Young individuals’ consideration of goal-self alignment and its relations to goal commitment and social concern: age differences and similarities

ABSTRACT

We examined middle-school, high-school, and college students in South Korea (n = 733) to discern age-related differences in considerations of alignment between life goals and self (i.e., competence, interest, and identity), personal goal commitment, and social concern for others. We also investigated the relations of the alignment considerations to personal goal commitment and social concern for others. Mean-level analyses revealed cross-age differences in alignment considerations, personal goal commitment, and social concern for others. Multiple group analysis, however, showed cross-age similarities; across all ages, all three alignment considerations positively predicted personal goal commitment. Social concern for others, however, was positively predicted only by identity alignment. Results advance our understanding of cross-age similarities and differences in young individuals’ life-goal setting and pursuit.

KEYWORDS:

• Life goals
• alignment
• identity
• goal commitment
• social concern

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Goal fusion is closely related to our predictors in the current study, considerations of alignment between life goals and the self. However, goal fusion is distinguishable from our predictors – it represents the overall feelings or perceptions of how much the goals are a part of who an individual is. In contrast, we focused on the extent to which individuals consider three specific aspects of the self – competence, interest, and identity – when setting their life goals.

2. To report our items, two bilingual speakers (English and Korean) who were graduate students in educational psychology independently re-translated the Korean items in English, and then one native English speaker confirmed if the translated items sounded natural. Any discrepancies were resolved through discussion among the translators, the native speaker, and the researchers.