nucleation

LIT-1860: Pushing and Coasting in Dynamic Goal Pursuit: Coasting Is Attenuated in Bipolar Disorder

1 min read

Properties4
StatusActive — read in full 2026-10-30 (NOTE-1442), from a JSTOR download of the published article posted on a Boston University research group's page (https://sites.bu.edu/amplab/files/2024/06/Goal-pursuit.pdf), a copy that counts under ADR-064. An experience-sampling study of 24 people, 12 with bipolar I disorder in remission, rating effort, progress and expected progress on three of their own goals three times a day for 21 days. Progress beyond expectation was followed by less effort on that goal (coasting) and progress short of it by more (pushing); the BD group coasted significantly less. Affect was not measured: the paper restates Carver 2003 (LIT-1445) that positive affect lets a goal take lower priority, and tests only the progress-to-effort link it predicts.
Tagsmotivation, emotion-and-affect, psychopathology-and-treatment
Cited as “grounds” byCLAIM-505 — A goal's lowered priority under positive affect need not be a weaker hold of the prevailing ordering: on Carver's satisficing account the effort released goes to the goal furthest behind, which the prevailing ordering of the system's states may itself direct
Cited as “paper” byNOTE-1442 — Fulford, Johnson, Llabre & Carver — Pushing and coasting

Graph View

Daniel Fulford, Sheri L. Johnson, Maria M. Llabre and Charles S. Carver (2010), Psychological Science 21(7):1021–1027 — DOI-10.1177/0956797610373372

Key takeaways

  • In daily life, progress on a goal that runs ahead of what a person expected is followed by less effort on that goal, and progress that falls behind by more (pp. 1024–1025).
  • People with bipolar I disorder, in remission, coast less after overshooting than controls do, though both groups coast (p. 1025).
  • The paper states Carver’s (2003) thesis in two sentences (p. 1021): positive affect, “a signal of surging ahead”, “may mean that the goal to which it relates can assume a lower priority”. It measures progress and effort, not affect and not priority.

Standing in the record

Filed on 2026-10-30 as a reading that restates Carver 2003 (LIT-1445), which CLAIM-468 and CLAIM-440 cite for the view that positive affect lowers a goal’s priority and which could not be fetched. It is a second-hand statement of that thesis by Carver’s own group, and a test of only its behavioural consequence.

Backlinks