Effects of subgoals and progress monitoring on motivation in the high-progress phase of goal pursuit

A subgoal refers to an intermediate goal that represents a subdivision of the actions required to achieve a final goal. This study focused on the role of subgoals as reference points to address the issue of low motivation during the high-progress phase of goal pursuit when subgoals are set. The process of assessing one's current status using reference points in goal pursuit is termed progress monitoring. Progress monitoring can be categorized into two frameworks: a to-date frame, which uses the starting state as the reference point, and a to-go frame, which uses the final goal as the reference point. Motivation tends to increase as the distance from the reference point decreases. We manipulated subgoals (absence vs. presence) and progress monitoring (to-date vs. to-go) in a laboratory experiment. The results showed that motivation in the high-progress phase was significantly higher in the to-go condition than in the to-date condition when subgoals were present. These findings suggest that the use of a to-go frame can mitigate the motivational decline during the high-progress phase when subgoals are present.