Achieving Your Goals: Does Removing Yourself from the Big Picture Help?

Are you more likely to achieve your goals and avoid temptations if you remove yourself from the big picture? Past research on personal achievement has focused on whether people set nearsighted or farsighted goals, but according to a groundbreaking new study, that route misses the point.

Juliet Zhu, Professor of Marketing at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, together with her co-authors Ravi Mehta from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Joan Meyers-Levy from the University of Minnesota, has published a paper entitled When Does a Higher Construal Level Increase or Decrease Indulgence? Resolving the Myopia versus Hyperopia Puzzle in the August 2014 edition of the Journal of Consumer Research.

In one study, participants were offered M&Ms while answering questions focused on either staying connected with friends and family or improving their health. Some participants answered the questions while seated in a cubicle facing a mirror. Results showed that when participants were focused on themselves (mirror), they were more likely to eat the M&Ms when their goal was more abstract (improving their health). Conversely, in the absence of self-focus (no mirror), the participants were more likely to eat the M&Ms when thinking about friends and family.

Brands selling luxury products or “trendy” goods can use this research to understand how and when a person might stray from personal saving and spending goals. These results also have important implications for public policy makers working on campaigns that promote responsible behavior like healthy eating and practicing safe sex.

“We were interested in how staying focused on the self can either help or hinder a person’s ability to overcome indulgences and distractions when they are either focused on the ‘big picture’ or remain more in the near term,” write the authors. “If a person does not focus on themselves or give any thought to their typical behaviors, they are able to use a big picture way of thinking that brings to mind universal ideals that society teaches us about the importance of behaving wisely and acting responsibly,” they conclude.