Increasing identity goal commitment by inducing doubt in goal doubts

Abstract

Although most work shows that an action crisis lowers goal commitment, the present work shows that it can lead to more or less commitment depending upon whether one is induced to experience meta-cognitive confidence or doubt. In Study 1, participants first completed the action crisis measure and, then, wrote about a time when they had experienced confidence or doubt in their thinking. Next, they completed the measure of commitment to their most important identity goal. As predicted, whereas people higher on action crisis showed lower commitment than those lower on action crisis when they wrote about an experience of confidence, they showed higher commitment when writing about an experience of doubt. Study 2 replicated and generalized these findings using a different population and induction of doubt. Moreover, Study 2 demonstrated that thought confidence mediated these effects on identity goal commitment.