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，多目标的研究集中在两个目标之间的动态关系上，作为多目标的典型例子。这种对二元关系的关注意味着许多问题对超过两个目标的心理学至关重要仍然未开发。我们认为，对多目标问题的更深入理解涉及超越两个目标。这样做不仅揭示了关于目标关系（例如，一个二元关系如何影响另一个）的新见解，而且还引入了目标结构（目标和目标关系如何相对于彼此定位）作为本身值得研究的变量。在我们的审查中，我们讨论了当前的知识差距，审查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——出现了哪些新问题和哪些动态，包括交叉问题（例如，目标之间的问题）属性和目标结构），成为可能的探索。