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Goals constitute the focal points around which human behavior is organized. Much of what people think about, feel, and do revolves around the goals they are trying to meet, or those goals they have already met or dismissed. Goals can influence major life decisions such as choosing one’s career path, as well as more mundane everyday choices, such as which book to read. Goals guide one’s behavioral responses to the social environment, such as whether one responds to a provocation by being competitive, collaborative, or resigned, for instance. And goals, and the ways in which people pursue them, also determine people’s evaluations, moods, and emotional experience both during a pursuit and after a pursuit has been completed or abandoned. The scholarship on goals in social psychology has reflected the centrality of goals in people’s lives, and consequently the goal construct has been defined, examined, and challenged, iteratively, throughout almost the entire century of empirical psychology (eg, Ach, 1935; Atkinson, 1964; Austin & Vancouver, 1996; Bandura, 1986; Bargh, 1990; Carver & Scheier, 1998; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Gollwitzer, 1990; Higgins, 1997; James, 1890; Kruglanski, 1996; Lewin, 1926; Locke & Latham, 1990; Mischel, Cantor, & Feldman, 1996).

In the current chapter, we propose a contemporary framework for understanding what goals are and how they influence human experience and behavior. In particular, we address how goals are activated, the characteristics of their operation, and the ways in which they interact with one another. We anchor the framework with a