This research examines the possibility that people’s choices in the service of an explicit focal goal may also reflect their tendency to fulfill implicit background goals and in that sense are multifinal. In fact, though not generally depicted in these terms, participants’ behavior in numerous goal-priming studies may reflect a concern for multifinality. In a typical such study, participants are explicitly assigned some focal goal, and they are additionally primed with a background goal of which they are unaware. Participants’ behavior in such a situation appears to aim at satisfying both objectives: to pursue the focal goal by engaging in the experimental task as instructed and to do it in a way that satisfies the primed background goal. We carried out 2 experimental studies to investigate this notion. In Experiment 1, a primed implicit goal affected individuals’ choices even when those avowedly served an explicit “focal” goal. we created conditions in which such goals were manipulated. Specifically, we varied participants’ desire to identify or disidentify with their country as an implicit goal, while keeping the goal of discovering the more durable of two papers as an explicit focal goal at the forefront of their consciousness. Experiment 2, via 3 types of control groups, showed that choices were affected by both the explicit and implicit goals in isolation, and they shifted toward multifinality when these goals were conjointly present. Participants were told that they would participate in a series of three unrelated brief studies. Their task was to role play the chief executive officer of a company and select the best hire among four applicants for a job in the company. In one condition, participants were told that the company was chemistry in nature. In another condition, the company’s specific character was not described to participants. Participants were then provided with the applicants’ grades in four subjects. The overall grades of the four applicants were equal in that each received two As and two Bs across the four subjects. However, the instrumentality of their grades to participants’ goals varied according to our experimental design. In experiment 1, we discover that consistent with our predictions, 85.71% of participants in the proud condition and only 25.71% of those in the vandalism condition chose the red patch, affording an expression of identification with their country as the more durable one. In experiment 2, we discover that consistent with our predictions. In the zero-treatment condition, participants’ choices of the four applicants did not significantly differ. However, when participants’ explicit goal was to make the best hire for a chemistry company, the majority of participants chose either one or the other of the two applicants with an A in chemistry. Of greater interest, when participants’ goal of identifying with country was implicitly activated, the majority of participants chose one of the two applicants who received an A in Chinese history. Of greatest present interest, when participants’ explicit and implicit goals were both present, the majority of participants chose the applicant who received As in both Chinese history and chemistry.The discussion considers the integrative potential of the multifinality framework and its implications for a variety of phenomena in the domain of motivated cognition. The present findings lend consistent support to our analysis. The present research explored the multifinality principle in choice behavior. It examined the possibility that while pursuing explicit focal goals, individuals may concomitantly attempt to satisfy their implicit background goals that have been activated in the situation and of whose influence the actors may not be aware. We investigated these effects in a choice context wherein the different options were explicitly identified and hence were likely highly salient for the individuals. The goal-priming manipulation not only introduces an implicit goal whose attainment adds value to the behavior’s consequences along the logic of the multifinality principle, but also activates the relevant behavioral tendency to begin with.