farsighted ant is better prepared for the winter than the live-for-the-moment grasshopper.
Still, Aesop isn’t the last word on setting goals. For decades, psychologists have been debating the merits of proximal goals (which are short-term objectives) versus distal goals (which are long-term objectives). One of the classic experiments was conducted by Albert Bandura, a legendary figure in the field (one survey of citations ranked him in fourth place behind Freud, Skinner, and Piaget). He and Dale Schunk studied children between the ages of seven and ten who were having difficulty with math. The children took a course featuring self-directed learning, with many arithmetic exercises. Some of the students were told to set themselves proximal goals of trying to do at least six pages’ worth of problems in each session. Others were told to set only one distal goal of completing forty-two pages by the end of seven sessions. The pace was thus the same for both goals. A third group did not set goals, and a fourth group did not even do the exercises.
The group with the proximal goals outperformed everyone else when the program was over and competence was tested. They succeeded, apparently, because meeting these daily goals gradually built their confidence and self-efficacy. With their focus on a specific goal for each session, they learned better and faster than the others. Even though they spent less time per session, they got more done, thus progressing through all the material faster. At the end, when faced with hard problems, they persevered longer and were less likely to give up. It turned out that the distal goals were no better than having no goals at all. Only the proximal goals produced improvements in learning, self-efficacy, and performance.
But soon after that study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (the most prestigious and rigorous journal for those fields), the same journal published a paper by Dutch researchers demonstrating the virtues of distal goals, at least for the high school boys being studied. The boys who cared more about long-term objectives—finding an interesting career, making plenty of money, having a good family life, achieving high social status—tended to do better in school. Those who were relatively indifferent to such distal goals tended to be worse students. Focusing on far-off goals seemed to be more effective than focusing on intermediate goals, like getting good grades, going on holidays, or earning a diploma. Those distal goals also seemed to be more useful than present-oriented goals, like aiming to help others or acquire knowledge. Why did the long-term objectives work with these high school students but not in the earlier study with the arithmetic lessons? One reason is that the high school students could clearly see a connection between their daily tasks and their long-term goals. The superior students not only emphasized distal goals but were also more likely than the lesser students to see their current studies and work as vital steps leading toward those goals. Another reason is that older children are better able than younger ones to think about the future.
Regardless of whether those boys ever reached their distal goals, they moved forward by seeing the connection between their distant dreams and the drudgery of daily life. And they presumably reaped the same kind of reward that Ben Franklin did. Late in life, he cheerfully acknowledged that he had failed to ever reach his proximal goal of a clean weekly notebook, much less his distal goal of moral perfection. But the link between the two goals had inspired him along the way, and he took solace from the results. “On the whole,” Franklin concluded, “tho’ I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.”
Fuzzy Versus
Still, Aesop isn’t the last word on setting goals. For decades, psychologists have been debating the merits of proximal goals (which are short-term objectives) versus distal goals (which are long-term objectives). One of the classic experiments was conducted by Albert Bandura, a legendary figure in the field (one survey of citations ranked him in fourth place behind Freud, Skinner, and Piaget). He and Dale Schunk studied children between the ages of seven and ten who were having difficulty with math. The children took a course featuring self-directed learning, with many arithmetic exercises. Some of the students were told to set themselves proximal goals of trying to do at least six pages’ worth of problems in each session. Others were told to set only one distal goal of completing forty-two pages by the end of seven sessions. The pace was thus the same for both goals. A third group did not set goals, and a fourth group did not even do the exercises.
The group with the proximal goals outperformed everyone else when the program was over and competence was tested. They succeeded, apparently, because meeting these daily goals gradually built their confidence and self-efficacy. With their focus on a specific goal for each session, they learned better and faster than the others. Even though they spent less time per session, they got more done, thus progressing through all the material faster. At the end, when faced with hard problems, they persevered longer and were less likely to give up. It turned out that the distal goals were no better than having no goals at all. Only the proximal goals produced improvements in learning, self-efficacy, and performance.
But soon after that study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (the most prestigious and rigorous journal for those fields), the same journal published a paper by Dutch researchers demonstrating the virtues of distal goals, at least for the high school boys being studied. The boys who cared more about long-term objectives—finding an interesting career, making plenty of money, having a good family life, achieving high social status—tended to do better in school. Those who were relatively indifferent to such distal goals tended to be worse students. Focusing on far-off goals seemed to be more effective than focusing on intermediate goals, like getting good grades, going on holidays, or earning a diploma. Those distal goals also seemed to be more useful than present-oriented goals, like aiming to help others or acquire knowledge. Why did the long-term objectives work with these high school students but not in the earlier study with the arithmetic lessons? One reason is that the high school students could clearly see a connection between their daily tasks and their long-term goals. The superior students not only emphasized distal goals but were also more likely than the lesser students to see their current studies and work as vital steps leading toward those goals. Another reason is that older children are better able than younger ones to think about the future.
Regardless of whether those boys ever reached their distal goals, they moved forward by seeing the connection between their distant dreams and the drudgery of daily life. And they presumably reaped the same kind of reward that Ben Franklin did. Late in life, he cheerfully acknowledged that he had failed to ever reach his proximal goal of a clean weekly notebook, much less his distal goal of moral perfection. But the link between the two goals had inspired him along the way, and he took solace from the results. “On the whole,” Franklin concluded, “tho’ I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.”
Fuzzy Versus
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