The Sweet Spot of Goal-Setting

Related to this, one of the strongest and most consistent findings in the goal-setting literature is that people tend to show greater progress when they act towards more difficult goals compared with easier ones (Locke & Latham, 2002; Wiese, 2007). For instance, if I set myself the goal of losing eight pounds in a month, I am likely to lose more weight than if I set myself the goal of losing one pound. And, to the extent that greater goal progress is associated with greater positive affect, then more challenging goals should lead to more positive feelings.

However, this is likely to be moderated by the degree to which a goal is real-istic: a dimension closely related to levels of challenge. Although evidence is mixed (Sheeran & Webb, 2012), a highly challenging goal may be highly unreal-istic, and therefore lead to greater feelings of negative affect because there is less goal progress or attainment. For instance, while I do feel better if I beat my wife at Trivial Pursuit compared with my son; in reality, I am less likely to experience positive affect when I play against my partner. And this is for the simple reason that the goal of beating her is less likely to be achieved: it is less realistic. Hence, the most salutogenic (i.e. facilitative of wellbeing) goals may be those that are challenging, but also realistic to achieve. (Cooper, 2018).

This article, while it is not specifically related to the user experience of banking apps, provides useful insights into the way people may engage with their financial goals and aspirations. When tasked with setting a goal, we have to decide how high or low we are going to aim. In this paper, a key point that is being discussed is how and where you set your goal will affect your motivation and well-being. This can mirror the financial behavior that people experience when setting financial goals, such as saving for a car or planning to pay rent for the month.

When setting these big financial goals, they may often seem too large and unachievable. However, once these goals start to get broken down into smaller, more achievable steps, it leads to a greater chance of achieving the goals that have been set out. There has to be a balance between how ambitious the goal is to make people go after it while also being able to maintain consistency with their goals.

References:

Cooper, M., & Law, D. (Eds.). (2018). Working with goals in psychotherapy and counselling. Oxford University Press.

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