How Does Your Motivation Affect the Achievement of Goals?

Source: Image generated with Microsoft Copilot, September 12, 2025

At various times in your life, you have probably decided to make a change in your life. Perhaps on New Year’s Day or a birthday, or after the death of a loved one, you have resolved to do things differently moving forward. If you’re like most people, though, you have had mixed success at actually achieving those goals.

Psychologists have spent a lot of time trying to understand why simply resolving to achieve a goal doesn’t always lead to success. A fascinating paper published in 2025 by Kaitlin Woolley, Laura Giurge, and Ayelet Fishback in the journal Psychological Science sheds light on this question.

They did four studies exploring the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on the selection and achievement of goals. Intrinsic motivation involves how you feel about the actions involved in goal completion themselves. If you resolve to exercise more often, how do you feel about the time you spend exercising? Extrinsic motivation is the value of completing the goal. Exercising more often in order to stay healthy is an extrinsic motivation, because it is about the outcome rather than the joy or pain of the activity itself.

In one study, the researchers explored how likely people would be to increase the number of steps they took over a 2-week period after resolving to walk more often. Ahead of time, they assessed how strongly people wanted to do this for intrinsic reasons (because they enjoy walking) versus for extrinsic reasons (because it would benefit their health). They measured the number of steps people took in the two weeks before and after the start of the study using an app. Overall, people had stronger extrinsic motivation than intrinsic motivation for wanting to increase the number of steps they took. However, the strength of intrinsic motivation predicted the actual increase in the number of steps taken, while the strength of extrinsic motivation did not.

In two other studies (one with American participants and one with Chinese participants), people were tracked for a longer period (1-year for American participants, 1 month for Chinese participants). The participants were asked around New Year's Day (January 1 for the American participants, Chinese New Year for the Chinese participants) about a resolution they made. These resolutions tended to be around topics like engaging in healthier behaviors, financial goals, and professional goals. Participants were asked at the start for their level of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to achieve the goal. American participants were surveyed every 4 months for a year and gave updates on goal engagement and completion as well as their current level of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Chinese participants were surveyed once after a month and gave ratings of their goal engagement.

The results were similar for both groups. The level of intrinsic motivation at one time predicted goal engagement at a later time. The level of extrinsic motivation did not predict engagement. For the American participants who were tracked over the course of a year, intrinsic motivation (but not extrinsic motivation) also predict their likelihood of completing the goal. Follow-up studies with American participants found that participants felt they picked their resolutions for extrinsic reasons (such as to improve health) rather than intrinsic reasons (such as to do something enjoyable). American participants also believed (mistakenly) that extrinsic motivation would matter more for their likelihood of succeeding at the goal than intrinsic motivation.

One final study did a manipulation of motivation. They had people consider using a health app that would enable them to search for health benefits of a product. When given the opportunity to download and use the app, some participants were given an extrinsic reason to use the app (it would provide useful and important product information), while others were given an intrinsic reason to use the app (it would be a game with surprising discoveries). In the 24 hours after downloading the app, participants searched more products with it when given the intrinsic framing than the extrinsic framing.

So, what does this all mean?

Chances are, when you set an important goal for yourself, you do it because you have not been able to achieve it before. You are likely to set this goal because the actions you need to take will have a desirable long-term effect (perhaps by making you healthier, wealthier, or more successful). Yet, your likelihood of achieving that goal is not driven that strongly by those extrinsic motivations. Instead, you persist with behaviors you enjoy. That is, you are more likely to do things that have a positive long-term benefit for you when you enjoy the activities than when you don’t.

This research suggests that if you have a long-term goal you need to achieve, you should search for ways of achieving that goal that you also find fun to do. That way, you don’t have to find constant ways to convince yourself to do something you don’t really enjoy in order to achieve something that matters to you.