This Is Important (But Don’t Tell Me That): The Backfire Effect of Emphasizing Goal Importance

Conventional wisdom and prior research suggest that when goals are more important, people will strive harder to reach them and increase self-control efforts (Trope and Fishbach 2000). However, might there be conditions under which emphasizing the importance of a goal may instead backfire, making people more likely to fail to reach the goal? We examine this possibility in the present research by examining the way in which individuals of varying levels of self-control respond differently based on the perceived importance of a goal. Prior studies indicate that consumers allocate more self-regulatory resources to achieving subjectively important goals (Carver, 2004; Köpetz et al. 2011). Even when self-control resources are depleted, individuals have been shown to exert more self-control toward important goals than unimportant ones (Agrawal and Wan 2009). Our findings support these assertions for individuals with high self-control who tend to experience less desire toward temptations that conflict with important goals and better regulate behaviors as a result. Conversely, emphasizing goal importance may backfire for individuals with chronically low self-control. We examine the key interaction between goal importance and self-control across three studies and provide initial evidence of the underlying process.