Controllability is key: Goal pursuit during COVID-19 and insights for theories of self-regulation

The COVID-19 pandemic has been an unprecedented public health emergency with wide-ranging psychological impacts. The resulting uncertainty surrounding employment, finance, and health could impact how individuals think about and pursue their personal goals. Specifically, we anticipated that pandemic-related goals would be perceived as less controllable, presenting a unique opportunity to test effects of controllability on self-regulation. We elicited spontaneous self-regulatory thought (SRT) data for personal goals related and unrelated to COVID-19, predicting that (A) the relative prevalence of different SRT modes (e.g., dwelling, indulging, mental contrasting) would differ between COVID-related and unrelated goals; and (B) the typical motivational benefit of mental contrasting (i.e., considering a desired outcome followed by present obstacles) would be attenuated for COVID-related goals. As anticipated, UK-resident adults (n = 288) judged COVID-related goals such as keeping one's family safe to be less controllable compared to unrelated goals, and tended to engage different SRT modes (e.g., higher incidence of dwelling vs. indulging). Mental contrasting occurred equally for both goal types, but when predicting goal commitment, its typical beneficial effect was absent for COVID-related goals. Results are consistent with the proposition that low subjective control influences both the cognitive processing of goals (i.e., promoting dwelling) and subsequent motivational outcomes. This poses a challenge to current theory, calling for greater emphasis on controllability as a contributing factor in self-regulation and goal pursuit.