My research investigates interpersonal processes during goal pursuit. People juggle many ongoing goals using a variety of ways or means of goal attainment. Every goal is facilitated, supported, or enabled by the assistance of another person. Every time a person initiates contact with someone else, s/he expects him or her to be helpful toward some goal. By contributing to successful goal pursuit, people serve as instrumental means to those goals. The use of other people as means toward personal goals shapes evaluations of the other person, contributes to their evaluations of themselves, and contributes to relationship formation and dissolution.

According to our people-as-means approach, people evaluate partners according to their instrumentality to the perceiver’s goals. People like, feel close to, and are committed to relationships with others when they are instrumental, but should dissolve relationships when the partner is no longer instrumental. Our principle of mutual perceived instrumentality states that relationship satisfaction occurs when both partners perceive that they themselves and their partner are instrumental to one another’s goals. In addition, goal pursuit and behavioral patterns should be importantly influenced by the presence of other people.