Personal Goals and Psychological Growth: Testing an Intervention to Enhance Goal Attainment and Personality Integration

We hypothesized that semester goal attainmentprovides a route to short‐term psychological growth. In an attempt to enhance this process, werandomly assigned participants to either a goal‐training program or to a control condition.Although there were no main effects of program participation on later goal attainment, importantinteractions were found. Consistent with a prepared to benefit model,participants already high in goal‐based measures of personality integration perceived the programas most useful and benefited the most from the program in terms of goal attainment. As a result,they became even more integrated and also increased in their levels of psychosocial well‐being andvitality. Implications for theories of short‐term growth and positive change are discussed, as is theunanswered question of how to help less‐integrated persons grow.