Historically, the study of multiple goals has focused on the dynamics between two goals as the prototypical example of multiple goals. This focus on dyadic relations means that many issues central to the psychology of more than two goals are still unexplored. We argue that a deeper understanding of multiple-goal issues involves moving beyond two goals. Doing so not only reveals new insights about goal relations (e.g., how one dyadic relation affects another) but also introduces goal structure (how goals and goal relations are positioned relative to each other) as a variable in its own right worthy of study. In our review, we discuss current knowledge gaps, review methodologies both in terms of existing techniques and novel techniques we propose, and highlight new directions from moving beyond two goals—what new questions emerge and what dynamics, including intersectional issues (e.g., between goal properties and goal structure), become possible to explore.

从历史上看，对多目标的研究主要集中在两个目标之间的动态变化，作为多目标的典型例子。这种对二元关系的关注意味着两个以上目标的心理学核心问题仍未得到探索。我们认为，对多目标问题的更深入理解需要超越两个目标。这样做不仅揭示了关于目标关系的新见解（例如，一个二元关系如何影响另一个），而且还引入了目标结构（目标和目标关系如何相对彼此定位）作为一个本身值得研究的变量。在我们的回顾中，我们讨论了当前的知识差距，回顾了现有技术和我们提出的新技术的方法论，并强调了超越两个目标的新方向——出现了什么新问题以及什么动态，包括交叉问题（例如，目标之间的交叉问题）属性和目标结构），使探索成为可能。