Enhancing Congruence between Implicit Motives and Explicit Goal Commitments: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial.

Theory and research suggest that the pursuit of personal goals that do not fit a person's affect-based implicit motives results in impaired emotional well-being, including increased symptoms of depression. The aim of this study was to evaluate an intervention designed to enhance motive-goal congruence and study its impact on well-being. Seventy-four German students (mean age = 22.91, = 3.68; 64.9% female) without current psychopathology, randomly allocated to three groups: motivational feedback (FB; = 25; participants learned about the fit between their implicit motives and explicit goals), FB + congruence-enhancement training (CET; = 22; participants also engaged in exercises to increase the fit between their implicit motives and goals), and a no-intervention control group ( = 27), were administered measures of implicit motives, personal goal commitments, happiness, depressive symptoms, and life satisfaction 3 weeks before (T1) and 6 weeks after (T2) treatment. On two types of congruence measures derived from motive and goal assessments, treated participants showed increases in agentic (power and achievement) congruence, with improvements being most consistent in the FB+CET group. Treated participants also showed a trend-level depressive symptom reduction, but no changes on other well-being measures. Although increases in overall and agentic motivational congruence were associated with increases in affective well-being, treatment-based reduction of depressive symptoms was not mediated by treatment-based agentic congruence changes. These findings document that motivational congruence can be effectively enhanced, that changes in motivational congruence are associated with changes in affective well-being, and they suggest that individuals' implicit motives should be considered when personal goals are discussed in the therapeutic process.