When people hit roadblocks with their personal goals, goal disengagement is an adaptive response associated with improved mental and physical health. However, people can have trouble letting go of goals, even when pursuing them is problematic. We introduce a motivational model of goal disengagement by proposing that having autonomous motivation to disengage (a sense of truly identifying with the decision) as opposed to controlled motivation to disengage (feeling forced to let go) allows for people to make greater progress disengaging from specific goals, and prevents people getting stuck in an “inaction crisis” where they feel torn between disengaging further or re-adopting the goal. Using prospective longitudinal designs, we tracked the goal disengagement of personal goals in university students (Study 1, N = 510) and a general adult sample of Americans (Study 2, N = 446), finding that autonomous motivation for goal disengagement facilitated making disengagement progress. This work expands our understanding of the role of autonomous motivation throughout a goal’s lifecycle and helps integrate different theoretical frameworks on goal motivation and self-regulation.

当人们的个人目标遇到障碍时，目标脱离是一种与改善身心健康相关的适应性反应。然而，人们可能难以放弃目标，即使追求目标是有问题的。我们引入了目标脱离的动机模型，提出具有自主脱离的动机（一种真正认同决策的感觉）而不是受控的脱离动机（感觉被迫放手）可以让人们在脱离特定目标时取得更大的进步。目标，并防止人们陷入“不作为危机”，在进一步脱离或重新采用目标之间感到纠结。使用前瞻性纵向设计，我们跟踪了大学生个人目标的目标脱离（研究 1，N = 510) 和美国的一般成人样本 (研究 2, N = 446)，发现脱离目标的自主动机促进了脱离的进展。这项工作扩展了我们对自主动机在整个目标生命周期中的作用的理解，并有助于整合关于目标动机和自我调节的不同理论框架。