Normal and pathological consequences of encountering difficulties in monitoring progress toward goals.

People pursue different goals. In an interview, we try to impress the interviewer. We study before an exam with the goal to understand and remember the study materials. We wash our hands to make them clean. But how do we know when to stop, and how do we know, in the process of goal pursuit, whether we need to exert more effort or may relax our effort? This chapter addresses these questions from the perspective of discrepancy-reduction models. We address difficulties in monitoring progress toward goals and discuss their antecedents and consequences. Finally, we propose to conceptualize obsessive-compulsive disorder as a pathology in monitoring goal progress and discuss its symptoms from that perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)