Ego Depletion

Self-control all too often fails. Despite people’s best intentions and considerable negative outcomes, people often find themselves at the losing end of resisting temptation, combating urges, and changing their behavior. One reason for these failures may be that exerting self-control depletes a limited resource (ego depletion) that is necessary for the success of self-control. Hence, after exerting self-control, individuals are less able resist temptations, fight urges, or stop a behavior that results in a loss of self-control. This chapter reviews the evidence for this theory in a wide variety of domains and examines what behaviors appear to deplete ego strength and how depletion affects behavior. A comprehensive theory that examines how depletion operates is put forth and used to examine some factors that might moderate the depletion effect.

Social Cognitive Theory and Motivation

Social cognitive theory is a theory of human behavior that emphasizes learning from the social environment. This chapter focuses on Bandura’s social cognitive theory, which postulates reciprocal interactions among personal, behavioral, and social/environmental factors. Persons use various vicarious, symbolic, and self-regulatory processes as they strive to develop a sense of agency in their lives. Key motivational processes are goals and self-evaluations of progress, outcome expectations, values, social comparisons, and self-efficacy. People set goals and evaluate their goal progress. The perception of progress sustains self-efficacy and motivation. Individuals act in accordance with their values and strive for outcomes they desire. Social comparisons with others provide further information on their learning and goal attainment. Self-efficacy is a critical influence on motivation and affects task choices, effort, persistence, and achievement. Recommendations are made for future research.

Flow

Flow is an optimal psychological state characterized by the enjoyment of deep absorption in what one is doing. This psychological state is autotelic (i.e., rewarding in itself); experiencing flow intrinsically motivates individuals to engage in activities that are conducive to it. Research on the flow experience has shed light on the phenomenology of intrinsic motivation since Csikszentmihalyi (1975) first introduced the flow concept. This chapter (a) describes the dimensions and conditions of the flow experience, (b) reviews research on its psychological covariates, (c) highlights conceptual and operational differences among four flow-related constructs, (d) discusses theory and research on the temporal dynamics of flow experience, and (e) summarizes research on the neurophysiology of the flow state.

A Terror Management Theory Perspective on Human Motivation

The capacity for self-reflection, which plays an important role in human self-regulation, also leads people to become aware of the limitations of their existence. Awareness of the conflict between one’s desires (e.g., to live) and the limitations of existence (e.g., the inevitability of death) creates the potential for existential anxiety. This chapter reviews how this anxiety affects human motivation and behavior in a variety of life domains. Terror management theory and research suggest that transcending death and protecting oneself against existential anxiety are potent needs. This protection is provided by an anxiety-buffering system, which provides people a sense of meaning and value that function to shield them against these concerns. The chapter reviews evidence regarding the role of death and other existential concerns in four domains of existence: physical, personal, social, and spiritual. Because self-awareness is a prerequisite for existential anxiety, escaping or changing the nature of self-awareness can also be an effective way to manage the problems of life and death.

A Self-Regulatory Viewpoint on Human Behavior

This chapter describes a set of ideas bearing on the structure of action and emotion and how they are regulated. Some of the ideas are associated with the terms feedback control and cybernetics. Those ideas have roots in many sources, including the concept of homeostasis and the creation of mechanical devices to serve as governors for engines. With respect to motivation, the ideas yield a viewpoint in which action is goal directed and reflects a hierarchy of control processes. The creation and reduction of affect are seen as reflecting another set of feedback processes. The portion of the model devoted to affect is of particular interest because it generates two predictions that differ substantially from those deriving from other theories. The first prediction is that both approach and avoidance can give rise to both positive and negative feelings; the second is that positive affect leads to coasting, a reduction in effort regarding the pursued goal. The latter suggests a way in which positive affect is involved in priority management when many goals are in play concurrently. Recent interest in dual process models, which distinguish between top-down guidance of goal pursuit and reflexive responses to cues of the moment, has caused a reexamination of some previous assumptions and consideration of the possibility that behavior emerges in two distinct ways. This line of thought has also recently been applied to conceptualizing diverse types of psychopathology. The chapter closes with brief consideration of how the ideas considered here might be compatible with other viewpoints on motivation.

Motivation in Psychotherapy

Motivational issues are central to human life. Correspondingly, they are also central to the challenging endeavor of psychotherapy. Assisting patients to change involves motivational issues at various levels and at various stages of therapy. Patients might be more or less motivated to begin and to participate in the different stages of psychotherapy (therapy motivation). Besides these differences in therapy motivation, an understanding of the broader concepts of motivation in psychotherapy should mandate that motivational issues be considered in the treatment of all patients, not only those with obvious deficits in therapy motivation. Motivational issues influence the therapeutic relationship; they should be considered in tailoring specific interventions and they might be important factors for the onset and maintenance of psychological disorders. The present chapter presents theoretical and empirical background information and illustrates therapeutic approaches for dealing with patients’ motivation. Moreover, it summarizes the implications of basic and clinical research for a motivationally informed psychotherapy.

Autonomous Motivation, Internalization, and the Self

In humanistic psychology, autonomy, internalization, and the self constitute fundamental concepts to explain adaptive behavior and well-being. However, the momentary mental processes, their interactions, and individual differences that constitute a causal fundament for these concepts are yet underexplored. The authors will analyze these processes against the backdrop of a functional approach, Personality Systems Interactions Theory, which conceives the self as one out of several neurocognitive systems and highlights its role for autonomous motivation and self-regulation. We attempt to provide answers to questions such as the following: Which momentary mental processes and underlying neurocognitive systems (e.g., large-scale brain networks) facilitate the establishment of stages of internalization? Can the self become inhibited in a way that even highly internalized goals and values may not manifest in behavior? Which role does the self play in emotion regulation and decision-making, and how do these processes in turn facilitate autonomous behavior? The authors believe that the present functional analysis advances a conciliation between a phenomenologically-oriented, humanities view and a process-oriented natural science view on human motivation.

Advancing Issues in Motivation Intensity Research

What determines effort intensity in instrumental behavior? According to motivation intensity theory, effort should be proportional to experienced task difficulty as long as success is possible and justified and low when success is impossible or excessively difficult, given the available benefit. When task difficulty is unspecified or unknown, effort should be proportional to the importance of success. This chapter reports an extensive program of research that has operationalized effort intensity as cardiovascular reactivity during task performance and used multiple manipulations of variables influencing subjective task difficulty (e.g., performance standards, instrumentality, ability, fatigue, mood, depressive symptoms, implicit affect, implicit and biological aging) and the amount of justified effort (e.g., material incentive, instrumentality, needs, personal and social evaluation, mortality salience). In the second edition of this handbook, this chapter focuses on recent empirical evidence for the principles of motivation intensity theory and discusses challenges for other theoretical accounts.

Goal Attainment

This chapter begins with a description of how the goal concept emerged in the history of the psychology of motivation to better understand the important role it plays in current research on motivation. The chapter then turns to the self-regulation of goal pursuit. The effects and underlying processes of two different self-regulation strategies will be discussed in detail: mental contrasting and forming implementation intentions. The chapter concludes with a report of the results of recent intervention studies that combine the self-regulation strategies of mental contrasting and forming implementation intentions to help people enhance goal attainment in the health, academic, and interpersonal domains.

Achievement Goals

This chapter describes the achievement goal construct’s origins and highlights noteworthy developments in the literature. Specifically it describes how the original dichotomous model of achievement goals developed into the modern trichotomous, 2 × 2, and 3 × 2 models of achievement goals. This historical overview is then used to provide the context for the key theoretical and conceptual issues surrounding the current achievement goal approach and a discussion of how these issues have an impact on empirical studies on achievement goals, especially focusing on the measurement of achievement goals. Finally, the text highlights several emerging lines of research in the literature. This includes achievement goal complexes, expansion of the competence-based model of achievement goals (e.g., potential-based achievement goals), and possible methodological improvement in assessing achievement goals.