Self-concordant goal motivation influences how people respond to crowds, but not how they perceive them

There is an emerging debate around the idea that goals can shape perceptual experiences, guiding people to act in a goal-directed manner. The degree to which a person’s motivation for goal striving is derived from internal versus external sources and aligns with their values, beliefs, and self-concept (i.e., self-concordance) plays an important role in determining successful goal pursuit but has been an overlooked factor in the research surrounding goal-driven perceptual phenomena. In the present experiment n = 66 participants determined whether stimuli depicting crowds of moving people contained 10 or more individuals. We assigned participants to either a threat-goal condition, emphasizing the potential for threat in large crowds, or a control condition which had no additional justification for the task. We measured goal self-concordance for the task and manipulated both the size of the crowd and the proportion of individuals in the crowd performing threatening actions across trials. Self-concordance predicted less accurate responding, with participants over-estimating small crowds and under-estimating large crowds. Additionally, participants with self-concordant motivation in the threat-goal condition had faster reaction times and were less influenced by task instructions. Our findings suggest that the self-concordance of motivation for a task may influence the way participants respond to stimuli, rather than the way they perceive them.