Self-Regulation through Goal Setting

No 3893, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Goals are an important source of motivation. But little is known about why and how people set them. We address these questions in a model based on two stylized facts from psychology and behavioral economics: i) Goals serve as reference points for performance. ii) Present-biased preferences create self-control problems. We show how goals permit self-regulation, but also that they are painful self-disciplining devices. Greater self-control problems therefore lead to stronger self-regulation through goals only up to a certain point. For severely present-biased preferences, the required goal for self-regulation is too painful and the individual rather gives up.

Keywords: self-control; time inconsistency; motivation; psychology; goals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 C70 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2008-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published - published in: Scandinavian Journal of Economics , 2011, 113 (1), 212-227;

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp3893.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Self‐regulation through Goal Setting (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3893

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().