Impact of personal goals on self-regulation processes elicited by daily negative events.

A diary study examined the impact of personal goals on appraisals, self-regulatory processes, and affect in response to daily negative events. Participants, who were pretested on a goal inventory, completed a diary in which they described and rated the most bothersome event twice each day for 2 weeks. Events were later coded for goal relevance and self-focused attention. Goal-related events were appraised as more serious and personally important, were associated with more negative moods during the rating period, and elicited stronger self-regulatory responses (higher levels of self-focused attention, self-concept confusion, and rumination ). The relation between goal relevance and mood was mediated by the self-regulatory variables. Nomothetic and idiographic relations among the diary variables (ignoring goal relevance) also implicated self-regulatory processes in responding to negative events.