (e.g., G. B. Moskowitz,

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier’s archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright Author's personal copy Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ABSTRACT—To successfully pursue a goal in the face of temptation, an individual must first identify that she faces a self-control conflict. Only then will the individual exercise self-control to promote goal pursuit over indulging in temptation. We propose a new model that distinguishes between the problems of conflict identification and those of conflict resolution. We then review research on the factors that influence conflict identification and those that determine conflict resolution. KEYWORDS—self-control; goals; temptation In Plato’s Protagoras (ca. 380 BC), Socrates asks how it is possible that one lacks command over oneself and experiences akrasia, the state of acting against one’s better judgment (Plato, 1986). With the advent of experimental psychology, the question of akrasia has endured as the question of self-control: How does

1 Despite knowing well that “you can’t have your cake and eat it too, ” people still want many conflicting things at once. That is, people want to fulfill short-term desires and they want to do so without obstructing their long-term interests. Thus, weight watchers wish to eat many delicious cakes and they also wish not to look like they have eaten many delicious cakes. Similarly, professionals wish for early leave on Friday afternoon, and they also wish for early promotions at year-end reviews. And feuding partners want to maintain their innocence in every battle, and they also want to maintain their relationship through every battle. In a world where people want to have it both ways – to enjoy the moment and to prosper in the long run – how do they protect long-term interests from the allure of short-term desires? An individual faces a self-control dilemma whenever the attainment of an alluring desire or temptation would conflict with more important, longer-term goals (Ainslie, 1992;