Interpersonal consequences of conveying goal ambition

Abstract

Setting ambitious goals is a proven strategy for improving performance, but we suggest it may have interpersonal costs. We predict that relative to those with moderately ambitious goals, those with highly ambitious goals (and those with unambitious goals) will receive more negative interpersonal evaluations, being seen as less warm and as offering less relationship potential. Thirteen studies including nine preregistered experiments, three preregistered replications, and one archival analysis of graduate school applications (total N = 6,620) test these hypotheses. Across career, diet, fitness, savings, and academic goals, we found a robust effect of ambition on judgments, such that moderately ambitious goals led to the most consistently positive interpersonal expectations. To understand this phenomenon, we consider how ambition influences judgments of investment in one’s own goals as opposed to supportiveness for other people’s goals and explore expectations about goal supportiveness as one mechanism through which ambition may influence interpersonal judgments.