Motivational Goal Bracketing

32 Pages Posted: 20 Oct 2009

See all articles by Alexander K. Koch

Alexander K. Koch

University of Aarhus - Department of Economics and Business Economics; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Julia Nafziger

Aarhus University - School of Business and Social Sciences

Abstract

It is a puzzle why people often evaluate consequences of choices separately (narrow bracketing) rather than jointly (broad bracketing). We study the hypothesis that a present-biased individual, who faces two tasks, may bracket his goals narrowly for motivational reasons. Goals motivate because they serve as reference points that make substandard performance psychologically painful. A broad goal allows high performance in one task to compensate for low performance in the other. This partially insures against the risk of falling short of ones' goal(s), but creates incentives to shirk in one of the tasks. Narrow goals have a stronger motivational force and thus can be optimal. In particular, if one task outcome becomes known before working on the second task, narrow bracketing is always optimal.

Keywords: goals, multiple tasks, motivational bracketing, self-control, time inconsistency, psychology

JEL Classification: A12, C70, D91

Suggested Citation

Koch, Alexander K. and Nafziger, Julia, Motivational Goal Bracketing. IZA Discussion Paper No. 4471, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1490473 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1490473

Alexander K. Koch (Contact Author)

University of Aarhus - Department of Economics and Business Economics ( email )

Fuglesangs Allé 4
Aarhus V, 8210
Denmark

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/site/alexanderkkoch/Home

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Julia Nafziger

Aarhus University - School of Business and Social Sciences ( email )

Fuglesangs Allee 4
Aarhus V, DK 8210
Denmark

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/site/julianafziger/

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