Linking Life Aspirations to Functional Medical Conditions: A Goal Contents Theory Perspective
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Psychological and motivational factors are implicated in various medical conditions, yet the link between physical health and life aspirations, as defined in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), remains underexplored. To address this gap and advance theory, we conducted a preliminary investigation of associations between aspirations and self-reported symptoms across five functional medical conditions-gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), headaches, sleep disturbances, and sexual dysfunction. We surveyed 392 Canadian medical patients (Mage = 42.8 years, SD = 12.7, 50.5% women, 82.1% white, 75.3% with higher education) to assess whether the relative importance, likelihood, and attainment of intrinsic (e.g., personal growth, relationships, community, health) and extrinsic (e.g., wealth, fame, image) aspirations were associated with symptoms. Consistent with hypotheses, greater relative prioritization of intrinsic goals was linked to fewer symptoms-especially sleep disturbance-while extrinsic aspirations were associated with increased symptoms, particularly GERD. Sociodemographic factors, such as age, gender, education, religiosity, and subjective financial status, also showed associations with goal orientations and symptom burden, broadly aligning with SDT predictions. Findings highlight the potential relevance of people's personal goals in patient-centered care for functional conditions and underscore the need for further research exploring mechanisms and moderators of these effects.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".