Goals That Huant—And Harm—Us

If you're drained and sad at the end of the workday, you may think a job change is in order. But first consider this: You could be pursuing and failing at a "non-conscious" goal, according to Tanya Chartrand, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of psychology at Ohio State University.

A domineering coworker may physically remind you of a favorite teacher, for example. So while your conscious strategy is to steer clear of him, his appearance triggers memories of your mentor. You try to befriend him and suffer the consequences. "If you consciously choose a goal in a certain situation and do that consistently, over time the goal and the environment become linked," says Chartrand. When the environmental memory of a teacher's face fires, the goal memory to bond fires too.

Chartrand's findings were presented at a recent American Psychological Society meeting. In her experiment, 122 subjects were primed to form impressions of others, then heard the story of a man characterized as both clumsy and graceful: The conflicting descriptions prevented subjects from forming an accurate impression of the man, and their subsequent "mood ratings" were lower than those of the control group.