
SITUATED
GOAL PURSUIT LAB
LATEST NEWS
Our contribution to a greener SG: the Beverage Return Scheme
It has been an eye-opening experience for Lile to serve on the Beverage Return Scheme Stakeholders Group. The amount of deliberation behind the details of the scheme and the openness in which the deliberation took place lend him confidence in the successful implementation of the scheme. The scheme is an important step towards creating a more environmentally friendly culture in Singapore.
Learn more about the scheme at The Straits Times and Eco-Business.


Extreme debtors may be exposed to debt accumulation due to inflated sense of self-control
We collaborated with the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) with the support of Credit Counselling Singapore (CCS), and used a combination of a self-reporting questionnaire and behavioural measures to compare the profiles of extreme debtors (defined as those who owed credit card debts that amounted to 12 times or more of their monthly income) with two control groups. We found that extreme debtors have a low capacity to regulate their behaviour but hold an illusory perception of high capacity, which may expose them to further debt accumulation.
Read more about our story on the NUSnews, Today, Channel 8, and see what Dr Jia says about the research.
Congrats to Li Ying and Titus on passing their QEs
Recently, two of our PhD students - LiYing and Titus - managed to successfully pass their qualifying examinations. As such, they have now been officially inducted into the department as PhD candidates and will be striving towards their respective dissertations over the next two years.
Read more about their thoughts and feelings here.


ABOUT
Goals are desirable end states people want to maintain (e.g., staying healthy) or achieve (e.g., academic excellence).
More often than not, people pursue important goals in various intrapersonal (e.g., temptations, prior goal pursuit efforts) and interpersonal (e.g., others’ goal pursuit, social interaction) contexts. Consistent with the perspective of situated social cognition (Smith & Semin, 2004), our lab examines how the various aspects of the goal pursuit process are dynamically shaped by the relevant context.