How (much) do people revise their goals after goal success and failure? A meta-analysis and research agenda on goal revision

Revising one's goal in response to feedback about goal success or failure is a central but poorly understood self-regulatory process. Specifically, a theoretical model that specifies how and how much people revise their goal following goal success or failure is lacking. Therefore, we synthesized previous empirical studies on goal revision to shed light on the processes and individual differences in goal revision. The 28 studies that met the inclusion criteria revealed a clear pattern: People raised their goals after success and lowered them after failure. Results of a meta-analysis further showed that the discrepancy between goal and performance predicted the strength of upward goal revision after success and downward goal revision after failure (r = .51). Moreover, a narrative summary of previously tested moderators revealed two mechanisms by which moderators might influence the direction and strength of goal revision, namely by affecting (1) the direct link between goal-performance discrepancy and goal revision or (2) self-efficacy, which emerged as a central mediating variable between goal-performance discrepancy and goal revision. Based on these findings, we developed the Triple-A Model (Assessment, Appraisal, Adjustment) of Goal Revision, which allows deriving directional hypotheses about how much people revise their goals after goal successes and failures.