Freedom under constraints : accentuating the positive in the time of corona

It is commonly surmised that restrictions limit freedom. Yet, the sense of freedom is a psychological experience only partially determined by objective restrictions. Deriving from the psychology of goals, we propose that people’s sense of freedom depends on the goals they focus on, and their attainability. Across four preregistered studies, we investigated the impact of goal focus on participants’ sense of freedom. In Studies 1–3, participants indicated the goals they could pursue despite the pandemic restrictions (commitment condition), the goals they needed to relinquish due to the restrictions (sacrifice condition), or no goals whatsoever (control condition). In Study 4, we manipulated goal focus by priming participants with the goal of socializing (which was hindered during the pandemic) and the goal of spending time alone (which was facilitated during the pandemic). Consistently across four studies, we found that participants experienced a significantly higher sense of freedom when they focused on enabled versus disabled goals. Moreover, in Studies 2 and 3, we observed that a greater sense of freedom was associated with better coping during the pandemic, reduced resistance to imposed constraints (reduced reactance), and a more positive evaluation of the imposed restrictions. These findings indicate that focusing on attainable goals instills a sense of freedom and contributes to constructive coping under objective constraints.