Goals and subjective well-being: Further evidence for goal-striving reasons as an additional level of goal analysis

The paper at hand extends the goal-striving reasons framework in three different ways, using two empirical studies. The first cross-sectional study (N = 146) extends the framework by analysing the degree to which goal-striving reasons predict subjective well-being (SWB) over and above classical measures of goal content, approach-avoidance goals and self-concordance. The second study contributes to the extension of the framework in the following two ways. By providing longitudinal data (n = 43), study 2 allows to test whether goal-striving reasons have any causal impact on future SWB levels. Study 2 also contains further cross-sectional data (N = 69) to investigate the degree to which people's core self-evaluations, proactivity levels, and self-actualisation tendencies are associated with more SWB-enhancing goal-striving reasons. The findings of study 1 suggest that goal-striving reasons have incremental validity over other goal-related measures in the prediction of affective and cognitive SWB. The findings of study 2 further show that goal-striving reasons influence future SWB levels, and that core self-evaluations are positively correlated with SWB-enhancing goal-striving reasons.