SITUATED
GOAL PURSUIT LAB
LATEST NEWS
HIT Delegation Visits Our Lab for Academic Exchange Research Innovation
Our lab was pleased to welcome a visiting delegation of faculty and students from Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) for an enriching bilateral exchange session. During the visit, the HIT representatives shared an insightful overview of their faculty’s rich history alongside the diverse, multifaceted research directions pursued by their students.
Our team benefited greatly from their experience leveraging open data and big data frameworks to tackle complex research questions and practical applications. Building upon these productive discussions, we look forward to fostering deeper academic ties and exploring joint collaborative initiatives in the near future.
Prof. Kentaro Fujita Shares Research with SPUR Lab | June 2026
Our Principal Investigator, Lile, recently hosted Prof. Kentaro Fujita from The Ohio State University for a research seminar with the lab.
During his visit, Ken shared his latest work on the "rank-scope bias," discussing how people associate different organizational ranks with different levels of regulatory scope. He also explored how these cognitive and motivational mechanisms influence decision-making and self-control.
A/P Lile Jia Featured on CNA's The Science of Ageing Well | February 2026
Our Principal Investigator, Lile, was recently featured in The Science of Ageing Well, a video series by Channel NewsAsia exploring the latest research on healthy ageing. In the episode "Unlocking the Mind," Lile discusses how the brain builds resilience over a lifetime and why emotional well-being is a powerful — yet often overlooked — factor in ageing well.
ABOUT
Welcome to the Situated Goal Pursuit Lab supervised by Dr Jia Lile.
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.