Led by: Marissa A. Sharif, associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

In this webinar, Professor Marissa Shariff will discuss how and why different types of flexibility can motivate people to persist toward their goals. Drawing on three research programs — goals with built-in emergency reserves, nudges that allow people to make up for goal failures, and the trade-off between goal granularity and flexibility —  she will show when flexibility helps goal pursuit, when it backfires, and the psychological mechanisms underlying these effects.

December 8, 2026