Liz Murray: Goal Complex

        A goal complex involves the goals people want to achieve and the reasons why they pursue those goals. Goals, as we mentioned before, include mastery approach goals, mastery avoidance goals, performance approach goals, and performance avoidance goals. Reasons to achieve those goals include proximal reasons and distal reasons. Proximal reasons are close to people’s behaviors. Distal reasons are further to immediate behaviors, and they can be divided into dispositional motives and self-determination continuum. The need for achievement and fear of failure constitute two important factors in dispositional tendencies, which classifies four kinds of people: optimists (high hope with low fear), over-strivers (high hope with high fear), failure accepting (low fear with low hope), failure avoiders (low fear with high hope). Autonomous reasons and controlled reasons are included in self-determination theory, which indicates a person “has to” or “wants to” pursue the goals.

        Liz’s goals and reasons were changing along with her life experiences. When she was young, her goal was to master the content and skills in order to satisfy her reading interests and needs, and her reason indicated she was oriented by mastery approach. Besides reading, she tried hard to have her father and mother stay together to form a healthy family because she desired the love from her family. She was worried when her mother was taking to the hospital and later left to her grandfather’s apartment. She gave the money they saved for living to her mother to buy drugs because she did not want to see her mother struggling, and she hoped her mother would go back to normal after she bought drugs. Liz held such hope to her family, and she was always worried if her family would fall apart, so she played an over-striver role in this family.

        After Liz came out from the “crazy house,” because she found out all her books were thrown away, school seemed to be the only way for her to gain knowledge. The decision to go back to school was a controlled reason because this was the only way she could choose, but the desire to learn was an autonomous reason because she read for interest and enjoyment. When Liz was fifteen years old, she became homeless. At that time, she held low hope and low fear: she asked people for money, stole food from the shop, and quitted school. She was not striving for any goals, which made her a failure accepter until her mother’s death. Her mother’s death made her want to change her situation, and she stated she did not want to be an idiot, which formed her mastery approach goal and mastery avoidance goal. She set the goal of living a better life and obtained hope for her future. She strived for her goals and had no fear of what would happen because she thought she was already in the worst situation, and nothing could be worse. Therefore, she became an optimist and started working hard to save herself from the environment where she was born.

        Primary control is people’s attempt to change the outside environment in order to fit the individual needs, while secondary control refers to the individual’s change to fit in with the world. Liz’s experiences made me realize that she was oriented by primary control when she went back to high school. She had a high self-efficacy, and she believed that she could obtain her desired outcomes if she worked as hard as possible. She did not rely on secondary control because the world that she was in was so dark and with no hope. She had to try hard and get out of that world that she was born in and enter a new world, and that was the hope she was striving for. However, she did hold secondary control for the experiences her family brought to her. When the scholarship committee interviewed her, she stated, “Because I was turned so inward by mom and dad, I got [a] chance to see how all the little tiny things come together to make the final product.” Her statement showed the value she gave to her family, and she changed the perspective to look back at her childhood experiences. Because of her past experiences, she could stand in front of everybody and became who she is now.