Principal Investigator: dr Ewa Szumowska

Funding agency: National Science Centre
Programme: OPUS
Allocated amount: 1 077 204 PLN

For decades, researchers have tried to answer the question of what end states people desire and what states, when attained, make them happy and content. Cannon (1932) proposed it was balance, or a steady state, within organismic needs that people desire. Recently, however, Kruglanski et al. (2020) argued that this is rather balance between needs (or goals derived from these needs) that should be taken into account to understand a person’s behavior. In the current project, we take balance to a yet higher level and propose that this is balance between the two opposing tendencies that leads to optimal functioning. These tendencies are the maximization of progress on one goal vs. striving to attain all one’s goals. When exaggerated, the former takes the form of extremism and the latter of excessive multitasking (switching). In extremism, one goal/need dominates over others, so that other goals are ignored or actively blocked. As a result, one “sticks” to the dominant goal and focuses all resources and energy on attaining that goal. This insufficient switching to other goals is a hallmark of all extreme behaviors and the motivational imbalance it produces (Kruglanski et al., 2020). 
On the other hand, multitasking is all about switching and when excessive, it produces imbalance too. When one has multiple active goals at the same time and none of these goals is relatively more important than the others, he or she constantly switches between them (to satisfy all salient concerns). This makes it impossible to make sufficient progress on the current goals and high switching costs occur. Thus, neither too rare (as represented by extremism), nor too frequent switches (as represented by excessive multitasking) are conducive to optimal functioning––in extremism, one can achieve “great things” on the dominant goal but other needs considerably suffer; in excessive multitasking progress on all tasks is rather small. Moreover, both lead to lowered well-being in the long run (satisfaction of all basic needs is necessary for well-being, and these are not satisfied under both cases of imbalance). 
We thus argue that the optimal functioning should be attained when the level of switching lies in between the two extremes. This optimal (moderate) rate of switching leads to best overall progress (progress on all considered goals, rather than progress on one particular goal) and well-being. We thus expect a curvilinear relationship between the rate of switching and overall goal progress and well-being in the long run. Moreover, we argue that both extremism and excessive multitasking are states of motivational imbalance and as such share some common characteristics and have similar consequences. 
In the first, theoretical part of the project, we aim to fully develop the model and identify motivational, cognitive, behavioral and affective consequences of both types of imbalance (e.g., in extremism, attention is focused on the dominant goal and “tunnel vision” occurs, whereas under multitasking, attention is overly diffused and one has problems sustaining it on one task for a longer period of time). Then, in Thrust 1 of studies, we will try to identify the optimal level of switching. We assume that how frequent switches are optimal, depends on the set of currently active goals or tasks. We will thus run three laboratory experiments and two studies in more naturalistic settings (with students during exam session and among employees in reference to work-life balance) to test this hypothesis. We expect that the moderate level of switching will lead to best overall progress on all goals in question. In Thrust 2, we will run a longitudinal study (over one year and three measurements) to show that both types of imbalance (too rare and too frequent switches) lead to suboptimal functioning in terms of lower overall progress and lowered well-being. In Thrust 3, we will test some of the parallels of the two types of imbalance. We will show, for instance, that the two require energy and thus both will peak at a young age, in energetic people or in conditions in which energy is high (compared to when it is low). In the final set of studies, we will show that both types of imbalance lead to sub-optimal decision making: extremism leads to risky and prompt decisions, whereas having too many unprioritized goals leads to difficulty with choice and decisional impasse. The project integrates and further develops many findings from the psychology of motivation.