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journal of research in personality 30, 348–362 (1996)

article no. 0024

Capturing the Dynamic Nature of Personality

Carol S. Dweck
Columbia University

In this paper, I argue that the most important task confronting the field of personality is
the task of capturing the dynamic, process-oriented nature of personality in a parsimonious
fashion. I propose that this may best be accomplished by understanding people’s predomi-
nant goals and their strategies for pursuing those goals. Such a motivational analysis
allows us to express coherent cognition-affect-behavior patterns that distinguish individuals
from each other. However, because it also illuminates the underpinnings of important
psychological phenomena in all individuals (e.g., helplessness, aggression), this analysis
would be of interest even if everyone had the same personality. I illustrate these points
by identifying major classes of goals and the cognition-affect-behavior patterns that are
associated with them. I close by proposing that goals can provide a common language
for those who take a process-oriented approach to personality, as well as common ground
between personality and other fields of psychology.  1996 Academic Press, Inc.

The challenge ahead for personality theorists and researchers is to capture

parsimoniously the dynamic, process-oriented nature of personality. Trait theorists
have addressed some of the more static, descriptive aspects of personality—how
people may be concisely described in terms of a set of global characteristics.
However, we have not yet arrived at the point where we can succinctly express
the more process-driven, context-sensitive patterns of personality. In this article
I will propose that this may best be done by understanding people’s predominant
goals, along with their beliefs about whether and how these goals can be realized.
Virtually all of the classic theories of personality (e.g., Adler, 1927; Erikson,
1959; Freud, 1933/1964; Horney, 1945; Jung, 1933; Maslow, 1954; Rogers, 1961;
Sullivan, 1953) had motivational contructs at their core. They all took as the
starting point of personality (and of personality development) the question of
what individuals are striving for. The problem with these theories, however, was
that it was often difficult to operationalize their variables and to observe their
workings in a rigorous fashion. Moreover, during the behaviorist era and the
cognitive revolution that followed, most psychologists ceased grappling with
issues of how to study motivation in human personality.

Address correspondence and reprint requests to Carol S. Dweck, Department of Psychology,

Columbia University, New York NY 10027.
348
0092-6566/96 $18.00
Copyright  1996 by Academic Press, Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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PERSONALITY DYNAMICS 349

Recently, however, a motivational analysis of personality has re-emerged, with

goals and goal-like concepts as its basis (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987; Carver &
Scheier, 1982; Emmons, 1986; Epstein, 1990; Ford, 1992; Frese & Sabini, 1985;
Klinger, 1977; Kuhl & Beckmann, 1985; Little, 1989; Markus & Ruvolo, 1989;
Pervin, 1983; Read & Miller, 1989a; see also Mischel & Shoda, 1995).
In this view, goals are the forces that drive, select, direct, and organize our
behavior (Emmons, 1989; Ford, 1992; Pervin, 1983; see also Adler, 1927; Allport,
1937; McDougall, 1908; Murray, 1938; Tolman, 1932). Looked at another way,
our most meaningful affect, cognition, and behavior occur and cohere in relation
to our goals: Strong emotions are about positive and negative events of relevance
to the things we value and strive for; vigorous thought is typically in the service
of such things as understanding, planning for, fantasizing about things we hope
for and seek (or fear and wish to avoid); and, clearly, much of our action is in
the service of carrying us closer to the attainment of valued goals (see, e.g.,
Barsalou, 1983; 1991; Fiske, 1992; James, 1890; Klinger; 1977; Kruglanski,
1990; Kunda, 1987; Pervin, 1983; Roseman, Wiest, & Swartz, 1994).
A motivational analysis of this sort not only describes and names what people
do, but it also tells us something about how people work. For example, as we
will see, when we are trying to understand aggression or self-defeating behavior,
the motivational analysis attempts not only to describe the pattern of behavior,
but also to identify the psychological processes that underlie it: What goals is
the individual pursuing and by what means? How are these goals and means
setting up the affect, cognition and behavior that characterize the pattern in
question? (see Pervin, 1995).
I will use the goal analysis to make a number of points. First, goals allow us
to detect and study coherent patterns of affect, cognition, and behavior as we
seek to understand personality. They thus allow us to use all of the elements
available to us as psychologists. Then I will discuss how goals are both individual
difference variables and variables that are highly contextually sensitive. They
thus can help us understand when people will be similar and when they will be
different. In addition, I will argue that because goals provide the when, why, and
how of behavior, we would look to them to understand variations in behavior
even if everyone had the same “personality.”
I will go on to propose that goals can provide a common language for those
who take a process-oriented approach to the study of personality, as well as a
common ground between personality and other fields of psychology. For example,
the directing and organizing function of goals has become clear within cognitive
psychology, neuropsychology, and social psychology, and these fields can all
readily make contact with personality via the study of goals. In addition, the
study of goals within personality, by leading to a clear analysis of adjustment or
adaptation problems, links personality directly to abnormal psychology and to
psychotherapy. I go on to suggest how goals can provide a conceptual framework
for understanding the effect of culture on personality. Finally, I argue that a

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350 CAROL S. DWECK

goal analysis, by allowing us to conceptualize development in terms of stage-

appropriate goals and strategies, links personality directly to developmental psy-
chology.
Goals allow us to study all the elements available to psychologists. When I
entered psychology, it was still the era of radical behaviorism. What went on
unseen inside the person was not the proper province of science. Several years
later, cognition made its debut as a worthy topic, and affect soon followed suit.
I could not have been more delighted. Now, I thought naively, we psychologists
would have all the elements we needed to understand people. For example, we
could now begin to understand how cognition and affect worked in concert to
affect behavior. But, with noteworthy exceptions, this is not what happened.
Many of those who studied behavior continued to study behavior. Those who
began to study cognition studied only cognition, and many of those who began
to study affect studied affect alone.
The problem, of course, was what to do with all these variables. How was
one to study them simultaneously, while still preserving a modicum of precision
and clarity?
A goal analysis allows us to make use of all the elements at our disposal and
it allows us to do it in a manageable way. Specifically, a goal analysis leads us
to see affect, cognition and behavior as forming coherent patterns, ones that are
driven and organized by people’s goals. And once we start looking for these
patterns, they begin to become apparent.
Definition of goals and basic classes of goals. First, however, it is necessary
to define what is meant by a goal and to pinpoint the level of analysis that appears
most useful. By “goal” I mean the purpose for which an individual is pursuing
a behavior. This is similar to what Emmons (1989) means when he refers to
what individuals are “trying to do.” A goal is also often defined as a desired end
point that an individual is seeking, but my concern, as described below, is that
this definition may focus one on the too-concrete or too-proximal aim of the
individual rather than on the more underlying purpose of the behavior.
What is the most useful level of analysis for goals? Goal is often used to refer
to the concrete end a person a person seeks, such as money. However, money
can be sought for many different purposes—for self-validation, as a means to
desired material goods, as a means to help others—and it is these purposes, I
will argue, that will determine the character of the goal striving. Since we are
interested in the patterns of affect, cognition, and behavior that goals produce, I
suggest that we seek the highest level at which classes of goals can be linked to
unique, meaningful patterns. Below, I delineate the classes of goals for which
there is evidence of unique and coherent allied patterns. I focus particularly on
patterns representing phenomena of longstanding, general interest to the field,
such as helplessness and aggression, and I offer many illustrations from our own
work, in which we have sought to relate goals to coherent patterns of cognition,
affect, and behavior. (Interestingly, the classes of goals I have identified have

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PERSONALITY DYNAMICS 351

much in common with the motives categories into which Emmons & King, 1989,
group their personal strivings.)
The first classes of goals fall under the umbrella of achievement/competence
goals. Here, two distinct classes of goals have been identified: performance goals
(in which the aim is to prove, validate, obtain positive judgments of one’s
competence) and learning goals (in which the aim is to improve one’s competence,
e.g., by understanding new things, mastering new tasks, acquiring new skills)
(Elliott & Dweck, 1988). A great deal of research has now shown that the pursuit
of the two classes of goals can have a very different character (see Ames &
Archer, 1988; Dweck & Elliott, 1983; Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Elliott & Dweck,
1988; Nicholls, 1984). When a performance goal, with its focus on measuring
competence, is paramount (and particularly when expectancy of success is uncer-
tain or low), individuals often avoid challenging tasks and are vulnerable to
helpless responses to failure: attributions to lack of ability, negative affect, lowered
persistence and impaired problem-solving strategies. In contrast, when a learning
goal is predominant, individuals are more likely to seek challenging learning
opportunities and to display a mastery-oriented response to failure: a focus on
effort or strategy, positive affect, and maintenance of effective problem-solving
strategies. It is important to note that everyone pursues both classes of achievement
goals at various times and that both can potentially promote vigorous striving.
However, when one predominates, it appears to lend the goal striving a particu-
lar character.
The next classes of goal can be seen as interpersonal or relationship goals
(see, e.g., Emmons, 1989; Ford, 1992; McAdams, 1985;). Here, we can start
with two classes of goals that are analogous to performance and learning goals
in that one involves striving for validation, whereas the other focuses on develop-
ment. Thus, the first class of interpersonal goals would include goals relating to
seeking approval, acceptance, and liking. The second class (“development goals‘)
would involve a focus on building relationships, and would include such things
as seeking intimacy, helping others, seeking to improve one’s relationship skills.
Research from a variety of quarters suggests that these are meaningfully distinct
interpersonal goals with distinct allied patterns. For example, Erdley, Cain,
Loomis, Dumas-Hines, and Dweck (in press) have recently shown that, just as
in the achievement domain, approval goals are more likely to produce helpless
reactions to rejection, whereas development goals are more likely to produce
mastery-oriented responses (such as a focus on attributions to controllable factors,
maintenance of positive affect, and increased self-disclosure). Other recent work
has supported similar distinctions between these different types of relationship
goals (Cantor, Norem, Langston, Zirkel, Fleeson & Cook-Flanagan, 1991; Read &
Miller, 1989c; Sanderson & Cantor, 1995).
Another class of relationship goals that has been shown to be predictive of
distinct cognition, affect, behavior patterns involves the goals of dominating or
controlling others or seeking power over others. In the developmental psychology

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352 CAROL S. DWECK

literature there is increasing evidence that this type of goal can be predictive of
aggression (Dodge, 1993; Erdley, in press). Specifically, those who are highly
concerned with dominating and controlling others appear highly sensitive to
actions that may question their status, and appear to respond with hostile attribu-
tions, anger and retaliation. There is related evidence from the extensive work
on power motivation that this class of goals predicts a tendency toward hostility
and aggression (Winter, 1988; 1993; see also McAdams, 1985).
As we noted with achievement/competence goals, all of the foregoing classes
of goals are universal in that virtually everyone pursues them to some extent at
some time. Moreover, all of them are capable of fueling vigorous striving. How-
ever, the different classes of goals create different vulnerabilities, and these
characteristic vulnerabilities are most likely to appear when a class of goals
predominates over other goals (either because that class of goals is paramount
to the individual or because the situation renders that class of goals paramount).
The final classes of goals I will identify are hedonic goals, those that focus
on pleasure and pain or on concrete rewards and punishments. These, again, are
goals we all pursue to some extent, but, again, when they become predominant,
they take on a unique character. For example, the literature is replete with
examples of “impulsive” behavior driven by a focus on rewards (e.g., Newman,
1987; Wallace, Newman, & Bachorowski, 1991). There is also compelling re-
search on the negative correlates of working for extrinsic rewards as a characteris-
tic style (Harter & Jackson, 1992; Kasser & Ryan, 1993), even when the goal-
oriented behavior is planful and sustained. Finally, there is an extensive and
important literature in which extrinsic and intrinsic rewards are manipulated,
showing the undermining effects of working for extrinsic rewards (Deci &
Ryan, 1985).
It should be noted that all of these classes of goals may have “approach”
forms, as well as “avoidance” forms (for example approaching positive judgments
vs avoiding negative judgments or approaching pleasure vs avoiding pain) and
these different forms may well have distinctive characteristics (Gray, 1986;
Carver, this issue).
Although I have dealt with these goals as though people pursue them one at
a time, this has merely been for the sake of simplicity. We all pursue many goals
simultaneously, and it can be cogently argued that one of the hallmarks of
adaptive functioning is the ability to coordinate our goal pursuits so that we may
successfully pursue many valued goals at the same time (Dodge, Asher, &
Parkhurst, 1989; Dweck, in press; Emmons, 1988; Peterson, 1989).
Underlying “needs” vs goals. There is much fascinating and valuable theorizing
on the basic needs from which goals flow and which they may serve. Different
theorists postulate different basic needs and among the most prominently featured
are self-esteem, autonomy, belonging/relatedness, competence, and control/
safety/security (see, e.g., Deci & Ryan, 1991; Emmons, 1989). If indeed there
are such basic needs, an important task for the future would be to understand

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PERSONALITY DYNAMICS 353

how they manifest themselves in various goals to affect people’s behavior. Never-
theless, our focus would still be on the goals in which they are manifest, for as
we have noted, this is the level of analysis at which unique patterns appear
to emerge.
Goals vs values. It is also important to distinguish goals from values. Values
can be seen as more abstract and latent psychological variables—the importance
that the individual ascribes to something. The more value one ascribes to some-
thing, the more, theoretically, it has the power to drive goals. However, goals
are the actual manifestations of values in one’s strivings.
Goals vs attributions. An attributional analysis has been used to explain some
of the same phenomena for which I have used a goal analysis. For example,
ability vs effort attributions have been used to explain helplessness (Diener &
Dweck, 1978), and hostile attributions have been used to explain aggression
(Dodge, 1993). What is the relation between these two approaches? While af-
firming the important role of attributions in these phenomena, I suggest, based
on the research reviewed above, that people’s goals play a critical role in setting
up their attributions. I argue that goals help create the meaning system or frame-
work within which outcomes are interpreted. For example, we have shown that
experimentally inducing performance vs learning achievement goals (Elliott &
Dweck, 1988) or approval vs development social goals (Erdley et al., in press)
produces helpless vs mastery-oriented attributions. As we have noted, there is
also evidence that social dominance and control goals predict hostile attributions
and aggression. It would be interesting to manipulate these goals experimentally
to determine whether they can produce the associated attributions and reactions.
In summary, the position taken here is that people interpret and react to what
happens to them in terms of the goals they are pursuing.
Individual differences and similarities. As I have suggested, virtually all people
share the basic classes of goals I have described. People differ, however, in the
relative emphasis they place on them and on the means they use to pursue them.
Thus a goal analysis tells us the ways in which people are similar—at a
fundamental level most of us value the same classes of goals. It also tells us
when we can expect people to behave similarly—e.g., when a particular situation
makes certain goals or means very salient so that most people adopt those
goals or means. For example, as noted above, in our own research we have
experimentally induced performance vs learning goals (Elliott & Dweck, 1988)
and social approval vs development goals (Erdley et al., in press). Such an
analysis of similarities is illuminating because it tells us how people work when
they are pursuing a certain goal (what affects, cognitions and behaviors they will
display; what mediational processes are at play) quite apart from how people
differ from each other. Thus, even if all people were exactly the same, they
would act differently when they had different goals, and we would still want to
understand these processes. That is, we would still want to know the processes
underlying helplessness or aggression.

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354 CAROL S. DWECK

The goal analysis also tells us when we can expect people to be different from
each other: when situations elicit their different goal/means priorities. But it also
tells us why—what processes are set in motion when a particular goal or means
is elicited.
What individual difference variables are most useful? Given our analysis, it
follows that the most useful individual difference variables would be ones that
tell us something about people’s goals, i.e., the degree to which, when, and the
means by which an individual tends to pursue particular classes of goals. Such
individual difference variables may relate very directly to people’s goal choices
(as with variables that actually tap goal preferences) or they might be variables
that orient people toward particular goals (such as beliefs that make certain goals
more salient or valued). I will illustrate these points with respect to theory and
research on the self.
The case of the self: Integrating the self in terms of goals. Many theorists of
the self have begun to stress its dynamic nature, and self-concepts are increasingly
discussed in terms of their relation to people’s goals (Breckler & Greenwald,
1986; Cantor, Markus, Niedenthal & Nurius, 1986; Markus & Ruvolo, 1989;
Read & Miller, 1989b; Carver & Scheier, 1982; see also Gollwitzer & Wicklund,
1985; Higgins, 1987; Trzebinski, 1989). However, major self-related variables
continue to have a static nature in many quarters. Prominent among these is self-
esteem, which is still most often treated as something that people have rather
than as something that people seek (see Cantor, 1990). I argue that although
there are important things to be learned by looking at individuals’ chronic levels
of self-regard, much can be learned by conceiving of self-esteem in terms of
dynamic goal variables: What goals do people tend to pursue in order to feel
good about themselves? Does a given individual strive to feel good about the
self primarily by seeking validation from others, by engaging in growth-producing
activities, or by seeking power and status? Looked at in this way, we could then
ask whether pursuing self-esteem via these different types of goals is associated
with different patterns of cognition, affect, and behavior? What are the costs and
benefits of pursuing self-esteem in these different ways? Do some ways of
pursuing self-esteem lead to more stable self-regard than do others? (For example,
is approval-based self-esteem more fragile than growth-based self-esteem?) Thus
self-esteem can be seen as something most people want and something they seek
in characteristic ways.
Indeed, there are several excellent examples of the utility of looking at self-
esteem in dynamic, motivational terms. Tesser’s Self-Evaluation Maintenance
Theory (Tesser & Campbell, 1983) and Wicklund and Gollwitzer’s Symbolic
Self-Completion Theory (e.g., Gollwitzer & Wicklund,1985) both explore the
strategies people use to build and maintain their self-esteem. The research growing
out of the these theories provides extensive documentation of the lengths people
go to repair their self-esteem in the face of threat, and lends support to the idea
that self esteem is not a personal possession, but a life-long goal (or set of goals)

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PERSONALITY DYNAMICS 355

that we pursue (see also Greenwald & Pratkinis, 1984; Jones & Berglas, 1978;
Schlenker & Weingold, 1989; Steele, 1988).
Another area of self-relevant research that could benefit from a more extensive
goal analysis is the self-efficacy literature. Although the research in this area
explicitly addresses people’s self-efficacy with regard to their “goals,” goals are
used in the sense of level of aspiration, and there is little distinction among
classes of goals. Yet, other research shows the critical importance of considering
the class of goal the individual is pursuing when assessing the beneficial effects
of efficacy and related variables. For example, in our own work, we find that
when individuals are pursuing learning goals (the goal of increasing their compe-
tence) their level of confidence in their present ability is not important (Elliott &
Dweck, 1988). They seek challenging tasks and pursue them in a mastery-oriented
manner whether their confidence in their present ability is high or low. It is
only when individuals are pursuing performance goals (the goal validating their
competence) that the level of perceived ability becomes important (see also Wood
and Bandura, 1989). In a related vein, Kasser and Ryan (1993) have studied a
group of people who are extremely high in efficacy beliefs, but who nonetheless
show poor adjustment and a compromised sense of well-being. These are people
for whom goals relating to wealth and material gain are more central than other
self-related goals. Thus an interesting issue for research would be the extent to
which the impact of efficacy beliefs varied as a function of the class of goals
the individual is pursuing.
An area of great productivity and influence in the realm of the self is the area
of working self-concepts—multiple selves and possible selves (Markus & Ruvolo,
1989). These constructs are explicitly motivation-based. A possible self is seen
as the mechanism through which individuals personalize their goals and image
their enactment (Markus & Ruvolo, 1989). Indeed, much of the research on
working self-concepts is basically about the different goals people have in the
different areas of their lives or in the different roles they assume in different
settings. It would thus be fascinating to combine this area with our present
analysis of goals. If we more explicitly look at this research in terms of the
classes of goals people are pursuing and how they are doing so, a number of
interesting questions arise. What is the impact of having possible selves that fall
more in line with approval-related goals vs growth-related goals vs hedonic
goals? Are multiple selves that are allied with certain classes of goals more easily
integrated? For example, is it easier to integrate growth-oriented goals across
the realms of one’s life than it is to integrate approval-oriented goals? In other
words, is it more likely that we will experience conflicts across domains (peers
vs parents, family vs career) if we are focused on pleasing others and obtaining
approval than if we are seeking to learn from and develop our skills and relation-
ships in the various domains?
Finally, there are many other self-conceptions that have motivational meaning,
such as gender role concepts (Deaux, 1985) or individualistic vs collectivistic

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356 CAROL S. DWECK

self-conceptions (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, 1989). (See also Kelly’s,
1955, theory of personal constructs and Epstein’s, 1990, cognitive-experiential
self-theory; cf. McAdams, 1993.) Indeed it would be difficult to argue that a
self-conception was a central one if it did not have motivational implications. In
our own work, we have shown that certain theories about the self (i.e., whether
self-attributes are conceived of as fixed traits or malleable qualities) have direct
consequences for the classes of goals individuals pursue (Dweck, 1991; Dweck &
Leggett, 1988). This strategy of investigating different self-conceptions and their
allied goals/strategies would seem to be a potentially fruitful way of approaching
cross-cultural research on the self.
Thus a goal analysis can serve as a way of organizing and integrating research
on the self (see also Pervin, 1983; Read & Miller, 1989a). This would be an
extremely exciting prospect.
In addition to research on the self, other key areas of interest to personality
psychologists lend themselves readily to a goal analysis, for example, interper-
sonal relations. Indeed there have been several very fruitful analyses of dyadic
interactions in terms of the goals and goal structures that individuals bring to
the interaction (Peterson, 1989; Read & Miller, 1989b; Trzebinski, 1989). As
suggested above for the self, this type of analysis would seem to be particularly
useful in analyzing cross-cultural interactions, where each participant’s actions
may interpreted within the framework of the other’s beliefs and goals.
Goals provide a common language for social-cognitive theorists. A great
strength of the trait approach to personality is that the researchers have a common
language. A great weakness of the more social-cognitive approaches is that the
researchers, although like-minded in many ways, often do not share a common
language or a common unit of analysis. Most of these systems, however, have
a strong motivational component, and a translation into goals at the same level
of analysis would be highly useful. This would represent a large step toward
having a more unified approach to the study of dynamic personality.
Goals provide a common language with other areas of psychology. Motivation
has once again become of central concern across many areas of psychology,
and goal constructs can provide a way of linking the findings of personality
psychologists with the findings in these other fields.
The most clear-cut example is the link between personality and social psychol-
ogy. Personality psychologists have typically measured individual differences to
unearth underlying processes and principles, whereas social psychologists have
typically manipulated situations for the same purpose. Goals can go both ways.
Once a goal and its allied pattern are clearly specified, they can be measured as
individual differences or manipulated situationally (see, e.g., Dweck & Elliott,
1988). Thus, particularly for the important phenomena that are clearly of interest
to both fields (e.g., aggression, achievement, and relationships, as well as the
self), goals can provide a common unit of analysis.
Moreover, there are areas of social psychology that are natural candidates for

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PERSONALITY DYNAMICS 357

a goal analysis. For example, attitude researchers, although deeply interested in

the question of the attitude-behavior relation (how and when attitudes guide
behavior) do not tend to place people’s attitudes in the context of their goals. I
suggest that attitudes (as values and evaluations) turn into behavior chiefly when
they are embedded in individuals’ goal structures. Again, such an analysis could
provide a meeting ground for personality and social psychologists.
There has always been a natural alliance between personality psychology and
abnormal psychology/psychotherapy. The goal analysis is a most useful one in
this alliance, for it allows us to pinpoint and understand breakdowns in functioning
in terms of such things as the relative absence of appropriate goals/strategies,
conflicts among goals, or the premature abandoning of goals in the face of conflict
or difficulty (Dweck, in press; Emmons, 1988; Pervin, 1983). The goal approach
also leads us to look for the roots of people’s goals in their belief systems, another
mode of analysis that has been common to both fields (see, e.g., Beck, 1976).
Cognitive psychologists, after decades of disembodied thought, have begun to
realize that much of the thinking people do is in the service of action, and hence
have begun to introduce goal constructs into their theory and research. Barsalou
(1983, 1991), for example, has argued that understanding the nature of categories
requires us to understand the purpose for which they were constructed and has
shown that many of our categories are constructed to achieve goals (see also
Medin, 1986).
Researchers in the are of cross-cultural psychology refer to the meaning systems
that cultures create (Morris & Peng, 1994; Ruzgis & Grigorenko, 1994; Shweder,
1991). If a meaning system can be taken to represent the beliefs and values of
the people in a culture, then this view is highly compatible with the present
analysis. We would then seek to determine how the beliefs and values of different
cultures affect the goals that were pursued and the means by which they were
pursued. For example, we might expect that different classes of goals would be
differentially valued (for example, goals that involve personal growth vs ap-
proval), that the social agents figuring most prominently in one’s goals might
differ (peers vs elders, individuals vs groups), and that the ways in which one
sought to attain the same class of goals might vary (approval though individual
achievement vs facilitation of the group). It would be fascinating to see whether,
despite the many differences across cultures in beliefs and values, a goal analysis
revealed interesting commonalities in the basic principles underlying personal-
ity processes.
Motivational processes have long been of great interest to biologically-oriented
psychologists and neuroscientists. In a recent book (Damasio, 1994), the neurolo-
gist Antonio Damasio uses neurological case studies and laboratory experiments
to argue for the role of motivation and emotion in our ability to make rational
decisions and to function effectively: “reasoning strategies revolve around goals,
options for action, predictions of future outcomes, and plans for implementation
of goals at varied time scales” (p. 84). The compelling neurological cases he

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358 CAROL S. DWECK

presents (cases of altered personality, but intact “intellectual” ability) are cases
of motivational systems gone awry, in which the wrong goals get priority or in
which individuals have become unable to choose strategies that would best serve
their goals. This kind of work shows that it is not just cognitive psychology, but
also personality psychology, that can form a beneficial alliance with the new
neuroscience approaches. Through such an alliance we can come to understand
more about the ways affect and cognition interact and are brought to bear on
goal-oriented behavior.
Developmental psychologists have begun to conceive of development as in-
volving a succession of goals or goal structures over the life span, with growth
consisting of the appropriate de-emphasis of old goals/strategies and adoption
of new ones (Baltes & Staudinger, in press; Damon, in press; cf. Siegler, 1989).
This is consistent with the views of classic theorists of personality development
(e.g., Erikson, 1959), who see the individual as confronting different tasks armed
with different competencies at differing points in the life course. A goal approach
to the study of development has many advantages. This process analysis allows
us to arrive at a more precise, sophisticated understanding of adaptive functioning
and growth over the phases of development, and by doing so, it allows us to
gain a handle on the factors that influence adaptive functioning and growth. For
example, we can ask what kinds of socialization experiences predict an emerging
emphasis on more or less adaptive goals and strategies at a given point in
development. Another advantage would be that researchers studying adult person-
ality and researchers studying personality development would at last be operating
within the same general framework, and this is a tremendously exciting prospect.
Conclusion. In summary, I have argued that the goal approach holds the promise
of allowing us to capture the dynamic, process-driven nature of personality. It
allows us to express, within the same framework, coherent cognition-affect-
behavior patterns that can distinguish individuals from each other and that can
describe variations in an individual over time and situations. That is, as Pervin
(1983) notes, it can portray the more stable aspects of personality along with the
more fluid ones. Moreover, I have argued that a goal approach can provide an
important link between the field of personality and other areas of psychology.

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