 25. Self‑Regulatory Processes, Stress, and Coping  551
Wrosch, Scheier, & Miller, 2013). Contin -
ued commitment to a goal that is unattain -
able wastes resources in futile efforts. If the 
futile efforts are extensive, so is the waste of 
resources.
Continued commitment to an unattain -
able goal shares two consequences with the 
case just considered—  premature disengage -
ment of effort while retaining commitment. 
In both instances, the person is prevented 
from taking up new, viable goals, because 
he or she is prevented from noticing, recog -
nizing, or responding to new opportunities 
(Baumeister & Scher, 1988; Feather, 1989). 
Both cases also result in distress. The person 
who is unable to move forward and unable 
to let go is condemned to suffer. These con -
sequences suggest how important it can be 
to accept the reality of a permanent change 
in one’s situation (Carver et al., 1993; Schei -
er & Carver, 2001; Wrosch et al., 2013). 
Pursuit of the unattainable is another case of 
an impediment to forward movement. The 
impediment in this case is real, because the 
goal is truly out of reach.
Thus, stress can arise both from lack of ef -
fort (stemming from doubt) and from com -
mitment to a goal that is impossible to at -
tain. In the former case, there are two ways 
to reduce the stress; in the latter, there is 
only one. If the goal is attainable, renewed 
effort can potentially reduce the stress. This 
will not happen for an unattainable goal. 
Whether the goal is truly attainable or not, 
disengagement from it (or scaling it back to 
something that is attainable) will have the 
effect of reducing stress.
Hierarchicality and  Importance Can 
Impede  Disengagement
There is an important qualification re -
garding disengagement, however. There 
are many reasons why a person might find 
it hard to disengage. A key reason follows 
from the idea that goals are hierarchically 
arranged. Recall that goals are more im -
portant and central to the self as one moves 
from lower to higher levels of a goal hierar -
chy. Furthermore, lower-order goals vary in 
how strongly they connect to higher-  order 
goals. It seems likely that disengaging from 
higher-  order goals is always troublesome. 
Disengaging from a higher-  order goal means giving up on a core element of the self, which 
people resist (Greenwald, 1980). Less obvi -
ous is that disengagement from concrete 
goals is also difficult if those concrete goals 
are closely linked to higher-  order goals. 
Under such circumstances, giving up on a 
lower-order goal means more than simply 
abandoning the action in question. It also 
means creating a problem for the higher- 
order goals to which the lower goal is linked. 
As a result, disengagement from the concrete 
goal is more difficult.
Thus, the emergence of stress in people’s 
lives is determined partly by the nature of 
the organization among their goals and 
values. It may be easy to step away from a 
particular unattained goal, in and of itself. 
But sometimes the relationship of that goal 
to core values of the self makes it harder to 
do so. The attempt to give up and step away 
then induces stress, because it creates an im -
pediment to the attainment or maintenance 
of the higher value.
When Is Disengagement the  Correct  Response?
It will be apparent from the foregoing that 
a critical question in life is when to keep 
trying and when to give up (Pyszczynski & 
Greenberg, 1992). On the one hand, disen -
gagement (at some level, at least) is a neces -
sity. Disengagement is a natural and indis -
pensable part of self-  regulation (Wrosch & 
Scheier, 2020; Wrosch, Scheier, Carver, & 
Schulz, 2003). If we are ever to turn away 
from efforts at unattainable goals, if we are 
ever to back out of blind alleys, we must be 
able to disengage, to give up and start over 
somewhere else.
The importance of disengagement is par -
ticularly obvious regarding concrete, low-
level goals: People must be able to remove 
themselves from literal blind alleys and 
wrong streets, to give up plans that have 
been disrupted by unexpected events. Disen -
gagement is also important, however, with 
regard to some higher-  level goals. A large lit -
erature attests to the importance of moving 
on with life after the loss of close relation -
ships, even if the moving on does not imply a 
complete putting aside of the old (e.g., Clei -
ren, 1993; Orbuch, 1992; Stroebe, Stroebe, 
& Hanson, 1993). People sometimes must 
even be willing to give up values that are 