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Using Network Analysis to Explore Longitudinal Predictors of Goal Progress and Adjustment
Anoushka Chhabda1, Florencia Maccarone1, Amy Gawned1
1Curtin School of Population Health, Curtin University, Bentley, Western Australia, Australia.
Journal of Personality
|July 24, 2026
Summary
Successful goal adjustment involves balancing persistence and flexibility. This study maps how personality, motivation, and goal processes interact to influence goal adjustment, offering insights for integrative models.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Behavioral Science
Background:
- Effective goal regulation necessitates adapting persistence and adjustment when facing unattainable goals.
- While antecedents of goal adjustment are known, their systemic interactions remain unclear.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the interconnected system of personality traits, motivation, affect, goal processes, and goal adjustment capacities.
- To empirically map conditional associations among these variables over time.
Main Methods:
- Bayesian network analysis of longitudinal data from 492 participants.
- Examined associations among personality, motivation, affect, goal processes, and goal adjustment over one month.
Main Results:
- Identified two clusters: stable individual characteristics (optimism, self-efficacy, neuroticism) and dynamic goal processes (progress, action crisis, disengagement).
- Controlled motivation linked person-level traits to goal processes.
- Progress and disengagement were opposing forces within the goal cluster, influencing affect and action crisis.
Conclusions:
- Findings map key associations between person- and goal-related variables.
- Provides an empirical foundation for integrative models of goal adjustment.
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