Communicating Personal Goals: Consequences for Person Perception in the Work and Family Domains
Abstract
Based on a set of three experimental studies (total N = 608), we examined how people appraise another person’s well-being and motivation in the work and family domains on the basis of knowledge of this other person’s goal system. Participants were introduced to the life situation of either a woman or a man belonging to a successful dual-career couple. This target person reported pursuing only work-related personal goals (work priority), only family-related personal goals (family priority) or both work- and family-related goals (balanced goal system). Participants were asked to appraise the target person’s life satisfaction as well as a number of work- and family-related attributes. Overall, as expected, target persons with a focus on work goals were perceived as higher on positive work-related attributes than the other groups, whereas the family-priority group was perceived as higher on positive family-related attributes. In addition, at least when judged by working adults, greater life satisfaction was attributed to persons with a balanced goal system than to those with a goal system focusing on either work or family goals.
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