Multifinality Without Awareness: Implicit Value Maximizing in Dynamic Goal Environments

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Psychological theories about motivation often assume that people act so as to obtain the best outcomes from their choices, or the highest (subjectively determined) value. That is, people behave in ways that they believe will bring about the desired results. It is also assumed that individuals are consciously aware of the goals they are pursuing, and, to the extent that people had several goals at once, these goals would conflict with each other, leading people to relinquish some of the goals on behalf of the others. Dr. Arie Kruglanski of the University of Maryland and colleagues propose research that challenges these assumptions and explore the concept of "multifinality" in which a single means or behavior may simultaneously serve multiple goals, even outside awareness. The researchers propose that: (1) while individuals are busy pursuing various explicit objectives, new goals are often activated by features of the environment and by the individuals' dynamic stream of associations, (2) such newly activated goals may affect individuals' behavior outside the actors' conscious awareness, (3) in these conditions, individuals may seek activities that afford the attainment of implicit goals without sacrificing the explicitly pursued objectives. Finding such multifinal activities can be considered "rational" as it maximizes subjective value by simultaneously attaining multiple desirable ends. The proposed work examines the conditions under which the search for multifinal activities will take place, and the potential psychological tradeoffs involved in pursuing multifinal activities. It also examines how individuals' search for multifinal activities is influenced by the difference in value between the explicit and implicit goals, and how sensitive people are to the degree to which different activities serve better the explicit versus the implicit goals. Overall, this work promises to contribute to the general understanding of the role of unconscious motivation that drives human action; it also offers important insights into the psychology of choice and self-control, including topics like addiction, violent behavior, and obesity.