In light of the consequential nature of goals, considerable research has investigated the antecedents of goal setting. Goals can be either self-initiated, participatively-set, or assigned by an authority figure such as a manager, experimenter, or parent. When self-initiated, goals tend to be guided by personal needs, values, and higher-order goals ( Lord, Diefendorff, Schmidt, & Hall, 2010), as well as social, contextual (Locke, 1991), and sometimes unconscious cues (Latham, Stajkovic, & Locke, 2010). Following Locke and Latham (1990), this chapter focuses on what leads people to set and pursue high goals in valued domains.