Obstacles: their impact on thinking and beyond thinking

People encounter myriads of obstacles throughout their lives. Those can be big or small, such as a fallen tree blocking the road to work or life circumstances that make it hard for an adolescent to obtain a university degree. What are the effects of such obstacles? Could it be that obstacles have an impact beyond the very task or goal people with which they interfere? The present chapter reviews major findings regarding the affective, motivational, and especially cognitive consequences of insurmountable obstacles on the one hand and potentially surmountable obstacles on the other hand. It also introduces new findings that show how obstacles influence the more basic ways in which people perceive and conceptually process information from their environment. Finally, it highlights possible directions for future research and discusses the role of people’s cognitive responses for dealing with life’s obstacles.