Back to the grind: How attention affects satisfaction during goal pursuit

A recent trend in job satisfaction research involves focusing not on overall satisfaction or satisfaction at any given moment, but instead on how satisfaction changes over time. One well-known but understudied example of how job satisfaction changes over time is "the grind," which is the period during goal pursuit when workers experience the least marginal gains in satisfaction. We demonstrate that whether people experience the grind during the beginning, middle, or the end of goal pursuit can be systematically manipulated according to the tenets of the value function in prospect theory. We also predict a way to "beat the grind." Results of three studies support our predictions.

Duke Scholars

Author Richard P. Larrick Fuqua School of Business