An describes the end: to win, to reach the podium, to beat a rival. A describes an action within the athlete’s control: a breathing rhythm, a body position, a technical sequence. A review gathered dozens of studies and compared the two kinds of goal. Which worked better?
The controllable one. Across 27 studies, process goals showed a larger effect than any , both on performance itself and on . The number of studies behind each comparison was limited, so the size of the effect is not a law of nature.
The review divided goals into three families instead of treating every goal as though it were the same thing.
Process goals received a larger performance estimate, while outcome goals on their own received a small one.
A sense of capability also improved more with action goals, probably because success can be seen inside the performance itself.
Nobody has to give up a dream of winning; daily training has to translate it into steps you can control. And the number of studies behind each comparison was limited, so these estimates are a direction rather than a dose.
wat. Aiming at an action within your control helped more on average than aiming only at winning.
wat wat
A good goal translates an ambition into an action you can take now, even when the rival and the result are out of your hands.
How do we know?
A systematic review located 27 studies in sport, and a meta-analysis compared kinds of goal against performance outcomes.
What is still unknown
The studies differed in sport, in level and in the length of the intervention; little data examined psychological outcomes beyond performance.
Learn something?
Where to next
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