Research has demonstrated that after making high goal progress consumers feel liberated to engage in goal-inconsistent behaviors. But what happens after consumers make high progress in the context of joint goal pursuit? We examine how jointly-made progress towards a joint goal pursued by couples affects subsequent individually-made goal-relevant decisions. Across five experiments with both lab-created couples and married participants and financial data from a couples' money management mobile app, we show that after making high progress on a joint goal (vs. low or no progress), higher relationship power partners are more likely to disengage from the joint goal to pursue personal concerns (e.g., indulge themselves or pursue individual goals), whereas lower relationship power partners do not disengage from the joint goal and continue engaging in goal-consistent actions that maintain its pursuit. We elucidate the underlying mechanism, providing evidence that the joint goal progress boosts the relational self-concept of high (but not low) relationship power partners and this drives the effects. Importantly, we demonstrate the effectiveness of two theory-grounded and easily implementable interventions which promote goal-consistent behaviors among high relationship power consumers in the context of joint savings goals.

研究表明，在取得高目标进展后，消费者会感到自由，可以从事与目标不一致的行为。但是，在共同追求目标的背景下，消费者取得了长足的进步之后会发生什么呢？我们研究了夫妻共同追求的共同目标的进展如何影响随后的个人制定的与目标相关的决定。在实验室创建的夫妻和已婚参与者的五项实验以及来自夫妻资金管理移动应用程序的财务数据中，我们表明，在共同目标上取得较大进展（相对于低进展或没有进展）后，关系更强大的伙伴会更多可能会脱离共同目标去追求个人问题（例如，放纵自己或追求个人目标），而较低关系权力的伙伴不会脱离共同目标，并继续从事保持其追求的目标一致的行动。我们阐明了潜在的机制，提供了证据表明共同目标的进步促进了高（但不是低）关系权力伙伴的关系自我概念，这推动了影响。重要的是，我们证明了两种基于理论且易于实施的干预措施的有效性，这些干预措施在共同储蓄目标的背景下促进了高关系权力消费者之间的目标一致行为。