Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T09:16:39.865Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What's in a goal? The role of motivational relevance in cognition and action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2014

Baruch Eitam  and
E. Tory Higgins
Baruch Eitam
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. [email protected]://hevra.haifa.ac.il/~psy/index.php/en/faculty?id=88
E. Tory Higgins
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027. [email protected]://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/indiv_pages/higgins.html
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We argue that it is possible to go beyond the “selfish goal” metaphor and make an even stronger case for the role of unconscious motivation in cognition and action. Through the relevance of a representation (ROAR) framework, we describe how not only value motivation, which relates to “selfish goals,” but also truth motivation and control motivation impact cognition and action.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , April 2014 , pp. 141 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Band, G. P., van Steenbergen, H., Ridderinkhof, K. R., Falkenstein, M. & Hommel, B. (2009) Action-effect negativity: Irrelevant action effects are monitored like relevant feedback. Biological Psychology 82(3):211–18.Google Scholar
Bruner, J. S. (1957) On perceptual readiness. Psychological Review 64:123–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Custers, R. & Aarts, H. (2005) Positive affect as implicit motivator: On the nonconscious operation of behavioral goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89:129–42. Available at: http://goallab.nl/publications/documents/Custers,%20Aarts%20%282005%29%20- %20positive%20affect%20as%20implicit%20motivator.pdf.Google Scholar
Echterhoff, G., Higgins, E. T. & Groll, S. (2005) Audience-tuning effects on memory: The role of shared reality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89:257–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eitam, B., Glass, R. S., Aviezer, H., Dienes, Z. & Higgins, E. T. (2013) Implicit learning of task irrelevant faces. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Eitam, B. & Higgins, E. T. (2010) Motivation in mental accessibility: Relevance of a representation (ROAR) as a new framework. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 4:951–67.Google Scholar
Eitam, B., Miele, D. B. & Higgins, E. T. (2013) Motivated remembering: Remembering as accessibility and accessibility as motivational relevance. In: Handbook of social cognition, ed. Carlston, D.. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ferguson, M. J. (2007) On the automatic evaluation of end-states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92:596.Google Scholar
Higgins, E. T. (2012) Beyond pleasure and pain: How motivation works. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Redgrave, P. & Gurney, K. (2006) The short-latency dopamine signal: A role in discovering novel actions? Nature Reviews Neuroscience 7(12):967–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silvestrini, N. & Gendolla, G. H. (2013) Automatic effort mobilization and the principle of resource conservation: One can only prime the possible and justified. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 104:803–16.Google Scholar
Verschoor, S. A., Spapé, M., Biro, S. & Hommel, B. (2013) From outcome prediction to action selection: Developmental change in the role of action-effect bindings. Developmental Science 16:801–14.Google Scholar