INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC GOALS : THEIR STRUCTURE AND RELATIONSHIP TO WELL-BEING

Aspirations for intrinsic (e.g., self-acceptance, affiliation, community feeling) versus extrinsic (e.g., financial success, appearance, social recognition) goals were examined in German and U.S. college students. The structure of students’ goal-systems in terms of goal content was remarkably similar in the two cultures, as evidenced by examination of the ordering of goals. Also, as in past work in the U.S., German college students who were especially focused on intrinsic goals had high well-being, whereas the reverse was true for a focus on extrinsic goals. Some differences between the cultures in terms of specific goals are also discussed. Recent work in the United States has suggested that some of the goals proferred by free-market economy cultures as worthwhile are actually associated with lower levels of well-being when they are highly valued. For example, Kasser and Ryan (1993, 1996, in press) have shown in a series of studies that people whose system of goals is strongly focused on financial success, attractiveness, and popularity have relatively low levels of well-being and happiness. In contrast, Kasser and Ryan have found that people oriented toward goals such as self-acceptance, affiliation, community feeling, and physical fitness generally have higher levels of well-being. Other work by Cohen and Cohen (1996) has shown that adolescents especially oriented to wealth and financial success have a higher susceptibility to several psychological disorders. Similar findings have also been reported by Sheldon and Kasser (1995, 1998), Lapierre et al. (1997), and Dykman (1998). As a way of understanding these results, Kasser and Ryan (1996) suggested that goals can be classified on the basis of their content into two types, intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic goals (e.g., selfSocial Indicators Research50: 225–241, 2000. © 2000Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 226 PETER SCHMUCK ET AL. acceptance, affiliation, community feeling, and physical fitness) are those which are inherently satisfying to pursue because they are likely to satisfy innate psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, competence, and growth (Deci and Ryan, 1985; Maslow, 1954; Rogers, 1961). For example, when individuals pursue and make progress at such intrinsic goals, they have experiences along the way which satisfy their needs and thus help to support their happiness and well-being (Ryan et al., 1996). In contrast, extrinsic goals (e.g., financial success, attractiveness, and popularity) are focused on obtaining rewards and the positive evaluations of others. Such goals generally reflect a sense of insecurity about oneself (Kasser et al., 1995) and also lead one to engage in more stressful, egoinvolved, and controlled behavior which does not satisfy one’s needs (Kasser & Ryan, 1996; Sheldon & Kasser, 1995). Thus, when individuals are especially oriented toward extrinsic goals, they are likely to ignore their needs and to engage in activities which work against their health and well-being. This theoretical distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic goals has received substantial empirical support through both factor analysis and associations with a variety of outcomes (see Kasser, in press, for a review). Because the interpretations mentioned above stem primarily from an organismic viewpoint (Deci and Ryan, 1985; Fromm, 1976; Maslow, 1954; Rogers, 1961), cross-cultural replications of past findings concerning aspirations are important to obtain. This is because the organismic perspective suggests that all people have inherent psychological needs which must be satisfied in order for well-being to occur (Ryan, 1995). Goals and values are vehicles through which people’s needs get satisfied (Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz, 1992), and some may be more conducive (or antagonistic) to need satisfaction than others. Although some goals have varied meanings in different cultures (e.g., a goal of conformity may mean community integration in Eastern cultures but loss of autonomy in Western cultures) other goals and values may have somewhat similar relations with needs cross-culturally. That is, there may be some goals which will cross-culturally be associated with higher or lower well-being because their relationships with need satisfaction are relatively clear. Other goals may have different relationships GOALS AND WELL-BEING 227 with need fulfillment in different cultural contexts, and thus would not show generalizable patterns. The intrinsic and extrinsic goals we measured herein were in part selected because we have hypothesized that they will have similar effects in the two cultures we studied. These predictions deriving from an organismic perspective stand in contrast to a more social-constructionist viewpoint which suggests that any goal or value can be easily incorporated into individuals’ self-concepts, and that it is primarily successful pursuit of such goals which leads to well-being (e.g., Brunstein, 1993; Carver et al., 1996; Markus and Nurius, 1986). Such a view suggests that goal configurations might vary across cultures dependent on differences in social organization, and that the goals which might be negatively related to well-being in one culture may not be in another. In a sense, the organismic perspective is a more “universal” one which suggests that all people have certain needs which must be satisfied, while the social constructionist viewpoint is more “relativistic” in that any goal or value has the potential to lead to well-being. The current study will test an aspect of the organismic claim by examining aspirations and well-being in college students from two cultures, the United States and Germany. Germany and the United States are interesting cultures to compare because, although they share much in common, they also have some interesting differences. In terms of similarities, Germany and the U.S. share strong freemarket economies, democratic governments, and similar linguistic roots. In terms of differences, Germany is less ethnically heterogeneous, less capitalistic, and less individualistic, but has experienced more national upheaval in recent years than the U.S. We chose Germany as a good comparison culture to the United States because its similarities increased the likelihood of replication, while its differences would help show the generalizability of previous results. Three hypotheses predicted that results in this German sample would replicate what has been previously found in the United States. First, higher-order factor analyses of aspirations of German subjects should yield a two-factor solution corresponding to intrinsic and extrinsic goals. As with other work on the structure of values 228 PETER SCHMUCK ET AL. (i.e., Schwartz, 1992), such a finding would support the notion that values cohere in similar manners across cultures. Second, we hypothesize that individuals will generally value intrinsic goals at a higher level than extrinsic goals, in both U.S. and German samples. This would support the organismic view that the needs represented by intrinsic goals are prominent cross-culturally, and are not just culturally manufactured. Third, we hypothesize that the pattern of correlations of well-being with intrinsic and extrinsic goals will be similar in Germany to what has been found in past research in the U.S. That is, we expect that a relative focus on intrinsic goals will be associated with greater well-being, whereas a relative focus on extrinsic goals will be associated with lower well-being. A final purpose of this study is to examine potential differences between the U.S. and Germany in terms of the aspirations their citizens espouse. Because the U.S. is generally a very consumeristic culture in terms of its exposure to advertising and the myths suggesting that wealth and status are highly important (Astin, 1998; Murphy and Miller, 1997), students from the United States may rate extrinsic goals higher than Germans. Correspondingly, it may be that Germans, with their longer history and more homogenous society, feel more connection with others and thus score higher on intrinsic goals. Germans may also be less extrinsically oriented, given that they are less likely to live in single parent families than U.S. citizens (6% of German children live in single parent families, Bertram, 1995: p. 20; as compared to 26% in the US, Bird and Melville, 1994: p. 404) and divorce has been shown to relate to a greater focus on materialistic goals (Rindfleisch et al., 1997). We explore these possibilities in the study that follows.