Pursuing Personal Goals: Temporal Associations of Welcoming Accountability, Personal Responsibility, and Progress Satisfaction

Objective: Research shows welcoming accountability and a related construct, personal responsibility, are relevant for goal pursuit, but whether they contribute to future satisfaction with goal pursuit progress remains unstudied. Method: This longitudinal investigation examined the pursuit of self-identified goals in 893 students attending 14 US universities across 4 timepoints spanning 2 years using multi-level random-intercepts cross-lagged panel modeling. Between-persons, welcoming accountability, personal responsibility, and goal progress satisfaction were positively associated. Results: At the within-person goal-level, welcoming accountability and personal responsibility predicted higher subsequent levels of each other. However, satisfaction with goal progress only predicted subsequent welcoming accountability. Exploratory analysis of goal types revealed that participants reported more accountability, responsibility, and progress satisfaction for approach (versus avoidance) goals. Interpersonal (versus intrapersonal) goals involved greater welcoming of accountability and progress satisfaction. Conclusions: This cybernetic approach to studying welcoming accountability in goal pursuit advances personality science and accountability theory.