Motivation and Its Regulation ─ The Control Within

Contributed by researchers from the US, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Israel, and Europe, the 20 essays in this volume explore recent research and theoretical developments on social motivation and its control and management. They first consider basic issues and theories about the origin and control of human motivation, including how people experience valued outcomes, how active goal pursuits may override self-interests and central beliefs and values, modes of processing experience, the role of imagination in behavior control, and compulsive self-control. The second section examines the interaction between affective states and motivational mechanisms, including the adaptive role of distress in motivation to remediate aversive situations; the role of executive functions in emotion regulation; the role of higher-order attentional, motivational, and affective processes in shaping visual perception; the regulatory function of affective states; and how impulsive aggressive behaviors can be motivated by anger. Subsequent sections address the management of approach and avoidance processes, with discussion of bodily influences, how pursuing avoidance depletes self-regulatory resources, responding flexibly to changing situations, and how visual perception is biased to regulate action, and the interpersonal, social, and cultural implications of research on motivation and its regulation, including the links between motivation, self-regulation, and social cognition in human mating, the motivation to hold positive social perceptions in terms of inequality, the cognitive dissonance mechanisms of choice justification in different cultures, the role of death anxiety in religious beliefs, and motivational mechanisms in social ostracism. Annotation c2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Joseph P. Forgas is Scientia Professor of Psychology at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. He received his D.Phil. degree from the University of Oxford, and a D.Sc degree also from Oxford. His research investigates affective influences on social cognition, motivation and behavior. He has published 26 books and over 200 journal articles and book chapters. He received the Order of Australia in 2012, as well as the APS’s Distinguished Scientific contribution Award, the Humboldt Research Prize, and is Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, the Association for Psychological Science, Society of Personality and Social Psychology and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Eddie Harmon-Jones is Professor of Psychology at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. His research focuses on emotions and motivations, their implications for social and cognitive processes, and their underlying neural circuits. He has published over 150 articles and book chapters and four books. He received the Award for Distinguished Early Career Contribution to Psychophysiology from the Society for Psychophysiological Research (2002), and the Career Trajectory Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (2012). He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.