The Goals and Motivation (GAM) Lab

My dissertation focuses on how consumers get in their own way during goal pursuit—foregoing the products that best support their goals in favor of inferior options.

In this article, my coauthors and I explore when and why reminders of the political system heighten consumers’ goals to be responsible—with implications in terms of preferences for utilitarian (vs. hedonic) products.

My coauthors and I find that optimistic consumers are more likely to generate upward counterfactuals (i.e., think about past events in terms of how things could have gone better) rather than downward counterfactuals (i.e., think about how things could have gone worse). Upward counterfactuals are more “instrumental” (i.e., useful) to an individual looking to improve their performance on a goal. Optimistic consumers tend to not only believe they can do better but also seek out means that are instrumental to improving performance. Thus, we find optimistic consumers tend to generate more upward (vs. downward) counterfactuals.