A Ternary Framework of Basic Goal Types: Changing, Protecting, and Maintaining What We Have

Understanding how people maintain what they have is of ultimate importance. On the individual level, maintenance goals are essential to both mental and physical wellbeing, while on the societal level, they are vital for pro-social and pro-environmental behavior. Nevertheless, to date, there is no integrative framework for understanding peoples’ efforts to maintain the current state of affairs. To shed light on this crucial psychological construct, we dive into predominant theories on approach-avoidance goals and promotion-prevention regulatory focus, and return with an integrative theoretical framework of basic goal types. We propose a mechanistic model with three broad goal categories, distinguishing the pursuit of maintenance goals from both progress and protection goals. We contrast our account with alternative accounts wherein maintenance is sorted under progress goals or under protection goals, we detail ways to empirically test our propositions on the nature of maintenance, and we discuss broad implications of our theoretical framework for theory and empirical research in diverse fields of psychological science.