Basic Concepts and Theories

PART I

Basic Concepts and TheoriesCO

PYRIGHTED

MATERIA

L

CHAPTER 1

Motivation and the Goal Theoryof Current Concerns

Eric Klinger

University of Minnesota, Morris

and

W. Miles Cox

Bangor University

Synopsis.—Behavior and experience are organized around the pursuit and enjoyment of goals.Accordingly, this chapter first discusses basic motivational concepts that address the processesinvolved in choosing and pursuing goals, and places goal pursuit within the framework of the theory ofcurrent concerns. It examines how people choose goals and traces the effects of having a goal and ofthe way the goal pursuit ends, in goal attainment or relinquishment. It integrates applicableneuroscientific findings that shed light on these processes. Goal choice depends on the value andcosts assigned by the chooser to each alternative (incentive) and its perceived attainability, subject tosuch complicating factors as forecasting biases and time frame. Commitment to a goal pursuitlaunches a latent, time-binding brain process (a current concern) that sensitizes the individual torespond emotionally and to notice, recall, think about, dream about, and act on cues associated withthe goal pursuit. These processes affect one another and are subject to implicit (nonconscious) as wellas explicit influences. Goal pursuits vary according to whether the goal is an approach or avoidancegoal, the time frame for action, the anticipation of the details and difficulties of the goal pursuit, andthe degree of conflict with other goals. Emotional responses determine incentive values, serve asevaluative feedback during goal pursuits, and accompany consummation of or disengagement fromthe goal. The process of disengagement normally entails a sequence of emotional changes:invigoration, anger, depression, and recovery. Each of these components of goal choice and pursuitcan go awry, leading to a variety of difficulties that become reflected in anxiety, depression, alienation,interpersonal and occupational problems, substance abuse, suicide, and other forms of psychologicaldisturbance. Motivational structure (an individual’s pattern of goal striving) is an importantdeterminant of well-being, the sense that one’s life is meaningful, and self-regulation. The chapterbriefly considers the implications of the findings for counseling interventions for motivationalproblems that deter clients from choosing and pursuing the goals that can potentially bring themhappiness and fulfillment, considerations that are discussed at length in the book’s remainingchapters.

All living organisms must meet life’s challenges of obtaining nutrients, excreting toxic

substances, locating hospitable places, and reproducing themselves. Plants and animals

Handbook of Motivational Counseling: Goal-Based Approaches to Assessment and Intervention with Addictionand Other Problems, Second Edition. Edited by W. Miles Cox and Eric Klinger.� 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

evolved quite different strategies for addressing these challenges. Plants depend on their

immediate environments to supply their needs. In contrast, animals evolved the capacity to

move around and thus gained a degree of freedom from the not-too-tender mercies of their

most immediate environments. However, this freedom from total dependency also carries a

price: the imperative to find, pursue, and consummate the substances and conditions that

satisfy their needs – to pursue and attain goals.

Human goals may be small or large, trivial or important – from a few moments of

amusement or organizing a closet to finding a mate, having and successfully rearing

children, succeeding in a vocation, or achieving spiritual fulfillment. They may be positive

(appetitive), such as those just described, or negative (aversive), such as avoiding disease, a

bully, or a bad reputation. Somemore obviously bear on individual survival than others, and

some may become perverted in ways that jeopardize survival.

In psychology, the processes that drive goal striving are collectively called motivation.

This book and the approaches it contains are built around the notion that, to be effective, any

psychological intervention must address the client’s set of personal goals, whether large or

small, and the ways in which the client relates to those goals. Taken altogether, a client’s

goals and ways of relating to them are what this book refers to as the client’s motivational

structure. The approaches described in the chapters that follow focus on understanding,

assessing, and intervening to modify clients’ motivational structure. First, however, this

chapter introduces some motivational definitions and concepts and maps out some of what

scientific research has established about motivational systems – their nature; their influ-

ences on what people notice, recall, think about, feel, and do; and their implications for

well-being, psychopathology, and treatment.

MOTIVATION FORMALLY DEFINED

Different psychologists define what they mean by motivation somewhat differently.

Ferguson (1994) reflected a long tradition when he defined motivation as “the internal

states of the organism that lead to the instigation, persistence, energy, and direction of

behavior” (p. 429). Thus, Ferguson’s definition includes the effects of drives such as

hunger, emotional states such as anxiety and anger, and many other variations of inner

states. Second, the definition lists themain qualities of behavior that motivation is defined to

influence: its initiation, persistence, vigor, and direction.

Yet this definition leaves out mention of a crucial component, which Chaplin (1968) put

in when he defined motivation as a concept “to account for factors within the organism

which arouse, maintain, and channel behavior toward a goal” (p. 303). That is, motivated

behavior is also goal-directed behavior. One could thus combine the two definitions of

motivation: “the internal states of the organism that lead to the instigation, persistence,

energy, and direction of behavior toward a goal.” It is this combined definition that informs

this chapter and most of the book.

THE CENTRALITY OF MOTIVATION IN BRAIN AND MIND

If animals evolved with a motile strategy to go after the substances and conditions they

need, the most basic requirement for their survival is successful goal striving. It follows that

4 HANDBOOK OF MOTIVATIONAL COUNSELING

all animal evolution, right up to humans, must have centered on natural selection of

whatever facilitated attaining goals. Everything about humans must have evolved in the

service of successful goal striving – including human anatomy, physiology, cognition, and

emotion. These must therefore be understood in terms of their relationship to goal striving

and the motivational systems that make it possible.

In recent decades, neuroscientists have turned up dramatic evidence of the close connec-

tions between virtually all psychological processes and those associated with emotion and

goal striving. Ledoux (e.g., 1995) showed that in the brain sensory pathways bifurcate, some

leading from sense organs to the cerebral cortex, and others from sense organs to the limbic

system, which is heavily implicated in emotion. This suggests that sensory signals begin to

trigger emotional reactions at least as quickly as they trigger cognitiveprocesses that analyze

thesignals soas tomakemoredetailedsenseof them.Therearealsopathways fromthe limbic

system to the cortex and from the cortex to the limbic system, which provides a system by

whichemotional andcognitiveresponses to the signalcanalert, refine,andcorrect eachother.

Thus, brain anatomy indicates that emotional response and closely related motivational

processes are a central part of responding to something.

The centrality of emotional and motivational processes is also apparent in the work of

Antonio and Hanna Damasio and their colleagues. They have, for example, shown that

destruction of specific brain areas, such as the medial prefrontal cortex, leaves people

unable to stay on course toward their goals, substantially crippling their ability to lead

normal, satisfying lives (Damasio, 1994). The ventromedial prefrontal cortex appears to

integrate emotion-related signals from the limbic system with signals from various cortical

areas, including some that are necessary for planning and volition.Without this integration,

people become impulsive, make unrealistic plans, and are easily distracted from their goals.

Along similar lines, a controlled experiment showed that, unlike intact individuals, patients

with ventromedial prefrontal brain damage could not learn to avoid risky or nonoptimal

strategies such as betting in laboratory games (e.g., Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, &

Damasio, 1997; Clark et al., 2008). Thus, the particular brain damage of these patients

interfered with input from their emotional responses and correspondingly compromised

their ability to make appropriate, goal-related decisions.

Mounting evidence such as this confirms the centrality of motivational and emotional

processes in the organization of the brain. Correspondingly, it supports the parallel, older

evidence of their centrality to psychological organization, and it underlines the importance

for counselors and psychotherapists of understanding the interconnections with motiva-

tional processes and integrating applicable methods into treatment procedures.

IMPORTANT DISTINCTIONS REGARDING MOTIVATION

Motivational States versus Motivational Traits

There are also other important distinctions regarding motivation to keep in mind.

The definitions introduced earlier suggest that motivation refers to short-lived internal

states such as hunger or anger, but there is also in psychology a long history of

conceptualizing and measuring motivational factors as relatively enduring dispositions

or traits (e.g., Allport, 1937; Heckhausen, 1967, 1991; Jackson, Ahmed, & Heapy, 1976;

McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1953; Murray, 1938). For example, an individual

MOTIVATION AND THE THEORY OF CURRENT CONCERNS 5

not only may be trying hard to build a strong business, which could reflect achievement

motivation, but also may place high value on and invest much effort into doing many things

better than others and into improving on his or her previous performance. Then this

individual may be described as broadly achievement motivated, which constitutes the

enduring trait of high achievement motivation.

There are purposes for which conceiving motivation in terms of enduring dispositions is

very useful. For example, as many search committees and search firms know, when one is

selecting college professors or corporate executives, it would be helpful to ascertain what

kinds of goals typically interest them, because that knowledgemay shed light on their likely

performance and fitness for the position. However, characterizing someone in terms of

motivational traits can also blind one to the facts that these traits are broad generalizations

about an individual’s goal pursuits but that each goal pursuit represents a decision that is

influenced by a given set of factors, and that these factors, and the decisions they produce,

are subject to change. Especially for counselors and therapists, the possibility of changing

motivation and the methods for producing change are central to their enterprise. Thus,

although motivational dispositions can be useful ways to describe individuals, they are not

fixed quantities, but changeable.

Accordingly, this book is focused more on motivational states and conditions, which

cumulatively may lead to traits, than on the motivational traits themselves. When one can

change people’s decisions about the kinds of goals to pursue, one has by that fact also

changed motivational traits.

Motivation and Volition

Some writers on motivation, especially in the German psychological tradition (e.g.,

Heckhausen, 1991; Kuhl, 2001), restrict the term motivation to the processes and factors

that determinewhich goals an individual will pursue; they then classify as volition (from the

Latin root for thewill) the factors that regulate how the individual carries out the pursuit – its

persistence, vigor, and efficiency. Thus, in this usage, the termmotivation includes only the

initial factors that determine an individual’s choice of goals, leaving the rest to volition. In

contrast, in the American tradition the term motivation includes volition; volitional

processes are simply a subset of motivation. This chapter and most of the other chapters

in this volume abide by the broader American definition of motivation.

What is important here is to keep in mind the importance of volitional processes. They

are part of motivational structure, and they are part of what may need to change in

counseling. For example, when an individual gives up too easily in the face of difficulty or

uses self-defeating coping strategies such as procrastinating or ruminating, addressing

these is part of effective intervention. Thus, a comprehensive approach to motivational

counseling must include both a person’s choices of goals and the volitional means of

pursuing them.

Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Motivation

The field of motivational research distinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsicmotivation

(e.g., Ferguson, Hassin, & Bargh, 2008). Motivation is said to be intrinsic when an


individual pursues a goal that is valued for its own sake. That is, reaching the goal is not

just a step in attaining some further goal. For example, eating an ice cream cone for

pleasure or marrying for love are intrinsically motivated acts. Motivation is said to be

extrinsic when a goal is a stepping stone toward some further goal. For example, eating an

ice cream cone solely to gain weight or marrying solely to improve one’s social position

are extrinsically motivated acts. Acts that are purely extrinsically motivated yield only one

kind of satisfaction: the satisfaction of moving closer to attaining some other source of

satisfaction.

In this sense, extrinsically valued goals are really subgoals or means leading to an

ultimate goal. Consistent with this formulation, the emotions that a person feels toward a

goal are transferred to some extent to the activities and social relationships that lead to

the goal, at least until it has been reached (Fishbach, Shah, & Kruglanski, 2004); and

they are also transferred to other cues that are relevant to the goal (Ferguson &

Bargh, 2004).

Although the objectively same kind of act may be motivated intrinsically, extrinsically,

or in both ways, some kinds of goals are generally more likely to be motivated intrinsically

(e.g., visiting a national park) and others more likely to be motivated extrinsically (e.g.,

becoming rich). The balance of an individual’smotivational structure in this regard – that is,

the extent to which the individual’s goals are more often intrinsically versus extrinsically

valued – is associated with overall feelings of well-being and satisfaction with life and work

(Kasser & Ryan, 2001; Niemiec, Ryan, & Deci, 2009; Ryan, Sheldon, Kasser, & Deci,

1996; Schmuck, 2001).

Nevertheless, it is important to keep inmind that any extrinsically motivated act, which is

a step toward some other goal, is part of a chain of acts and subgoals that ultimately lead to

an intrinsically valued goal. What may very well be more important than whether particular

goals are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated is whether the intrinsically motivated goal

at the end of the chain is appetitive (e.g., having a happy home) or aversive (e.g., avoiding

arguments). People with more aversive goals are generally less satisfied with life and work

than those with fewer aversive goals (Elliot & Sheldon, 1998; Roberson, 1989; Roberson &

Sluss, Chapter 15, this volume). Satisfaction presumably also depends on whether the

ultimate intrinsically motivated goal is worth all the bother of the extrinsically motivated

activity leading up to it.

It is also important not to confuse the intrinsic-versus-extrinsic distinctionwith whether a

goal was self-chosen or assigned by someone else. Similarly, the distinction is not to be

confused with whether another person plays a role in the rewards of attaining a goal. Goals

imposed on one by others, or perhaps even just suggested by others, are likely to be

extrinsically motivated, in that pursuing the goal is likely to have the further purpose of

keeping the person who imposed it happy. Thus, the child carries out the trash when asked

to do so because of a desire to keep the parent’s emotional support. Keeping that support,

however, may be in part intrinsically motivated, in that the child enjoys for its own sake

relating to a supportive parent. Conversely, self-chosen goals may be extrinsically

motivated (e.g., taking a difficult college course so as to upgrade one’s credentials for

future employment).

In summary, it is a mistake to equate – as some current writers appear to do – intrinsic

motivation with desirable motivation and extrinsic with undesirable. Both are important

and necessary. However, the balance between them in an individual’s life and the concrete

forms they take can affect overall happiness.


Other Motivational Constructs

This chapter is unable to review all of the many other motivational constructs. However,

readers may wonder what happened to the traditional concepts that make up the main focus

of conventional introductory textbooks, constructs such as drive (e.g., hunger, thirst, and

sexual arousal), need or motive (e.g., for achievement or intimacy), and arousal.

Drive

The venerable concept of drive (e.g., Hull, 1953) remains an important source of

motivation as an aroused internal state that both invigorates mental and motor activity

and modulates the value of drive-related incentives. However, even Hull’s (1953) theory

supplemented it with incentive as a determinant of motivation, and subsequent evidence

(e.g., Black, 1965; Black & Cox, 1973; Klinger, 1971; Tomkins, 1962) has supported the

need for factors in addition to drive for predicting everyday human behavior. Drive may

be considered to perform two functions: to activate an organism and to modify the

values of various incentives, even if only temporarily. Thus, both rats and people, when

newly hungry, become more restless and give heightened priority to getting something

to eat.

Needs and Motives

The concept of need (e.g., Heckhausen, 1991; McClelland et al., 1953; Murray, 1938) has

evolved into a construct, which is today more commonly called motive rather than need,

that summarizes the value that an individual typically places on a certain class of incentives

(i.e., on potential goals). For example, an individual who generally places relatively high

intrinsic value on achievement incentives, such as winning races or intellectual contests or

doing well in one’s work, is said to have a high need or motive for achievement. Thus, like

drive, motives predict the values of different incentives for an individual, which is a crucial

component in the individual’s decision making regarding which goals to pursue (see below

and also Alsleben & Kuhl, Chapter 5, this volume; Correia, Murphy, & Butler, Chapter 2,

this volume).

Explicit and Implicit Motives

The two most common ways to assess people’s motives are to ask people about their

motives through questionnaires or to infer the motive strengths from imaginative crea-

tions, such as stories that people make up about pictures. The first, direct method produces

scores that represent explicit (i.e., self-attributed) motives, whereas the inferential method

produces scores that are thought to represent implicit motives – motives that are often

described as operating below the surface of an individual’s consciousness. It is well

established that measures of nominally the same explicit and implicit motives of the

same individuals are very poorly correlated (e.g., King, 1995), a fact that has cast doubts

on their validity. However, research (beginning with McClelland, Koestner, &


Weinberger, 1989) has shown that both are valid measures of two legitimately different

kinds of motives: those that an individual can articulate and that are responsive to social

and situational demands, and those that are ingrained in an individual’s intuitive

valuations of incentive outcomes.

These two motive types have rather different behavioral implications. People’s explicit,

self-attributed motives are related to the strength of their self-attributed commitments to

their goals, but emotional satisfaction is more likely to arise from attaining goals that are

consistent with implicit motives (i.e., implicit values). Thus, people whose explicit goals

are congruent with their implicit values experience a higher sense of well-being than

individuals with little such congruence (Baumann, Kaschel, & Kuhl, 2005; Brunstein,

Lautenschlager, Nawroth, P€ohlmann, & Schultheiss, 1995; Brunstein, Schultheiss, &

Gr€assman, 1998). Progress toward goals is associated with positive feelings much more

closely if the underlying implicit motives toward those goals are strong than if they are

weak, even when accompanied by strong explicit commitment to these goals (Schultheiss,

Jones, Davis, & Kley, 2008).

Although measures of nominally the same explicit and implicit motives are overall

largely uncorrelated, they are actually well correlated in people who are perceptive of what

is going on inside their bodies and who prefer to be consistent with themselves; they

are uncorrelated for people who lack this perceptiveness or tailor their self-presentation to

suit others (Thrash, Elliot, & Schultheiss, 2007). Interestingly, explicit achievement

motivation is correlated with measures of positive affect and well-being, but only for

people who express strong explicit commitment to their achievement goals (Job, Langens,

& Brandst€atter, 2009). Similarly, unpublished data indicate that positive affect is weakly

(about .20) but statistically significantly correlated with the proportion of a person’s goals

that are self-described as achievement or power goals (Stuchl�ıkov�a & Klinger, 2010).

These findings suggest a further explanation for the varied correspondence between

explicit and implicit measures of motives. It may be that when questionnaires focus on

concrete particulars, such as goals and emotions, people are better able to reveal personal

attributes that remain poorly expressed in the broad self-generalizations requested by most

explicit trait measures of motives. This possibility has important implications for motiva-

tional assessment and provides support for the kinds of measures, such as the Motivational

Structure Questionnaire and Personal Concerns Inventory, discussed in Chapters 7, 8, and 9

of this volume.

Of course, a person’s valuations of incentives, whether explicitly or implicitly valued, are

subject to change. Many incentives, such as a job promotion, a romantic relationship, or a

new house, carry multiple kinds of potential satisfactions. Mentally exploring incentives

that initially hold little implicit appeal for someone may reveal ways in which they may,

after all, satisfy the individual’s implicit values and thereby induce the person to pursue

them as explicit goals (Schultheiss & Brunstein, 1999).

There are clear implications for counseling in these findings. It is important to explore

clients’ implicit values, not just their explicit ones. There are classical picture-story

methods for assessing implicit motives (e.g., McClelland et al., 1953) and many later

variants, such as the Operant Motive Test (Alsleben & Kuhl, Chapter 5, this volume), but

more direct methods also exist. Assessment tools such as the Motivational Structure

Questionnaire and Personal Concerns Inventory (Chapters 7, 8, and 9, this volume) or the

Personal Projects Analysis (Little, Chapter 3, this volume) obtain ratings of individuals’

affective responses to their goals, which are likely to reveal aspects of implicit values.


GOAL PURSUITS AND THE CONCEPT OF CURRENT CONCERN

Pursuing a goal imposes some complex requirements on an individual. The intent must be

represented somehow in the brain from beginning to end – an example of prospective

memory (Brandimonte, Einstein, & McDaniel, 1996). When the memory is explicit and

conscious, Kuhl (2000, 2001) calls it intention memory. Moreover, goal pursuit requires

more than a passive memory of the pursuit; it requires a continuing state of sensitization to

stimuli relevant to the pursuit and a readiness to act – to seize opportunities for attaining the

goal even while not consciously thinking about it. To pursue goals efficiently, this state of

sensitization requires an implicit, latent process that we have dubbed a current concern –

the state of an individual between two time points, the one of becoming committed to

pursuing a particular goal and the other of either attaining the goal or giving up the pursuit.

As a later section of this chapter shows, there is now ample evidence confirming that goal

pursuits are accompanied by a pervasive biasing of cognitive processing – attention, recall,

and thought content – toward information associated with an individual’s goal pursuits.

It is worth reiterating two other properties of current concerns. First, there is a separate

such process – a separate concern – corresponding to each goal. Second, it is a latent

process, meaning that in and of itself it is not conscious. It certainly affects consciousness,

and individuals are probably conscious of most, if not all, of the goals undergirded by their

current concerns, but the concern construct refers to the underlying process, not just its

conscious representation. It labels the process of having a goal.

The construct of current concern as a latent brain process was first proposed as a scaffold

for further development of the theory (Klinger, 1971, 1975, 1977). That it was labeled a

latent brain process seemed a necessary assumption. Since then, brain-imaging studies of

goal-related phenomena have begun to identify brain regions related to its functions (e.g.,

Berkman & Lieberman, 2009; Kouneiher, Charron, & Koechlin, 2009). Thus, goals

assigned to one by others are probably represented by activity in lateral prefrontal and

lateral parietal cortex, whereas self-chosen goals are probably represented by activity in

medial prefrontal and medial parietal cortex. Short-term intentions, as represented by

preparatory sets for taking action, appear to entail activity in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

and superior frontal gyrus. Monitoring progress and responding to conflicts and discre-

pancies appear to activate the anterior cingulate cortex (Berkman & Lieberman, 2009).

Little is known about the loci for longer-term intentions or current concerns, but showing

people pictures related to their probable current concerns (in contrast to showing neutral

pictures) activates inferior frontal gyrus and precentral gyrus (Ihssen, Cox, Wiggett,

Fadardi, & Linden, in press).

Before and since the coining of the concept of current concern, other theorists have

offered other, somewhat similar time-binding concepts. The concepts of Einstellung,

Ustanovka, or set (Ach, 1910; Uznadze, 1966); intention (e.g., Alsleben &Kuhl, Chapter 5,

this volume; Gollwitzer, 1990; Heckhausen&Kuhl, 1985; Irwin, 1971; Kuhl, 2001); quasi-

need (Lewin, 1928); force (Lewin, 1938); and personal project (Little, 1983, Chapter 3, this

volume) are all constructs with time-binding properties and have more or less overlap with

the construct of current concern, but with variations in their theoretical properties. This is

not the place for a detailed comparison of these constructs. The important point is that

initiating a goal pursuit instates a persistent psychological process that influences cogni-

tion, action, and emotional response in ways that give it special priority.

The concept of current concern provides a unifying framework for motivational

processes in animal and human behavior and suggests important aspects of animal and


human behavioral evolution. It has generated empirically verified predictions regarding the

contents of people’s attention, recall, thoughts, dreams, moods, sense of one’s life being

meaningful, and substance use (see subsequent sections of this chapter and Chapter 6, this

volume). It has also stimulated the development of new approaches to motivational

assessment (Chapters 7, 8, and 9, this volume) and psychological intervention (Chapters

11 through 16, this volume).

GOALS AND EMOTIONS

Goal pursuits are pervasively intertwined with emotions. Emotions play crucial roles in

choosing goals, monitoring their pursuit, steering cognitive processes within them, and

reacting to their outcomes. Subsequent sections of this chapter explore these propositions.

The purpose of this section is to lay out the terrain and to examine some emotion-related

concepts. (In this chapter, the term emotion includes conscious affect and all of the many

other implicit and physiological processes that are components of emotion.)

Emotions constitute states of organisms that directly or indirectly affect virtually every

process, psychological or biological. Emotional responses constitute changes in organismic

states. They have long been recognized as components of instinctive behavior (e.g.,

Darwin, 1872/1985; McDougall, 1921) and as preparing an individual to act in particular

ways. For example, participants were asked to look at strings of letters on a screen and as

quickly as possible either press a key (an approach response) or take their finger off a key

(a withdrawal response) if the string was a word (Wentura, Rothermund, & Bak, 2000).

Participants whowere asked to press keys did so faster if theword was positively toned than

if it was negatively toned, and thosewhowere asked towithdraw their fingers did so faster if

the word was negatively toned than if it was positively toned. The valences of the words

presumably evoked incipient emotional responses, and these were evidently linked to a

motor disposition to move accordingly – to approach positive things and withdraw from

negative ones – that facilitated or interfered with the corresponding acts of pressing or

releasing a key on a keyboard. (See also Cacioppo, Priester, & Berntson, 1993; Neumann&

Strack, 2000.) Such studies thus demonstrate the connections between emotional response

and physical movement. Extensive evidence has also linked emotions to a wide range of

neurohumoral states and immune function (e.g., Fredrickson, 2009; Lewis, Haviland-

Jones, & Barrett, 2008). Emotions are thus much more than just the subjective feelings or

the bodily sensations that people usually associate with them.

There is a growing consensus among emotion researchers (e.g., Cacioppo, Gardner, &

Berntson, 1999; Kuhl, 2001; Watson, Wiese, Vaidya, & Tellegen, 1999) that the different

emotions people feel can be organizedwithin two dimensions or categories, that is, as either

positive or negative affect. There is good reason to believe that these two dimensions

correspond to separate reaction systems in the brain (Cacioppo et al., 1999) with somewhat

different functions and consequences, such as for accuracy of recall (Kensinger, 2009) and,

certainly, subjective experience. When people experience positive affect, they feel plea-

surably engaged with their environment; when they experience negative affect, they feel

distressed and dissatisfied (Watson & Kendall, 1989).

An affective change is a change in affect from its previous state. The change may be

desirable (an increase in positive affect or a decrease in negative affect) or undesirable

(a decrease in positive affect or an increase in negative affect). Affective change is a central

motivational concept, because it is ultimately the essence of what people are motivated to


achieve. As noted by innumerable writers from (at latest) Aristotle onward (Stocker, 1996),

people strive for things that will make them feel better by either giving them pleasure or

relieving their discomfort.

Beyond this truism, important as it is, research has uncovered a remarkable range of other

ways in which changing from a positive to a negative affective state or vice versa influences

basic psychological functions. The changes involve peripheral physiology, neurophysiol-

ogy, types of cognitive processing, and even the ability to consult one’s own values and to

learn from experience (e.g., Alsleben & Kuhl, Chapter 5, this volume; Kuhl, 2000, 2001).

The relation between emotion and goal striving has become progressively better docu-

mented.Affect (the conscious experience of emotion) constitutes a person’s basic system for

recognizing the value of something, both of potential goals (or, negatively, of impediments

and threats) and of progress toward goals (Damasio, 1994; Klinger, 1977; Pervin, 1983; see

alsoBaumeister, Vohs, DeWall, &Zhang, 2007).When people are asked to rate the intensity

of the emotions thatwords arouse in themandhowclosely thewords are associatedwith their

goalpursuits, thecorrelations tend tobeabout .60 (e.g.,Bock&Klinger, 1986).Ofcourse, the

affective and broader emotional responses that lead to evaluative judgments are generally

embedded in a more complex process that includes other components. Some emotional

responses are innately hard-wired to certain schematic features of stimuli (e.g., revulsion at a

foul odor) and hence require a perceptual process; others are responses to conditioned

stimuli, which require a learning history; and still others depend on even more complex

inferences about the significance of a stimulus, such as emotional reactions to a government

policy. Nevertheless, the weight of evidence strongly suggests that it is the emotional

response or an anticipated emotional response that determines the value that a person places

on something. The chapter discusses this point at greater length in a later section.

Not everything to which an individual responds emotionally becomes a goal, but it does

constitute a potential goal. To provide a term for this larger class of potential goals, the term

incentive refers to an object or event that a person expects will bring about an affective

change. Corresponding to the two broad kinds of affect, incentives can be either positive or

negative. People would like to acquire positive incentives that would enhance their positive

affect. They would like to avoid, escape, or get rid of negative incentives that would

increase their negative affect.

A goal, then, is a particular incentive that a person decides to attain because of the

expectation that it will cause desirable changes in affect. However, for various reasons,

people do not strive to attain all of the incentives that could potentially bring them the

changes that they would like. For example, they might (a) feel that they do not know how to

go about attaining the goal that they want, (b) imagine that doing so would also bring them

unhappiness, (c) believe that they are unlikely to succeed, or (d) find that time constraints

force a choice among alternatives. Goals, therefore, constitute a limited selection from

among a person’s incentives.

HOW GOAL PURSUITS BEGIN

Commitment

Goal pursuits generally have an identifiable beginning when the individual selects an

incentive and forms an inner commitment to pursuing it as a goal. This commitment instates


a current concern about the goal and constitutes an irreversible change, in the sense that the

goal cannot be relinquished without a psychological cost, such as disappointment or

depression.

That commitments are discrete events is evident not only in the costs of relinquishment

but also in that commitment to a goal produces several changes. First, it changes the initial

effects of sudden impediments; before commitment to a goal, impediments make pursuing

the incentive as a goal less attractive, but after a commitment impediments initially lead to

invigorated pursuit and deepened commitment (Klinger, 1975). When people are firmly

committed to a goal that they have not attained yet and are then reminded of all that

remains left to do to attain the goal, their motivation toward the goal rises; if their

commitment is weak, this kind of reminder does little to increase motivation (Koo &

Fishbach, 2008). Likewise, making concrete plans regarding when, where, and how to

pursue a goal (implementation intentions) helps people attain their goals only if they also

have a clear commitment to attaining those goals (goal intentions; Sheeran, Webb, &

Gollwitzer, 2005).

Second, commitments also change mind-sets (e.g., Gollwitzer, Heckhausen, & Steller,

1990). Before commitment, while the individual is still weighing alternatives and

reserving the decision as to which incentive to pursue, the individual is in an evaluative

mind-set, characterized by relative objectivity about the alternatives and openness to a

wide range of information. After commitment, the individual enters an implementalmind-

set characterized by partiality toward the chosen goal and a mental focus on the steps

necessary to reach it. Third, as indicated in subsequent sections of this chapter, the current

concerns instated by commitments sensitize the individual to respond to cues associated

with the goal pursuit.

Determinants of Commitment: Expectancy � Value Approaches

In any given circumstance, people are generally faced with choices of which incentives they

will pursue. They face choices of playmates, careers or jobs, partners with whom to spend a

coffee break or a lifetime, items on a restaurant menu, vacation destinations, whether to talk

in class, and so on. Often one alternative is so much more attractive than the others, or so

much less unattractive, that the individual may not feel as if there is a choice, but the choice

is generally there.

If there is a choice, what determines which incentive the individual will choose as a goal?

A long theoretical tradition in psychology and economics, which may loosely be termed

Value�Expectancy formulations (e.g., Feather, 1982; Van Eerde & Thierry, 1996), holds

that two important variables determine this choice: the value that the person attributes to

each alternative incentive and the person’s expectancy (subjective probability) of being

able to attain it. In the simplest form of Value�Expectancy theory (which economists

generally term subjective expected utility theory), one multiplies the value assigned by an

individual to each alternative by the individual’s expectancy (perceived likelihood) of

being able to attain it, and predicts that the individual will choose as a goal the alternative

yielding the highest product.

There are many elaborations, modifications, and qualifications of this approach, but its

general outlines have survived. Although attempts to empirically test the nature of the

relationship between value and expectancy remain inconclusive because of unresolved


methodological problems (see Kuhl, 1986, pp. 409–410; Rustichini, 2009; Van Eerde &

Thierry, 1996), the approach has proven useful in making concrete predictions of goal

choice.

This section dwells on expected value theory for two principal reasons. First, it forms a

useful framework for thinking about how people choose their goals, and, second, it suggests

important features of goal pursuits, which can be incorporated into tools for assessing goals

and motivational structure (Cox & Klinger, Chapter 7, this volume).

Value and Emotion

The notion that things have a certain amount of value assumes that the desirability of

everything can be compared to that of everything else. But how does one compare an apple

with an orange, a yacht, and a symphony? Economists might answer that everything would

have to bemeasurable by some common currency, such as dollars. However, moneywas not

always the metric for value, and, anyway, before one can decide how much money

something is worth to oneself, one has to have a subjective sense of its value.

There does, in fact, appear to be such a subjective common metric, or common currency,

and research is beginning to identify it both in subjective experience and in the brain (e.g.,

Rustichini, 2009; Winkielman, Knutson, Paulus, & Trujillo, 2007). To begin with the

common currency in subjective experience (see further below for the brain processes),

humans and many other species appear to have evolved an intuitive representation of value,

and the likely code resides in anticipated emotion. That is, the value of each incentive – of

each potential goal object – is the degree of affective change that the person expects to

derive from it (Klinger, 1977; see also Loewenstein, Weber, Hsee, & Welch, 2001;

Mellers, 2000). Insofar as an incentive has positive value, people expect that attaining

it will increase their happiness more than their unhappiness, and they expect to experience

sorrow if they fail to achieve it. In other words, people attribute value to their goal objects on

the basis of the potential emotional payoffs for them.

Putting Value and Expectancy Together in PredictingChoice of Goals

According to the Value�Expectancy view, both value and expectancy (likelihood of

attaining the goal) must be substantial for people to pursue a goal. Even if a person greatly

values a particular incentive, there will be nomotivation to pursue it if it seems unattainable

or attainable only at an unreasonable cost in time, effort, and resources. Likewise, even if

the chances of reaching particular goals are judged to be high, individuals will be

unmotivated to pursue them unless they expect a suitable benefit. In the multiplicative

relationship of Value�Expectancy, if either variable is zero therewill be zeromotivation to

attain the goal, regardless of how high the other might be.

The most important point here is that expected emotional return is probably the prime

determinant of whether a person becomes committed to pursuing a particular goal.

However, there are some important qualifications to this generalization, which are

discussed in subsequent sections.


Neuroscientific Support for Value � Expectancy Theory

Amid the many criticisms and qualifications of this theory, it may have seemed to be simply

a useful abstraction, but recent studies with both monkeys (single-cell recordings) and

humans (brain imaging) have indicated its concrete biological reality. That is, they have

found either single neurons or brain sites whose activity varies in accordance with the value

or expectancy of a reward.

For example, Tobler, Fiorillo, and Schultz (2005) conditioned macaque monkeys to

associate different stimuli (visual patterns) with differing food values (amounts of juice)

and differing probabilities of obtaining the juice. After the conditioning, particular

individual dopamine neurons (mostly part of the substantia nigra and ventral tegmental

area) showed higher activity levels that accorded with the reward value associated with the

stimuli and also with expectancies of reward.

These reward-sensitive pathways are also linked to positive affect. Furthermore, if the

reward was exactly what the monkey had been led to expect, neural activity in these

pathways remained flat, as if to reflect lack of excitement; if reward was greater than

expected, neural activity rose accordingly; and if reward was below expectation, neural

activity showed suppression, which one might interpret as disappointment. There are

similar findings with regard to expectancy. Thus, the activity of single monkey neurons in

the anterior cingulate corresponded to the probability of reward (Shidara &

Richmond, 2002).

Something as complex as value, preference, or choice is not, of course, localized in one

brain site. Their representations are carried forward in the brain and integrated with other

relevant information so as to foster choice and decision, most likely in various parts of the

prefrontal cortex such as particular neurons in the orbitofrontal area (Padoa-Schioppa &

Assad, 2006, 2008).

Working with humans, Knutson, Taylor, Kaufman, Peterson, and Glover (2005) found

parallel results using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess brain

processes, and money rather than juice as the rewards. A number of brain structures were

active in relation to expectations of winning or losing different amounts of money. Most

clearly, activity in nucleus accumbens reflected the anticipated amount of reward; activity

in medial prefrontal cortex reflected the probability of reward and most likely also

integrated the anticipated amount of the reward (i.e., value) with the probability of

receiving it (i.e., expectancy).

Knutson et al.’s (2005) participants also rated the valence of their emotions (positive or

negative) and levels of emotional arousal, as well as their estimated probability of receiving

a reward. The emotional arousal ratings correlated significantly with activity in nucleus

accumbens. Probability ratings were correlated with activity in medial prefrontal cortex but

not with activity in nucleus accumbens. Presumably, these different strands of information

become integrated in prefrontal cortex, perhaps especially in its medial and orbitofrontal

regions (Clark et al., 2008; Winkielman et al., 2007).

The division of brain loci between initial response to the value of a reward in

dopaminergic pathways, such as ventral striatum, including nucleus accumbens, versus

expectancies (probability of success and calculation of risk) in prefrontal cortical areas

has been found repeatedly in other investigations (e.g., McClure, Ericson, Laibson,

Loewenstein, & Cohen, 2007; Xue et al., 2009). For example, choosing between a smaller


reward now versus a larger reward in the future activated regions of the lateral prefrontal

cortex (McClure, Laibson, Loewenstein, & Cohen, 2004). Furthermore, the lateral and

medial prefrontal cortex regions are themselves differentiated according to the kind of

processing required of them. More anterior areas may have evolved later in evolution to

handle more complex tasks (Kouneiher et al., 2009), perhaps such as judgments about the

likelihood of success in pursuing an incentive as a goal.

The point here is that neuroscience is establishing a division in the processing of

incentives: evaluating them, on one hand, in dopaminergic areas (which are linked to

positive affect) as if they were immediately available, and, on the other hand, in the lateral

prefrontal cortex, calculating the odds of obtaining them. Of course, the activity in

dopaminergic pathways that are associated with imminent reward also eventually reaches

the prefrontal cortex. Areas of the medial prefrontal cortex recur as a likely site for

integrating these different sources of information to arrive at an individual’s final choices.

Thus, when Haynes et al. (2007) asked people to choose between two tasks and to hold that

intention for a few seconds before acting on it, the investigators were able to “read” which

task these participants were choosing from differential fMRI patterns in the medial

prefrontal cortex. (See also Egner, 2009; Seitz, Franz, & Azari, 2009.) Furthermore, a

person’s decisions about which movement to make can be detected in prefrontal and

parietal regions before the decision becomes conscious, sometimes up to 10 seconds

beforehand (Soon, Brass, Heinz, & Haynes, 2008).

To return to the issue of value as anticipated emotional payoff, these neuroscientific

findings link incentive value with emotional processes, consistent with current-concerns

theory (e.g., Klinger, 1977) and a number of earlier theories, such as such as those of O. H.

Mowrer, S. S. Tomkins, and P. T. Young. The new findings also support expected value

theory, both in supporting the partial dissociation of processing of expectancy from

processing of value and in indicating the integration of expectancy with value at higher

cortical levels. They are also consistent with Epstein’s (e.g., 2003) cognitive-experiential

self-theory.

Complications in Applying the Expectancy � Value Approach

There are a number of complications in applying the Expectancy � Value approach.

Balancing Value Against Costs

In predicting whether a person will choose a goal, one must balance value against costs.

For example, the incentive may be something of relatively low absolute value (e.g., going

to see a particular film), but if the cost of pursuing this incentive is also modest and

attaining it is likely to bring positive emotion, there is a good chance that the individual

will pursue it. On the other hand, a person may place great intrinsic value on an incentive,

such as taking a cruise around the world, and yet not choose this as a goal because of its

likely costs. These costs may include opportunity costs, which are the incentives one

would have to forgo, as when the world cruise might require losing a highly attractive job

opportunity.


Extrinsic Consequences

The value of an incentive may depend on a variety of extrinsic components – ways in which

it affects one’s ability to reach other goals. For example, becoming a physician may be a

positive incentive for someone because the individual expects it to lead to high social status,

respect, financial returns, and becoming more competitive in the search for a desirable

mate, which are its extrinsic consequences, in addition to the intrinsic pleasure of feeling

needed and making an important contribution to society.

Erroneous Affective Forecasting

People often miscalculate their future emotional reactions to a particular event, which

should theoretically distort their valuations. Thus, one’s present mood state colors

estimates of future emotion – such as estimating greater future joy if currently feeling

good – although often in complex ways (Buehler, McFarland, Spyropoulos, & Lam, 2007),

especially when one is cognitively overloaded or if the timing of the future event is not

specified (Gilbert, Gill, & Wilson, 2002).

Furthermore, people underestimate their future liking for things if they believe that once

they receive them, they will no longer be able to change their choice (Gilbert &

Ebert, 2002). They tend to overestimate the intensity (Wilson, Meyers, & Gilbert, 2001)

and duration (Gilbert, Pinel, Wilson, Blumberg, & Wheatley, 1998; Wilson, Wheatley,

Meyers, Gilbert, & Axsom, 2000) of future emotional reactions to both positive and

negative events. These distortions are reduced by having people consider in greater detail

the context of their activities and lives at and after the time of the future event whose impact

they are forecasting (Gilbert et al., 2002; Wilson et al., 2000), as well as reflecting on their

inner emotional coping skills for reducing negative affect (Gilbert et al., 1998).

Individual and Situational Differences in the Relative Weightingof Value and Expectancy

The extent to which people take probability of success and incentive value into account

varies, both from person to person (e.g., Shah & Higgins, 1997) and from time to time.

Some people are more attracted by the emotional payoff of the likely reward, and others by

the likelihood of succeeding in obtaining it. Moreover, people in general are more likely to

pay attention to the incentive value (i.e., emotional payoff) of incentives that are reachable

only in the distant future than of those in which success or failure is near in time, but are

more likely to pay attention to their chances of obtaining the incentive if it is near in time

rather than far off (Liberman & Trope, 1998). Finally, there may be situations in which

people dispense with probabilistic thinking, such as situations that are very familiar or that

other people partially control (Rottenstreich & Kivetz, 2006).

Delay Discounting

Imagine having to decide between two business propositions. In both instances, you have to

perform a certain service, whether it is shoveling snow off a driveway or providing


statistical consultation. One proposition will pay you immediately after you perform the

service, and the other will pay you in 30 days. If both offer the same amount of money for

the same service, most people would choose the one offering immediate payment. If the

delayed-payment proposition were to offer an extra 5%, how many people would prefer

waiting for it rather than taking the other offer of immediate payment of slightly less?

Probably not very many. How much more would the proposition for payment in 30 days

have to offer tomake it fully competitivewith the proposition for immediate payment? How

much more for payment in six months? A year?

Research has repeatedly found that in making such intertemporal choices, people and

animals alike discount the effective value of delayed rewards (e.g., Ainslie, 1975; Berns,

Laibson, & Loewenstein, 2007; Loewenstein, 1996). The longer the delay, the greater is the

discount – hence the term delay discounting. The drop-off for humans is much less steep

than it is for other species, for some of whom reward value may drop to zero in a matter of

seconds. For humans, future rewards may retain at least some value for decades, but some

discounting remains in force.

Effective value falls more steeply at first and then ever more gradually, yielding

something like a concave hyperbolic function. Thus, seemingly equal rewards – and

perhaps even equal Value�Expectancy products – exert different degrees of influence on

choices, depending on the anticipated delay for receiving the rewards.

Why should people place greater weight on an imminent reward than on the same

reward offered later? One possibility is the greater risk that something unforeseen could

interfere with actually collecting a farther-off reward, thereby lowering expectancy, but

Loewenstein (1996) has another explanation: that value is determined by “visceral”

influences, such as hunger, joy, and fear, which are stronger when a reward is imminent

than when it is far off in time. In fact, when one remains in the presence of a reward but

has seemingly decided for good reasons to put off enjoying it, one may experience a

preference reversal, in which one changes one’s mind and succumbs to the temptation to

enjoy it now rather than wait for the greater benefit (Ainslie, 1975; Berns et al., 2007;

Loewenstein, 1996).

This process presumably plays an important role in dieters eating their whole dessert

now; recovering alcoholics, at a bar with their friends, succumbing to drinking alcohol;

shoppers making an unplanned impulse purchase; and so on. This is probably a process of

the dopamine systems, especially the ventral striatum, which are activated strongly by

present and imminent incentives, overwhelming the inhibitory processes that emanate from

the prefrontal cortex (as described above).

There are important individual differences in the relative strengths of these brain

systems, which presumably account for some of what makes some people more resistant

than others to temptation. For example, Hariri et al. (2006) found that the strength of an

individual’s activity in the ventral striatum correlated significantly with the amount of that

person’s delay discounting of monetary rewards. (See also Correia, Butler, & Murphy,

Chapter 2, this volume, for further discussion of delay discounting, especially in regard to

individual differences.)

There are also some nonobvious situational influences. For example, after rating the

attractiveness of attractive women’s faces shown in photos, men had a steeper delay

discount for monetary incentives than before the rating task (Wilson &Daly, 2004). That is,

after the ratings, their preference for receiving immediate but smaller amounts of money

instead of later larger amounts increased. This effect was absent if they had been rating


photos of cars. Most likely, rating the faces stimulated the dopamine system, which

remained strengthened while these men chose their monetary rewards.

There are also some other factors that affect the operation of delay discounting. Berns

et al. (2007) propose two more of these: anticipation and representation.

Anticipation of a reward or punishment constitutes a mental state that may itself have

positive or negative value. For example, the tension of waiting for something may be

experienced as uncomfortable and could lead people to choose to receive it immediately

rather then later. On the other hand, there is the phenomenon of the birthday gift sequence,

in which people often prefer to receive the less valuable gifts first and the most valuable gift

last, presumably because the reverse order would lead to a succession of let-down feelings

as gift values diminish.

Representation – that is, how the delays are framed – also seems to affect the delay

discount rate. For example, drawing special attention to the passage of time in a delay

appears to steepen the discount rate (Berns et al., 2007).

Resource Depletion

Making choices and exercising self-control appear to draw on a common pool of mental

resources, a pool that can be depleted in a way analogous to physical fatigue from

continuous exertion (e.g., Vohs et al., 2008). Thus, having to make many choices in a

short period of time, or having to exercise self-control, weakens the ability to muster the

resources for subsequent choices or self-control, which degrades the quality of decision

making and leaves people vulnerable to succumbing to temptations that are contrary to their

long-term interests.

Satisficing

People are often willing to settle for good enough rather than insisting on getting the very

best alternative. This is called satisficing (Schwartz et al., 2002; Simon, 1956). Neverthe-

less, despite all of these qualifications, expected emotional gain remains the most reliable

determinant of goal choice.

Implications of the Value � Expectancy Framework for MotivationalCounseling

TheValue� Expectancy framework has a number of implications for motivational counsel-

ing. For example, a depressed or substance-abusing client may be forgoing potentially

satisfying nonsubstance incentives because of pessimism about being able to attain them.

Depression lowers incentive values (see Klinger, 1993, for a review), which makes most

incentives less attractive; and conflicts among goals (Michalak, Heidenreich, & Hoyer,

Chapter 4, this volume) reduce their attractiveness, which further discourages people

from pursuing them. Substance use competes with nonsubstance incentives and may be

chosen if thenonsubstance incentives are sufficiently unattractive (Cox&Klinger,Chapter 7,

this volume; Correia, Chapter 2, this volume; Glasner, Chapter 13, this volume). Sufficient

lack of interest in earthly satisfactions may dispose people toward suicide (e.g., King


et al., 2001; Klinger, 1977; Snyder, 1994; Williams, 1997). Here, motivational interven-

tions to revalue incentives and instill reality-based optimism can change the balance of

motivational structure and hence clients’ behavior (Cox & Klinger, Chapter 11, this

volume; de Jong-Meyer, Chapter 14, this volume; Jones & Young, Chapter 20, this

volume; McMurran, Sellen, & Campbell, Chapter 10, this volume; Roberson & Sluss,

Chapter 15, this volume; Schroer, Fuhrmann, & de Jong-Meyer, Chapter 12, this volume;

Snyder, 1994;Willutzki&Koban, Chapter 18, this volume). The various factors described

above that distort choices and other decisions, such as erroneous affective forecasting,

delay discounting, and resource depletion, provide important considerations for

counselors’ analyses of clients’ decisions and self-ratings.

Hereditary, Environmental, and Developmental Influenceson Goal Choices

There are, of course, many influences on the goals that people choose to pursue – influences

on what people come to value and expect. Learning experiences through exposure to

various incentives codetermine the emotional payoff expected of them. Self-perceptions of

physical and mental abilities, social status, and social support, as well as perceptions of

opportunities and social norms, codetermine expectancies. Some of these factors are

influenced by genetic endowment, and many of them change in the course of individual life

span development.

Systematic research on these questions is still relatively new. Working with a Finnish

sample of older female pairs of twin who listed their goals with the Personal Projects

Analysis (Little, 1983; see also Chapter 3 this volume), Salmela-Aro et al. (2009) reported

significant and substantial hereditary (additive genetic) effects – 44% to 53% of the

variance – on goals grouped as “health and functioning,” “independent living-related,” and

“close relationships.” Environmental influences predominated for goals grouped as

“physical activity-related,” “care of others,” and “cultural activities.”

There are also clear-cut developmental influences on choices of goals. For example, in a

10-year longitudinal study, during which people who were initially Finnish university

students characterized their goals on five occasions using the Personal Projects Analysis,

Salmela-Aro, Aunola, and Nurmi (2007) reported changes in patterns of goal striving as the

sample moved from emerging adulthood to young and middle adulthood, from being

students to employment, marriage, and parenthood. As one might expect, there were

declines in goals related to education, friendship, and travel, and increases in goals related

to work, family, and health.

HOW GOAL PURSUITS UNFOLD

The course of a goal pursuit can be thought of in control theory terms (Carver &

Scheier, 1998, 2009). There is a feedforward component, in that the goal sets up criteria

for the priority the individual will place on processing various future stimuli, as well as

some specifications as to how the individual will respond. Having decided to pursue a

particular goal, a person becomes sensitized to respond to stimuli associated with that goal

pursuit (Klinger, 1971, 1975, 1977, 1996). The stimuli – cues –may be external (e.g., words

or pictures related to the goal pursuit) or internal (e.g., thoughts or mental images related to


the goal pursuit). Sensitization means that encountering one of these cues increases the

likelihood of responding to them – with goal-directed actions if that seems appropriate or,

more often, withmental activity such as the thoughts andmental images of mindwandering.

People are more likely to recall such cues and to think about them than they are to recall and

think about other cues. Response is often extremely fast, making it clear that goal-related

cues receive high priority in cognitive processing.

There is also a feedback component to goal pursuits (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1998, 2009;

Klinger, 1977). People continuously monitor the extent to which their thoughts and actions

are advancing them toward their goals. If the feedback is favorable, they proceed according

to plan; if the feedback is unfavorable, indicating that what they are doing is not helping as

much as planned, they may adjust their actions to obtain better results. An important part of

this feedback process – its evaluative component – is emotional. Positive emotions in

reaction to events signal that the goal pursuit is on course; negative emotions – especially

fear and depression – signal imminent or actual failures. This emotional component may

occur before or without the person consciously recognizing it (e.g., Winkielman &

Berridge, 2004; Winkielman, Berridge, & Wilbarger, 2005).

Effects on Attention, Memory, Recall, Dreams, and Action

The evidence for the effects of current concerns – of having a goal – on cognition is by now

very strong. Initial investigations of this model asked participants to listen to series of two

different but similar, simultaneous, 15-minute narratives on audiotape, one narrative to

each ear. At particular time points, they heard passages in one ear that were associated with

their own concerns and, simultaneously, passages going to the other ear that were related to

another’s concerns. Participants spent significantly more time listening to passages

associated with their own concerns than to passages associated with others’ concerns,

recalled those passages related to their own concerns much more often, and had thought

content that (by ratings of judges who were blind to anything else about these participants)

was much more often related to the passages associated with their own concerns than to the

other passages (Klinger, 1978). Hearing words associated with one’s current concerns

evokes electrodermal orienting responses (skin conductance changes in the palm of the

hand that indicate attentional shifts), and spontaneous electrodermal activity is dispropor-

tionately accompanied by current-concern-related thoughts (Nikula, Klinger, & Larson-

Gutman, 1993). For example, visual stimuli (human faces) that experimenters paired with

different sizes of monetary rewards led to greater attention to the heavily rewarded faces

(Raymond & O’Brien, 2009). Recent research using fMRI has shown much greater

activation of certain brain regions when people were exposed to pictures related to

common current concerns than when exposed to neutral pictures (see Figure 1.1; Ihssen,

Cox, Wiggett, Fadardi, & Linden, in press). Further evidence is described in subsequent

sections. These findings support the inference that having a goal, with its underlying current

concern, sensitizes people to respond with special attention to cues, whether to externally

encountered faces or words spoken, or to internal thoughts and images.

A side effect of focusing attention on goal-related cues is to narrow it at the expense of

missing other cues. For example, associating large monetary rewards with particular

nonsense-shaped stimuli, which presumably associates them with a goal of earning money,

bent subsequent attention toward them and away from poorly rewarded shapes for days


afterward (Della Libera & Chelazzi, 2009). Being in a positive mood associated with a

desire for something may also narrow attention in a more general way. For example,

showing people pictures of attractive desserts led them to focus more on the details of

subsequent stimuli (Navon letters) than showing them more neutral pictures (Harmon-

Jones & Gable, 2009).

Automaticity of the Effects

Subsequent studies of both waking and sleeping participants has indicated that the effects of

current concerns on cognitive processes are apparently nonconscious and automatic rather

than attributable to a conscious process, such as deliberately focusing on goal-related

stimuli. In fact, goal-related stimuli seem to impose an extra cognitive-processing load even

when they are peripheral and participants are consciously ignoring them; when asked to

judge as quickly as possible whether a string of letters on a screen constitutes a word, goal-

related distractor stimuli, even though supposedly irrelevant and unattended, slow the

lexical decisions about the target words (Young, 1987).

Similar effects have been shown in yet another cognitive process, Stroop and quasi-

Stroop procedures. In these procedures, people are presented with words on a screen and

instructed to name the font color of the words as quickly as possible. Participants in these

experiments name font colors more slowly when the words are related to one of their own

concerns than when they are not. This reaction time difference between own-concern-

related stimuli and neutral stimuli in naming font color is a measure of attentional bias

toward the concern-related stimuli.

The Stroop studies varied widely in cues and populations. Some presented cues for

concerns tailored to individual participants versus neutral material (Riemann, Amir, &

Louro, 1995; Riemann & McNally, 1995; Williams, Mathews, & McLeod, 1996). Others

Concern Pictures

Be

ta

Inferior

Frontal Gyrus

Precentral

Gyrus

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

Neutral Pictures

Figure 1.1 Mean beta values for goal-related and neutral pictures in the inferior frontal gyrusand precentral gyrus (after Ihssen, Cox, Wiggett, Fadardi, & Linden, in press. Reprinted withpermission ofOxfordUniversity Press, Inc (www.oup.com)). Beta values represent the degree ofactivation of a brain region when exposed to a picture, where activation is assessed throughfMRI measures of blood oxygenation levels in the region. Participants were adults whosealcohol consumption was light (21 units of alcohol per week or fewer for men, and 14 units perweek or fewer for women).


presented alcohol or other substance cues (versus neutral or general concern cues) to

participant groups that differed in their substance consumption patterns (Bauer &

Cox, 1998; Cox, Blount, & Rozak, 2000; Cox, Brown, & Rowlands, 2003; Cox, Fadardi,

& Pothos, 2006; Cox, Hogan, Kristian, & Race, 2002; Cox, Yeates, & Regan, 1999;

Fadardi, Ziaee, & Shamloo, 2009; Johnsen, Laberg, Cox, Vaksdal, & Hugdahl, 1994;

Sharma, Albery, & Cook, 2001; Stetter, Ackermann, Bizer, & Straube, 1995; Stormark,

Laberg, Nordby, & Hugdahl, 2000). One (Moskowitz, 2002) experimentally activated

common goals (and replicated the effect using a non-Stroop method), and at least one

presented food-related and neutral stimuli to obese or dieting individuals versus normal-

weight or underweight people (Fadardi, Moghadaszadeh, & Rezazadeh, 2009).

In the visual probe method, participants are shown successive, briefly presented pairs of

pictures, such as a picture of an alcoholic beverage on the left and another picture unrelated

to alcohol on the right. On each trial, after the pictures vanish, there is a screen with a dot (or

other, similar probe) in place of one of the pictures. The participant’s task is as quickly as

possible to press one of two response buttons to indicate whether the probe was on the right

or the left. Heavy drinkers, unlike light drinkers, pressed more quickly when the probe

replaced an alcohol-related picture than when it replaced an alternative picture (e.g.,

Schoenmakers et al., in press; Townshend & Duka, 2001), indicating perceptual preference

for the alcohol-related location. Opiate addicts displayed a similar probe bias toward

the drug location; in contrast, successfully treated addicts displayed a negative bias

(Constantinou et al., 2010).

Thus, results have been consistent in finding attentional biases toward concern-related

content (or substance-related content in the case of heavy users). The slower color naming

for concern-related Stroop stimuli than for neutral stimuli suggests that the brain gives

processing priority to the concern-related features of the stimuli and processes other

features such as color later.

Even when people are asleep, concern-related stimuli influence dream content much

more reliably than do other stimuli (Hoelscher, Klinger, & Barta, 1981; Nikles, Brecht,

Klinger, & Bursell, 1998). Taken together, these results confirm that the effects of concern-

related cues on cognitive processing are substantially automatic and probably inexorable.

Automatic Linkages of Goals to Action

When a goal-related cue activates the goal pursuit, it also activates the course of action

habitually associated with it. For example, after a reminder for attending a lecture, students

who used bicycles to travel to lectures responded faster to bicycling-related cues than when

not reminded of this goal (Aarts & Dijksterhuis, 2000). Chapter 6 (this volume) discusses

some of the implications of the link between goals and actions (or cognitions about actions)

for alcohol consumption in habitual drinkers.

Furthermore, just encountering something that is at odds with a goal potentiates ideas of

acts to rectify the discrepancy. For example, if a person has the goal of looking neat, reading

“The shoes you put on look dirty” makes the concept of “polish” much likelier to come to

mind than does reading a similar sentence (“The shoes you put on have laces”) that is

consistent with the goal (Custers & Aarts, 2007, p. 626). Evidence adduced in the next

paragraph suggests that potentiating the cognitive representation of action also makes the

action itself more likely to occur.


Implicit Effects on Goal Striving

Goal-related cues, even implicit, nonconscious ones, also appear to exert automatic effects

on goal-directed actions. A series of investigations (Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barn-

dollar, & Tr€otschel, 2001; Chartrand & Bargh, 1996, 2002; Pessiglione et al., 2007) has

shown that exposing participants to priming cues related to a particular goal influences how

they perform on subsequent laboratory tasks. For example, when participants performed a

first task that exposed them to unobtrusively embedded words related to achievement

(versus receiving achievement-unrelated words), they performed better on a different

second task, persisted longer, and were more likely to resume it if interrupted (Bargh

et al., 2001). This was true even though no participant knew the true connection between the

first and second tasks, meaning that the effect was probably nonconscious and in this sense

automatic. Furthermore, the priming effect was even greater if acting on it was delayed for 5

minutes, which suggests that the effect was truly motivational rather than just associative

(Bargh et al., 2001; Laran, 2010, Study 5). Priming cues related to cooperation had a similar

effect on participants’ cooperative behavior (Chartrand & Bargh, 1996). Thus, noncon-

scious cues can affect performance in ways similar to the established effects of setting

conscious performance goals for oneself (e.g., Locke, 1968, 2001).

Such implicit cues affect not only the probability of acting on a goal but also the amount

of effort exerted on it. Pessiglione et al. (2007) exposed people to cues related to the amount

of money they would receive for squeezing hard on a handgrip. As expected, priming larger

rewards led to harder squeezes than priming smaller rewards, even when the reward

information was subliminal. Using fMRI, these investigators found the brain’s ventral

pallidum involved in motivating the force of the squeeze.

These kinds of effects appear to operate even when adoption of the goal was not entirely

conscious (Ferguson et al., 2008 and Dijksterhuis & Aarts, 2010, recently reviewed the

relationship of goal striving to consciousness). In fact, in the short term, goals can be

created or enhanced by pairing an activity that was previously not a goal for a person, such

as solving puzzles or squeezing a handgrip, with a stimulus that carries positive valence.

Ordinarily, to prime a goal successfully requires that an appetitive (positive) goal already

have an association with positive affect, but the associative pairing described by Aarts and

colleagues (Aarts, Custers, & Holland, 2007; Aarts, Custers, & Marien, 2008; Aarts,

Custers, & Veltkamp, 2008) instates a similar motivational tendency, at least until it is

disrupted by some later mental activity. For example, pairing subliminally presented words

related to “doing puzzles” with positively evaluated words leads people subsequently to

overestimate the size of a picture of a puzzle (Aarts, Custers, & Veltkamp, 2008), which is

one indication that the puzzle has just acquired enhanced value.When people are instructed

to squeeze a handgrip after having been exposed to subliminal “force” stimuli, they squeeze

harder if the stimuli are followed by supraliminal, positively evaluated words than if the

subsequent words were neutral (Aarts, Custers, & Marien, 2008). Furthermore, motivation

toward an already positively valued goal can be reduced by a similar pairing with a

negatively valued stimulus (Aarts et al., 2007).

For purposes of motivational counseling (see also Chapter 11, this volume), these clear

effects of a person’s context on goal pursuit have a number of implications. Changing a

person’s motivation – the kinds of goals the person chooses and the person’s manner of

pursuing them – requires the counselor’s attention to the kinds of communications to which


the person is exposed. This could involve family, friendship, school, religious, and work

settings and other social contexts, including recreational contexts such as sports settings

and bars.

Emotions and Attentional Processing

A number of indications from these and other data (e.g., Klinger, Barta, &Maxeiner, 1980)

suggest that a critical property of current concerns is to dispose individuals to respond

emotionally to cues that are associated with corresponding goal pursuits. The emotional

response then induces cognitive processing at a number of levels, sometimes ending with

conscious thought. Because this hypothesis is hard to test with naturally occurring thought

flow, it was tested with effects on attention, recall, and physiological variables.

In a reaction time experiment (Schneider, 1987), emotionally evocative cues (which

participants had been instructed to ignore) slowed choice reaction time similarly to

Young’s (1987) current-concern-related words. Furthermore, emotionally arousing dis-

tractors slowed Schneider’s high scorers on the Affective Intensity Measure (Larsen &

Diener, 1987) significantly more than other participants.

Emotions and Recall

Words rated by participants as either relatively emotionally arousing or concern-related

were later recalled significantly more often than other words (Bock & Klinger, 1986).

Words’ concern relatedness and emotional arousal value were strongly intercorrelated.

Partialing emotionality and concern relatedness of words out of each other suggested that

much of the effect of current concerns on recall is mediated by concern-potentiated

emotional responses. This interpretation is consistent with other findings that people

experience more emotion in relation to those autobiographical memories that are most

closely associated with current goal pursuits and longer-term personal strivings (Singer &

Salovey, 1993). Chemically impairing the ability to respond emotionally reduces recall of

emotionally toned stimuli (Cahill, Prins, Weber, & McGaugh, 1994).

These findings help to make sense of some other results in the literature, in which

emotionally arousing stimuli speed performance when they are central to a task and slow it

down when they are distractors (see Klinger, 1996, for a review). Close examination of

procedures used in such studies suggests that people respond to cues as emotionally

arousing insofar as the cues are related to current concerns. Thus, patients suffering from

social phobias attend differentially more to socially threatening stimuli than to physically

threatening ones, whereas people fearful of physical harm attend to the latter more than the

former (Mogg, Mathews, & Eysenck, 1992; Williams et al., 1996).

Conclusion

Having a goal sensitizes a person to respond to goal-related cues, thus drawing the

individual’s perceptions, memories, thoughts, dreams, and actions back to the goal pursuit.


Furthermore, the person’s emotional reactions, whether of joy, fear, anger, or sadness,

depend substantially on what is happening to the individual’s goal pursuits.

Taken together, these effects mold people’s inner worlds around their individual sets of

goals. If one placed two individuals into an identical objective world but with different sets

of current concerns, they would experience quite different subjective worlds. What they

would notice, recall, and think would be quite different; they would react with different

emotions; and they would correspondingly act quite differently, which in turn would result

in creating for them different objective circumstances.

These connections between goals, on the one hand, and perception, cognition, emotion,

and action, on the other, are important points to remember in providing counseling. Apart

from organic disorders, such as psychosis and brain damage, troublesome cognitions,

emotions, and actions are tied to troubled goal pursuits.Whether the problem is rumination,

boredom, depression, anxiety, or substance abuse, effective intervention requires examin-

ing and intervening in the related goal pursuits and in the cognitive and emotional

phenomena they engender.

Reciprocal Effects of Attention and Mindwandering on Goal Pursuits

The influences operating between goals and cognitions are a two-way street. Goal-related

cognitions feed back into the self-regulation of goal pursuits. Noticing, remembering, and

thinking about one’s goals act both as a reminder of one’s agenda and as a continuing

inducement to pursue them. When one’s goals are ambivalent, as in trying to give up

smoking or alcohol use even as these continue to be attractive, goal-related cognitions can

get in the way of changing behavior.

Retraining Attention

New research is demonstrating that retraining attention can reduce these effects and thereby

facilitate reducing substance use and social phobia. Alcohol misuse is an example of having

a positive, appetitive goal, albeit a destructive one, and social phobia is an example of an

avoidance or escape goal, albeit an exaggerated, unnecessary one. Both kinds of goals

foster corresponding attentional biases, and retraining attention to reduce those biases feeds

back into action to reduce or eliminate those goal pursuits. Thus, simple laboratory

exercises based on the alcohol Stroop procedure in the Alcohol Attention-Control Training

Program help heavy drinkers to disattend from alcohol cues, with both reduced attentional

bias toward alcohol cues and reduced alcohol use over a 3-month follow-up (Fadardi &

Cox, 2009; Fadardi, Shamloo, and Cox, Chapter 16, this volume).

Adaptations of the visual probe (also called a dot probe) method have shown similar

effects. Retraining consists of challenging participants to reduce their reaction time to

probes following nonalcohol stimuli, thus breaking the bias toward alcohol stimuli. Using

this method, heavy-drinking inpatients reduced their attention to alcohol-related stimuli

and remained sober longer than other patients (Schoenmakers, et al., in press). In another

retraining adaptation of the visual probe method, people who suffered from social phobia

came to disattend from threatening faces and reduced their clinical symptoms of social

phobia over a 4-month follow-up (Amir et al., 2009).


Functions of Mindwandering

Research has repeatedly shown that people’s spontaneous thoughts, as in mindwandering,

are associated with their goals and current concerns (Klinger, 1978; Klinger et al., 1980).

Mindwandering is a virtually universal phenomenon that is very hard to suppress

completely. Along with other forms of daydreaming, it also appears to consume nearly

half of an average person’s waking hours (Klinger & Cox, 1987–1988).

Such time-intensive activity must serve important functions because otherwise, in the

course of evolution, natural selection would have selected against it. Now there is strong

evidence that mindwandering is associated with activity in specific brain regions that had

earlier been identified and labeled as the brain’s default network (Christoff, Gordon,

Smallwood, Smith, & Schooler, 2009; Mason et al., 2007) – that is, the baseline state to

which the brain returns when not engaged in work or other operant activity (Klinger, 1971).

The association of this baseline, default state with mindwandering strongly suggests that

the brain has evolved to spontaneously fill spare capacity with thoughts that are associated

with goals, even when the person is not at the moment working toward them. Because the

content of these thoughts tends to rotate among a person’s goals, this system can keep

people’s larger agendas fresh in their minds. It can remind them of future things they may

need to do about their goals, scrutinize past episodes, and rehearse future episodes related to

these goals – a spontaneous reminder and a learning and discovery process to optimize and

organize goal pursuits.

Other Influences on Goal Pursuits

A number of variables besides those already described also affect the level and quality of

the motivation to pursue a goal. These and other aspects of motivated behavior are taken

into account in the techniques for assessing motivation presented in Chapter 8.

Approach versus Avoidance Goals

One such variable is the valence of the desired goal object – whether it is positive or

negative (Elliot, 2008). Positive and negative goals involve different neural systems for,

respectively, approach and avoidance (e.g., Cacioppo et al., 1999; Carver & Scheier, 1998;

Watson et al., 1999). These different systems are associated with different effects on

emotion, motivation, and health. Thus, people striving to achieve positive (approach)

goals such as gaining a job promotion or better health are more likely to do so for the

intrinsic value of the goal (Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996) and less likely to experience

negative feelings, poor health, or a negative outlook on themselves than people who are

motivated more by a desire to avoid negative consequences (avoidance goals), as in

striving not to be fired, not to become ill, or to rid oneself of negative incentives by which

one feels burdened, such as a poor marriage or loud neighbors (Elliot & Church, 2002;

Elliot & Sheldon, 1998).

However, these deleterious effects of avoidance goals may apply more to individuals

with an independent outlook (which, on average, includes Americans and otherWesterners)

than to people with an interdependent outlook, such as, on average, traditional residents of


Asian countries (Elliot, Chirkov, Kim, & Sheldon, 2001). This cultural difference aside, it

may be beneficial for motivational counselors to help clients reframe their avoidance goals

into approach terms. For example, avoiding illness can be reframed as maintaining health;

avoiding arguments with one’s spouse can be reframed as improving one’s marital

relationship (see also Cox & Klinger, Chapter 11, this volume; Elliot & Church, 2002;

Willutzki & Koban, Chapter 18, this volume).

Higgins (1997, 2009) labels approach goals as promotion or ideal goals and avoidance

goals as prevention or ought (obligatory) goals. The person’s state is labeled respectively as

having a promotion focus or a prevention focus. These concepts have led to an extensive line

of research that has associated different emotions with the two orientations; striving for

promotion goals is associated with eagerness and cheerfulness or, in the event of setbacks,

dejection, whereas striving for ought goals is associated with quiescence and vigilance or,

in the event of setbacks, agitation or anxiety (e.g., Higgins, Shah, & Friedman, 1997). The

same objective goal may be the subject of either focus, depending on the individual’s

momentary orientation; a person is likely to orient differently with different goals, and

people differ with regard to their typical orientation.

Having one or the other of these foci – promotion or prevention – has numerous

implications, such as which kind of persuasion will work best with an individual, which

manner of goal striving will prove most efficient, or the value placed on a given

incentive. Persuasion, performance, and valuation will be higher when the nature of the

persuasive message, method used to perform a task, or incentive fits the individual’s

momentary regulatory focus on promotion or prevention. Higgins (2009) calls this

regulatory fit.

There are important individual differences in the strength of the two hypothetical

approach and avoidance systems. Some individuals respond more readily to approach

goals, are more likely to experience positive emotions, and in these senses are said to be

more reward dependent (e.g., Cloninger, Svrakic, & Przybeck, 1993) or reward sensitive, a

characteristic that may be part of the essence of extraversion (Lucas, Diener, Grob, Suh, &

Shao, 2000). This difference among individuals is reflected in the different values they

place on the same objective incentives and hence in their different choices of goals and

other decisions.

“Fundamental Motives” Underlying Goal Pursuits

The kinds of goal-related cognitions and actions that cues associated with goals

elicit depend on which “fundamental motives” underlie the goal pursuit – motives such

as affiliation, self-protection, social status, or acquiring a mate (Kenrick, Neuberg,

Griskevicius, Becker, & Schaller, 2010). Consistent with evolutionary theories of behavior,

these different motives engender attention to different kinds of cues, and the thoughts and

actions that follow are also different. Thus, for example, when harboring a mating motive

(and, presumably, having a mating goal), men are likelier than otherwise to overinterpret

the sexual arousal conveyed by attractive female faces (Maner et al., 2005). Similarly,

people with implicit power motives attend more to faces that signal low power, but those

with implicit affiliation motives attend more to faces that signal rejection or acceptance

(Schultheiss & Hale, 2007).


Time Frame

The time course of the goal pursuit is another important consideration. People are more

strongly motivated when pursuing goals (or subgoals) that are achievable in the relatively

near future, rather than having to wait far into the future to gain a sense of accomplishment

(Miller, 1944). Breaking long-term goal pursuits into a tangible series of attainable nearer-

term subgoal pursuits may improve motivation for staying on course, especially when the

overall goal also stays in focus (Fishbach, Dhar, & Zhang, 2006; Roberson & Sluss,

Chapter 15, this volume).

Breaking longer-term goals into subgoals may help maintain motivation because of the

phenomenon of delay discounting, described in the “Delay Discounting” section of this

chapter. That is, the farther away an incentive is in the future, the less it is likely to be

preferred. Put another way, given a choice between a near-term goal and a distant one, the

value placed on the distant goal must be greater than the value placed on the near-term goal

in order for the distant goal to be preferred (e.g., Ainslie, 1975; Loewenstein, 1996).

Because subgoals are by definition nearer in time, they are likely to be valued more highly

(other things equal) than a distant outcome.

Goal Conflicts and Shielding

Yet another consideration is the impact that pursuing one goal will have on one’s other goals

(see also Michalak, Heidenreich, & Hoyer, Chapter 4, this volume). A person’s goals may

facilitate or may conflict with one another. One can think of goal conflicts on at least two

levels: conflict in a given situation and conflict in the purposes themselves.

When a person is physically in the act of pursuing one goal, it would obviously be

disruptive to try at the same time to reach another goal with actions that are incompatible

with the first goal. That is why hungry students or employees who are deeply involved in a

class or a project ignore their hunger until they come to a logical stopping point rather than

racing in the direction of food at the first hunger pang. Indeed, at particular moments in

time, pursuing a goal inhibits responsivity to memories and cues related to other goals that

might conflict with the pursuit (e.g., Laran & Janiszewski, 2009; McCulloch, Aarts, Fujita,

& Bargh, 2008; Shah, Friedman, & Kruglanski, 2002) and reduces the perceived value of a

competing reward, tempting though it might be, as in a serious student’s choice of an

academic textbook rather than a leisure DVD (Fishbach & Zhang, 2008). These ways of

resolving short-term conflicts are normal, healthy, and automatic ways of protecting the

coherence of goal-directed actions. In effect, having a goal instates a tendency to shield it

from competing pursuits that might interfere with it. Once the goal has been attained, the

inhibition of other goal pursuits ends (Laran, 2010).

Furthermore, facing a temptation (such as partying) that conflicts with a higher priority

goal (such as doing well in one’s studies) activates the higher priority goal (Fishbach,

Friedman, & Kruglanski, 2003) and strengthens avoiding the temptation (Fishbach &

Shah, 2006). A number of attributes of goals and persons influence the extent to which one

goal inhibits responsivity to another (Shah et al., 2002). This inhibition is greater insofar as

the person is committed to the inhibiting goal, is generally tenacious in pursuing goals, is in

an agitated but nondepressed state, and has a high need for closure. Inhibition is also greater


when the competing goal is a reasonable substitute for the inhibiting goal (but less when the

competing goal facilitates attaining the inhibiting goal), and inhibition is greater when the

inhibiting goals are viewed, in Higgins’s (1997, 2009) sense, as obligatory (preventive)

rather than simply ideal (promotional).

The more wrenching kind of conflict arises when attaining one important, longer-term

goal inherently interferes with the achievement of another one. For example, finding one’s

best job opportunity in one community when a romantic partner is tied to a different, distant

one is bound to produce distress. The resulting conflict may dampen the motivation to

achieve either goal. Thus, conflicts between family and work goals are associated with

reduced work satisfaction (Wiese & Salmela-Aro, 2008). Peoplewith more than an average

number of such conflicts experience more negative affect and poorer health (Emmons &

King, 1988). Such goal conflicts are necessarily an important target of counseling

interventions.

Specificity of Intentions

People vary in regard to how concretely they imagine their goal pursuits. Sometimes they

focus mainly on the end result – what it will be like and how it will feel to achieve the goal.

Musing about the consummation of a romantic relationship or of a business deal can both be

pleasant experiences. However, people are more likely to carry out their intended goal

pursuits if they also imagine the steps necessary to reach their goals (e.g., Brandst€atter,Lengfelder, & Gollwitzer, 2001; Gollwitzer, 1999; Snyder, 1994) and take into account the

difficulties before them (Oettingen, Pak, & Schnetter, 2001), especially if the goals also fit

well with the individual’s core values (Koestner, Lekes, Powers, & Chicoine, 2002).

Counseling interventions can be targeted toward helping clients to form adequate con-

ceptions of their goal pursuits so as to improve the quality of their tactics for attaining their

goals (Cox & Klinger, Chapter 11, this volume).

HOW GOAL PURSUITS END

All goal pursuits must end, whether by reaching the goal or by relinquishing it. Attaining a

goal, especially an important goal that has many ramifications for one’s future life,

generally evokes some combination of joy, gratification, contentment, and pride. One

marries, obtains a college degree, gets a desired job, buys a lovely house, or finds spiritual

fulfillment. Attaining the goal ends the pursuit and deactivates the current concern. It is

clearly the nice way for goal pursuits to end.

Unfortunately, life is rarely so kind as to spare people at least some failures. The

relationship ends or the partner dies, the job goes to someone else, or the stock market

collapses and takes one’s savings with it. Obstacles to goal pursuits unleash a regular

sequence of events, an incentive–disengagement cycle (Klinger, 1975, 1977). When the

obstacle first arises, the effect is to invigorate goal-directed action. One tries harder,

rethinks, tries alternatives, and seeks help. If these tactics fail, invigoration turns to anger

and possibly aggression. If this also fails to avert the obstacle, the individual experiences a

souring of mood that can range from disappointment to depression. Depression is regularly

associated with blocked goal pursuits (Klinger, 1975, 1977; e.g., Nurmi, Salmela-Aro, &


Aunola, 2009). There is often a reduced interest in other pursuits (Klinger, 1993), lassitude,

and fatigue. The normal attentional bias toward cues related to one’s goals weakens

(Fadardi &Bagherinejad, 2010). In major depression, people have trouble reducing activity

in their brains’ default network (Sheline et al., 2009), which is associated with mind-

wandering and self-referential content. This failure to regulate the default network would

be expected to hinder focusing one’s attention on work; reduced ability to concentrate is a

frequently reported attribute of depression.

Eventually, the individual recovers from the failure or loss and returns to baseline levels

of mood and activity. This may take fromminutes to years, depending on the individual and

the scale and ramifications of the failure.

Although there are wide variations in the strength of these effects, they appear nearly

universal, even when there is no apparent point to them. Thus, when someone learns that a

loved one has unexpectedly died, the first reaction is often disbelief, checking on the

accuracy of the report and ascertaining that nothing can be done. This is often followed by

anger and blame toward the departed, caretakers, medical personnel, relatives, or oneself.

Then come the grieving and eventually, normally, the recovery.

Before that recovery, the depth of the depression depends in part on the individual’s

implicit valuation of the goal (Schultheiss et al., 2008), and the relative prominence of the

various symptoms of depression depends on what gave rise to them (Keller &Nesse, 2006).

Thus, failed efforts to attain a goal gave rise most prominently to guilt, rumination, fatigue,

and pessimism, whereas social losses gave rise most prominently to crying, sadness, and a

desire for social support.

When the cycle has run its course, the person is largely freed to go on to other things. The

failed goal ceases to be a goal. However, its representation in the brain remains.

Disengagement is almost certainly not a process of forgetting or deleting the goal but

rather one of inhibiting responses to all but the most central cues associated with it. The

failure or loss lives on, even though deeply suppressed. Thus, groups of parents who have

lost children continue to report effects of the loss at follow–ups of 4 to more than 18 years

(Lehman,Wortman, &Williams, 1987;Murphy, Johnson, Chung, &Beaton, 2003; Rogers,

Floyd, Seltzer, Greenberg, & Hong, 2008).

Very likely, the reaction to failure or loss is a form of extinction, which results from

withholding reward that the animal had previously regularly experienced, and also leads

to a cycle of invigoration and depressed activity followed by recovery (e.g., Klinger,

Barta, & Kemble, 1974; Lewis, Sullivan, Ramsay, & Alessandri, 1992). Furthermore, the

goal striving is rapidly reinstated when the reward is again made available (e.g.,

Nakajima, Tanaka, Urushihara, & Imada, 2000; Toyomitsu, Nishijo, Uwano, Kuratsu,

& Ono, 2002), suggesting that the previous extinction of response was by inhibition rather

than deletion.

Faced with intractable problems affecting one’s health and finances, one can resort to

three major kinds of approaches to improve one’s sense of well-being: persisting in

pursuing one’s goals, reappraising what the problems mean to one, and lowering one’s

aspirations (Wrosch, Heckhausen, & Lachman, 2000). These are differentially successful

depending on one’s circumstances. Persistence works best on average for improving well-

being in young adulthood but less in old age, positive reappraisal works better in middle

and old age, and lowering aspirations is associated with reduced well-being in all three

age groups (Wrosch et al., 2000), as one would expect from incentive–disengagement

theory.


Incentive–disengagement theory also predicted that failure to let go of failed goals can

protract the depressed phase of the disengagement cycle (Klinger, 1975, 1977), a

hypothesis that is now supported by empirical evidence in regard to childbearing. German

women who had passed the biological deadline for bearing children and had disengaged

from that goal (as measured by recall of relevant sentences) scored higher on measures

of well-being than women who had disengaged less well (Heckhausen, Wrosch, &

Fleeson, 2001). Finnish women who received unsuccessful fertility treatments suffered

more depression than did those who received successful treatments. Six months after the

last treatment, those unsuccessfully treated women who continued to place importance on

having a child remained depressed longer than those who let go of this goal (Salmela-Aro

& Suikkari, 2008). Failure to disengage from unattainable goals exacerbates perceived

stress and continuing intrusive thoughts related to the lost goal (Wrosch, Scheier, Miller,

Schulz, & Carver, 2003). It is also associated with self-reported depression, reduced life

satisfaction, and poorer physical health, but reengaging with alternative goals counters

these effects on common-cold symptoms and life satisfaction (Wrosch, Miller, Scheier,

Schulz, & Carver, 2007). For older adults, moreover, reaping the emotional benefits of

successful disengagement may depend on their reengaging with other goals (Wrosch

et al., 2003).

Reengaging with alternative goals may thus be even more important in promoting well-

being than disengaging from lost goals. Young adults with a high ability to reengage

reported fewer intrusive thoughts, less stress, and a greater sense of mastery and purpose in

life (Wrosch et al., 2003). Similarly, older adults’ health problems were associated with

depression unless these individuals were pursuing goals to overcome them (Wrosch,

Schulz, Miller, Lupien, & Dunne, 2007).

Similarly, in another study of childless women, long-held, intensewishes for a child were

associated with intense feelings of longing for a child, a longing that often persisted past the

point at which the person expected to be able to attain it (Kotter-Gr€uhn, Scheibe,

Blanchard-Fields, & Baltes, 2009). Such disappointed longings affect personal well-being,

but in this study the longing for a child was no longer related to the well-being of those

women who had successfully disengaged from the childbearing goal and reengaged with

other goals.

These concepts of incentive–disengagement and extinction are important considerations

in counseling depressed clients. Within limits, depression is a normal reaction to failure and

loss. Individuals characterized by strong emotional responsiveness and by a weak ability to

downregulate negative affect are particularly more likely to experience psychopathological

depression (Kuhl, 2000, 2001; see also Alsleben & Kuhl, Chapter 5, this volume).

Nevertheless, in treating depression it would appear to remain crucial for counselors and

psychotherapists to work with the client’s motivational structure, along with applying other

cognitive and interpersonal approaches (e.g., Beck, Rush, & Emery, 1979; Fadardi &

Bagherinejad, 2010; Teasdale et al., 2000). Chapters 11 to 25 of this volume describe the

various motivational-counseling techniques.

MOTIVATIONAL STRUCTURE

Motivational structure refers to the individual’s pattern of goal striving. For example,

given a choice between a little money now or much more money much later, substance


abusers are likely to pick the smaller amount now (Bickel & Marsch, 2001). However,

there are also many other dimensions of motivational structure that grew out of current-

concerns theory and are assessed using variants of the Motivational Structure Question-

naire (MSQ) or the Personal Concerns Inventory (PCI). These are described more fully,

including their factor structure, reliability, and validity, in Chapters 7 and 8 of this

volume.

In brief, respondents first list their current goals and then rate each goal on a series of

rating scales. The pattern of content and ratings reflects important elements of the

individual’s motivational structure. The scales include such things as how a person frames

each goal (e.g., positive/appetitive or negative/aversive), the person’s level of commitment

to pursuing it, the emotional payoff anticipated from reaching it or failing to reach it,

optimism about reaching it, and time frame. The latter variables correspond to value and

expectancy dimensions plus time frame.

Some of these motivational patterns are presumably more adaptive than others, permit-

ting people to attain their valued goals and to stay out of trouble. Factor analyses of MSQ

and PCI scores have repeatedly arrived at a factor that one might call adaptive motivation.

The scales that load on it are typically Commitment, Joy Anticipated at Success, Sorrow

Anticipated at Failure, and optimism about succeeding. Putting this another way, this factor

reflects the richness and attainability of the individual’s set of goals, a pattern associated

with relatively high well-being and the sense that one’s life is meaningful (Klinger, in press;

Chapter 8, this volume) and with pursuing specific goals of achievement and power

(Stuchl�ıkov�a & Klinger, 2010).

Evidence is accumulating that adaptive motivational structure relates to important

behavioral patterns. Not only is it inversely related to alcohol and substance use, but also

it fully mediates their relationship to resilience (Fadardi, Azad, & Nemati, in press), sense

of control, and intrinsic motivation (Shamloo & Cox, 2010). However, its relation to such

use is not necessarily across the board. For example (Cox, Schippers, et al., 2002), adaptive

motivation of people who had encountered few problems as a result of drinking alcohol was

unrelated to the amount of alcohol that they habitually consumed. People who have

encountered few problems as a result of drinking have no reason to modify their drinking

patterns – drinking doesn’t matter. However, for the others, the more such problems they

encountered, such as with their work, their families, and the police, the more strongly

adaptive motivational structure was associated with reduced drinking (see also Chapter 8,

this volume).

Thus, successful self-regulation depends on motivational structure, but only insofar as

what one is regulatingmatters. Healthymotivational structuremeans that a person has a rich

assortment of other life goals – rewarding goals – besides, for example, drinking alcohol.

INCENTIVES, GOALS, WELL-BEING, AND THE SENSETHAT ONE’S LIFE IS MEANINGFUL

Perhaps the broadest measure of an individual’s subjective success in life is the person’s

global sense of well-being (Diener, 1984; Diener, Scollon, Oishi, Dzokoto, & Suh, 2009).

Another, closely correlated measure (Wong, in press, Chapter 19, this volume) is the sense

that one’s life is meaningful. Both are closely related to having a range of satisfying

personal goals and making reasonable progress toward attaining them (Brunstein, 1993;


Diener & Fujita, 1995; Klinger, 1977, in press) – goals such as finding and maintaining

close relationships (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Myers, 1999) and satisfaction with one’s

work (Roberson, 1989; Roberson&Sluss, Chapter 15, this volume;Warr, 1999). Having a

sense of interpersonal support in one’s goal pursuits enhances well-being; a sense of

others hindering one’s goal pursuits detracts from well-being (Palys & Little, 1983).

When people must disengage from an unattainable goal, their well-being and sense of

having purpose depend to a large degree on their ability to reengage with other goals

(Wrosch et al., 2003).

Similarly, a long-term longitudinal study (Halisch & Geppert, 2001) found that life

satisfaction and well-being depend on having goals that are attainable, and this is especially

true for people highly committed to them. Mood was lower in the absence of affiliative

activity and, for men, of power-related activity. Thrash, Elliot, Maruskin, and Cassidy

(2010, Study 4) found morning experiences of inspiration to have a substantial relationship

with levels of well-being later that day, but this was partly mediated by feeling a sense of

purpose on that day – that is, meaningfulness, which arises from engagement with

attainable goals, determined the contribution of inspiration to well-being. By contrast,

objective indices of personal resources and circumstances, such as income, education, and

marital status, are correlated rather modestly with subjective well-being (Diener &

Fujita, 1995).

However, not all personal goals carry equal weight in well-being. For example, progress

on goals imposed by others or suggested by social pressures boost subjective well-being

less than goals that correspond to one’s individual core values (Baumann, Kaschel,

et al., 2005; Brunstein et al., 1998; Sheldon & Elliot, 1999). This suggests a point of

departure for psychological intervention: assessing the self-concordance of a client’s goals

and modifying or eliminating those at variance with the client’s core values.

There are also other important factors that moderate the relation of goal pursuits to

subjective well-being. For example, some individuals (state-oriented) have more difficulty

than other people in distinguishing self-chosen goals from goals suggested by others (Kuhl

& Kaz�en, 1994; see also Alsleben & Kuhl, Chapter 5, this volume). Under pressure, they

may be less able to discern their own values and interests in a situation and hence strive for

less fulfilling goals. Activation of people’s more analytic left cerebral hemisphere

apparently exacerbates this kind of confusion, whereas activation of the more holistic

right hemisphere reduces it (Baumann, Kuhl, & Kaz�en, 2005). It also crops up more after

induced stress and elevated levels of cortisol, a hormonal response to stress (Quirin, Koole,

Bauman, Kaz�en, & Kuhl, 2009). Insofar as pursuing the assigned goals is less satisfying

than pursuing genuinely self-chosen goals, this kind of confusion can be expected to reduce

overall well-being.

Thus, situational and individual differences in emotional response dispositions, partially

described in this chapter, can determine the extent to which people pursue goals and the

extent to which they derive satisfaction from them. These findings, too, suggest possible

foci for psychological intervention.

A substantial proportion of the variance in subjectivewell-being can be accounted for by

genetics (Lykken, 1999;Lykken&Tellegen, 1996). The genetic factors may, however, exert

some of their effect through their influence on an individual’s readiness to commit to

positive goals and to reap the emotional gain from attaining them. Thus, it would be

mistaken to conclude that heritability prevents intervention from improving an individual’s

motivational structure and, with it, subjective well-being. Genes provide an input whose


ultimate results depend on their interaction with the environment. Intervention can be part

of that environment.

A substantial literature relates subjective well-being and the sense that one’s life is

meaningful to psychopathology and substance use (Baumeister, 1991;Cox&Klinger, 1988,

Chapter 6, this volume; Glasner, Chapter 13, this volume; Klinger, 1977, in press; Wong, in

press, Chapter 19, this volume). For example, a substantial student sample produced a

correlation of �.46 between a rating of their lives’ meaningfulness and depression scores

(Klinger, 1977). In two samples of adolescents and young adults, Newcomb and Har-

low (1986) found low-order but significant relationships between substance use and lacking

direction, plans, or solutions. In a comparison of Czech students and demographically rather

similarnonstudentalcoholicpatients (Man,Stuchl�ıkov�a,&Klinger,1998), theclinicalgroup

listed 40% fewer goals, responded as if they needed richer incentives to form strong

commitments to goal striving, displayedmarginally less average commitment to their goals,

and, after other variables had been partialed out, expressed less ability to influence the course

of goal attainment. These correlational findings cannot establish cause and effect, but, when

they are combined with experimental studies of extinction, loss, and failure, it seems likely

that goal pursuits affect moods and at least some forms of psychopathology.

Accordingly, efforts tomodify clients’ motivational structure form a promising avenue to

clinical effectiveness with a variety of disorders and discontents. These methods form the

focus of Parts III and IV of this volume.

REFERENCES

Aarts, H., Custers, R., & Holland, R. W. (2007). The nonconscious cessation of goal pursuit:

When goals and negative affect are coactivated. Journal of Personality and Social Psycholo-

gy, 92, 165–178.

Aarts, H., Custers, R., & Marien, H. (2008). Preparing and motivating behavior outside

awareness. Science, 319, 1639.

Aarts, H., Custers, R., &Veltkamp,M. (2008). Goal priming and the affective-motivational route

to nonconscious goal pursuit. Social Cognition, 26, 555–577.

Aarts, H., & Dijksterhuis, A. (2000). Habits as knowledge structures: Automaticity in goal-

directed behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(1), 53–63.

Ach, N. (1910). Uber den Willensakt und das Temperament. Leipzig: Van Quelle & Meyer.

Ainslie, G. (1975). Specious reward: A behavioral theory of impulsiveness and impulse control.

Psychological Bulletin, 82, 463–496.

Allport, G. W. (1937). Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York: Holt, Rinehart &

Winston.

Amir, N., Beard, C., Taylor, C. T., Klumpp, H., Elias, J., Burns, M., et al. (2009). Attention

training in individuals with generalized social phobia: A randomized controlled trial. Journal

of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 77, 961–973.

Bargh, J. A., Gollwitzer, P. M., Lee-Chai, A., Barndollar, K., & Tr€otschel, R. (2001). Theautomated will: Nonconscious activation and pursuit of behavioral goals. Journal of

Personality & Social Psychology, 81, 1014–1027.

Bauer, D., & Cox, W. M. (1998). Alcohol-related words are distracting to both alcohol abusers

and non-abusers in the Stroop colour naming task. Addiction, 93, 1539–1542.

Baumann, N., Kaschel, R., & Kuhl, J. (2005). Striving for unwanted goals: Stress-dependent

discrepancies between explicit and implicit achievement motives reduce subjective


well-being and increase psychosomatic symptoms. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology, 89, 781–799.

Baumann, N., Kuhl, J., & Kaz�en, M. (2005). Left-hemispheric activation and self-infiltration:

Testing a neuropsychological model of internalization.Motivation and Emotion, 29, 135–163.

Baumeister, R. F. (1991). The meanings of life. New York: Guilford.

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal

attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497–529.

Baumeister, R. F., Vohs, K. D., DeWall, C. N., & Zhang, L. (2007). How emotion shapes

behavior: Feedback, anticipation, and reflection, rather than direct causation. Personality and

Social Psychology Review, 11, 167–203.

Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D., & Damasio, A. R. (1997). Deciding advantageously

before knowing the advantageous strategy. Science, 275, 1293–1294.

Beck,A.T.,Rush,A. J.,&Emery,G. (1979).Cognitive therapyof depression.NewYork:Guilford.

Berkman, E. T., & Lieberman, M. D. (2009). The neuroscience of goal pursuit: Bridging gaps

between theory and data. In G. B. Moskowitz & H. Grant (Eds.), The psychology of goals

(pp. 98–126). New York: Guilford.

Berns, G. S., Laibson, D., & Loewenstein, G. (2007). Intertemporal choice: Toward an

integrative framework. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 482–488.

Bickel, W. K., & Marsch, L. A. (2001). Conceptualizing addiction: Toward a behavioral

economic understanding of drug dependence: Delay discounting processes. Addiction, 96,

73–86.

Black, R. W. (1965). On the combination of drive and incentive motivation. Psychological

Review, 72, 310–317.

Black, R.W., & Cox,W.M. (1973). Extinction of an instrumental running response in rats in the

absence of frustration and nonreinforcement. Psychological Record, 23, 101–109.

Bock, M., & Klinger, E. (1986). Interaction of emotion and cognition in word recall.

Psychological Research, 48, 99–106.

Brandimonte, M., Einstein, G. O., & McDaniel, M. A. (Eds.). (1996). Prospective memory:

Theory and applications ( 53–91). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Brandst€atter, V., Lengfelder, A., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2001). Implementation intentions and

efficient action initiation. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 81, 946–960.

Brunstein, J. C. (1993). Personal goals and subjective well-being: A longitudinal study. Journal

of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 1061–1070.

Brunstein, J. C., Lautenschlager, U., Nawroth, B., P€ohlmann, K., & Schultheiss, O. (1995).

Pers€onliche anliegen, soziale motive und emotionales wohlbefinden [Personal goals, social

motives, and emotional well-being]. Zeitschrift f€ur Differentielle und Diagnostische

Psychologie, 16, 1–10.

Brunstein, J. C., Schultheiss, O. C., &Gr€assmann, R. (1998). Personal goals and emotional well-

being: The moderating role of motive dispositions. Journal of Personality & Social


Buehler, R., McFarland, C., Spyropoulos, V., & Lam, K. C. H. (2007). Motivated prediction of

future feelings: Effects of negative mood and mood orientation on affective forecasts.

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 1265–1278.

Cacioppo, J. T., Gardner, W. L., & Berntson, G. G. (1999). The affect system has parallel and

integrative processing components: Form follows function. Journal of Personality & Social


Cacioppo, J. T., Priester, J. R., & Berntson, G. G. (1993). Rudimentary determinants of attitudes:

II. Arm flexion and extension have different effects on attitudes. Journal of Personality &

Social Psychology, 65, 5–17.


Cahill, L., Prins, B., Weber, M., & McGaugh, J. L. (1994). Beta-adrenergic activation and

memory for emotional events. Nature, 371, 702–704.

Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1998). On the self-regulation of behavior. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (2009). Action, affect, and two-modemodels of functioning. In E.

Morsella, J. A. Bargh, & P. M. Gollwitzer (Eds.), Oxford handbook of human action

(pp. 298–327). New York: Oxford University Press.

Chaplin, J. P. (1968). Dictionary of psychology. New York: Dell.

Chartrand, T. L., & Bargh, J. A. (1996). Automatic activation of impression formation and

memorization goals: Nonconscious goal priming reproduces effects of explicit task instruc-

tions. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 71, 464–478.

Chartrand, T. L., & Bargh, J. A. (2002). Nonconscious motivations: Their activation, operation,

and consequences. In A. Tesser & D. A. Stapel (Eds.), Self and motivation: Emerging

psychological perspectives (pp. 13–41). Washington, DC: American Psychological

Association.

Clark, L., Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Aitken, M. R. F., Sahakian, B. J., & Robbins, T. W. (2008).

Differential effects of insular and ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions on risky decision-

making. Brain, 131, 1311–1322.

Christoff, K., Gordon, A. M., Smallwood, J., Smith, R., & Schooler, J. W. (2009). Experience

sampling during fMRI reveals default network and executive system contributions to mind

wandering. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 106, 8719–8724.

Cloninger, C. R., Svrakic, D. M., & Przybeck, T. R. (1993). A psychobiological model of

temperament and character. Archives of General Psychiatry, 50, 975–990.

Constantinou, N.,Morgan, C. J. A., Battistella, S., O’Ryan, D., Davis, P., &Curran, H. V. (2010).

Attentional bias, inhibitory control and acute stress in current and former opiate addicts.Drug

and Alcohol Dependence, 106, 220–225.

Cox, W. M., Blount, J. P., & Rozak, A. M. (2000). Alcohol abusers’ and nonabusers’ distraction

by alcohol and concern-related stimuli. American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 26,

489–495.

Cox, W. M., Brown, M. A., & Rowlands, L. J. (2003). The effects of alcohol cue exposure on

non-dependent drinkers’ attentional bias for alcohol-related stimuli.Alcohol and Alcoholism,

38, 45–49.

Cox, W. M., Fadardi, J. S., & Pothos, E. M. (2006). The addiction-Stroop test: Theoretical

considerations and procedural recommendations. Psychological Bulletin, 132, 443–476.

Cox, W. M., Hogan, L. M., Kristian, M. R., & Race, J. H. (2002). Alcohol attentional bias as a

predictor of alcohol abusers’ treatment outcome. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 68,

237–243.

Cox, W. M., & Klinger, E. (1988). A motivational model of alcohol use. Journal of Abnormal


Cox, W. M., Schippers, G. M., Klinger, E., Skutle, A., Stuchl�ıkov�a, I., Man, F., et al. (2002).

Motivational structure and alcohol use of university students with consistency across four

nations. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 63, 280–285.

Cox, W. M., Yeates, G. N., & Regan, C. M. (1999). Effects of alcohol cues on cognitive

processing in heavy and light drinkers. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 55, 85–89.

Custers, R., & Aarts, H. (2007). Goal-discrepant situations prime goal-directed actions if goals

are temporarily or chronically accessible. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33,

623–633.

Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. New York:

Avon.


Darwin, C. (1985). The expression of the emotions in man and animals. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press. (Original work published in 1872).

Della Libera, C., & Chelazzi, L. (2009). Learning to attend and to ignore is a matter of gains and

losses. Psychological Science, 20, 778–784.

Diener, E. (1984). Subjective well-being. Psychological Bulletin, 95, 542–575.

Diener, E., & Fujita, F. (1995). Resources, personal strivings, and subjective well-being:

A nomothetic and idiographic approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,

68, 926–935.

Diener, E., Scollon, C. N., Oishi, S., Dzokoto, V., & Suh, E. M. (2009). Positivity and the

construction of life satisfaction judgments: Global happiness is not the sum of its parts. In E.

Diener (Ed.), Culture and well-being: The collected works of Ed Diener (pp. 229–243). New

York: Springer.

Dijksterhuis, A., & Aarts, H. (2010). Goals, attention, and (un)consciousness. Annual Review of


Egner, T. (2009). Prefrontal cortex and cognitive control: Motivating functional hierarchies.

Nature Neuroscience, 12, 821–822.

Elliot, A. J. (Ed.). (2008). Handbook of approach and avoidance motivation. New York:

Psychology Press.

Elliot, A. J., Chirkov, V. I., Kim, Y., & Sheldon, K. M. (2001). A cross-cultural analysis of

avoidance (relative to approach) personal goals. Psychological Science, 12, 505–510.

Elliot, A. J., & Church, M. A. (2002). Client articulated avoidance goals in the therapy context.

Journal of Counseling Psychology, 49, 243–254.

Elliot, A. J., & Harackiewicz, J. (1996). Approach and avoidance achievement goals and

intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 461–475.

Elliot, A. J., & Sheldon, K. M. (1998). Avoidance personal goals and the personality-illness

relationship. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1282–1299.

Emmons, R. A., & King, L. A. (1988). Conflict among personal strivings: Immediate and long-

term implications for psychological and physical well-being. Journal of Personality & Social

Psychology, 54, 1040–1048.

Epstein, S. (2003). Cognitive-experiential self-theory of personality. In T. Millon &M. J. Lerner

(Eds.), Handbook of psychology: Personality and social psychology (Vol. 5, pp. 159–184).

Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Fadardi, J. S., Azad, H., & Nemati, A. (In press). The relationship between resilience,

motivational structure, and substance use. Social and Behavioral Sciences.

Fadardi, J. S., & Bagherinejad, M. (2010, July 11–16). Reversing the sequence: Effectiveness of

Depression Attention Control Training Program. Paper presented at the 27th International

Congress of Applied Psychology, Melbourne, Australia.

Fadardi, J. S., & Cox, W. M. (2009). Reversing the sequence: Reducing alcohol consumption by

overcoming alcohol attentional bias. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 101, 137–145.

Fadardi, J. S., Moghadaszadeh, M., & Rezazadeh. O. (2009). What feeds obesity? The role of

eating type and attentional bias. Poster session presented at the conference of the Wales

Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Deganwy, North Wales, United Kingdom.

Fadardi, J. S., Ziaee, S., & Shamloo, Z. S. (2009). Substance use and the paradox of good and bad

attentional bias. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 17, 456–463.

Feather, N. T. (Ed.). (1982). Expectations and actions: Expectancy-value models in psychology.

Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Ferguson, E. (1994). Motivation. In R. J. Corsini (Ed.), Encyclopedia of psychology (Vol. 2, 2nd

ed., p. 429). New York: Wiley.


Ferguson, M. J., & Bargh, J. A. (2004). Liking is for doing: The effects of goal pursuit on

automatic evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 557–572.

Ferguson, M. J., Hassin, R., & Bargh, J. A. (2008). Implicit motivation: Past, present, and future.

In J. Y. Shah & W. L. Gardner (Eds.), Handbook of motivation science (pp. 150–166). New

York: Guilford.

Fishbach, A., Dhar, R., & Zhang, Y. (2006). Subgoals as substitutes or complements: The role of

goal accessibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 232–242.

Fishbach, A., Friedman, R. S., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2003). Leading us not unto temptation:

Momentary allurements elicit overriding goal activation. Journal of Personality and Social


Fishbach, A., & Shah, J. Y. (2006). Self-control in action: Implicit dispositions toward

goals and away from temptations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90,

820–832.

Fishbach, A., Shah, J. Y., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2004). Emotional transfer in goal systems.

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 723–738.

Fishbach, A., & Zhang, Y. (2008). Together or apart: When goals and temptations complement

versus compete. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 547–559.

Fredrickson, B. (2009). Positivity: Groundbreaking research reveals how to embrace the hidden

strength of positive emotions, overcome negativity, and thrive. New York: Crown.

Gilbert, D. T., & Ebert, J. E. J. (2002). Decisions and revisions: The affective forecasting of

changeable outcomes. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 82, 503–514.

Gilbert, D. T., Gill, M. J., & Wilson, T. D. (2002). The future is now: Temporal correction in

affective forecasting. Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 88,

430–444.

Gilbert, D. T., Pinel, E. C., Wilson, T. D., Blumberg, S. J., & Wheatley, T. P. (1998). Immune

neglect: A source of durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of Personality & Social


Gollwitzer, P. M. (1990). Action phases and mind-sets. In E. T. Higgins & R. M. Sorrentino

(Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (Vol. 2, pp.

53–92). New York: Guilford.

Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American

Psychologist, 54, 493–503.

Gollwitzer, P. M., Heckhausen, H., & Steller, B. (1990). Deliberative and implemental mind-

sets: Cognitive tuning toward congruous thoughts and information. Journal of Personality

and Social Psychology, 59, 1119–1127.

Halisch, F., & Geppert, U. (2001). Motives, personal goals, and life satisfaction in old age: First

results from the Munich Twin Study (GOLD). In A. Efklides, J. Kuhl, & R. M. Sorrentino

(Eds.), Trends and prospects in motivation research (pp. 389–409). Dordrecht, the Nether-

lands: Kluwer.

Hariri, A. R., Brown, S. M., Williamson, D. E., Flory, J. D., deWit, H., &Manuck, S. B. (2006).

Preference for immediate over delayed rewards is associated with magnitude of ventral

striatal activity. Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 13213–13217.

Harmon-Jones, E., & Gable, P. A. (2009). Neural activity underlying the effect of approach-

motivated positive affect on narrowed attention. Psychological Science, 20, 406–409.

Haynes, J., Sakai, K., Rees, G., Gilbert, S., Frith, C., & Passingham, R. E. (2007). Reading

hidden intentions in the human brain. Current Biology, 17, 323–328.

Heckhausen, H. (1967). The anatomy of achievement motivation. New York: Academic Press.

Heckhausen, H. (1991). Motivation and action. Berlin: Springer.


Heckhausen, H., & Kuhl, J. (1985). From wishes to action: The dead ends and short cuts on the

long way to action. In M. Frese & J. Sabini (Eds.), Goal-directed behavior: Psychological

theory and research on action (pp. 134–160). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Heckhausen, J., Wrosch, C., & Fleeson, W. (2001). Developmental regulation before and after a

developmental deadline: The sample case of “biological clock” for childbearing. Psychology

and Aging, 16, 400–413.

Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist, 52, 1280–1300.

Higgins, E. T. (2009). Regulatory fit in the goal-pursuit process. In G. B. Moskowitz & H. Grant

(Eds.), The psychology of goals (pp. 505–533). New York: Guilford.

Higgins, E. T., Shah, J., & Friedman, R. (1997). Emotional responses to goal attainment:

Strength of regulatory focus as moderator. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,

72, 515–525.

Hoelscher, T. J., Klinger, E., & Barta, S. G. (1981). Incorporation of concern and non-concern

related verbal stimuli into dream content. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 49, 88–91.

Hull, C. L. (1953). A behavior system. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Ihssen, N., Cox, W. M., Wiggett, A., Fadardi, J. S., & Linden, D. E. J. (in press). Differentiating

heavy from light drinkers by brain responses to visual alcohol cues and other motivational

stimuli. Cerebral Cortex.

Irwin, F. W. (1971). Intentional behavior and motivation: A cognitive theory. New York:

Lippincott.

Jackson, D. N., Ahmed, S. A., & Heapy, N. A. (1976). Is achievement a unitary construct?

Journal of Research in Personality, 10, 1–21.

Job, V., Langens, T. A., & Brandst€atter, V. (2009). Effects of achievement goal striving on well-

being: The moderating role of the explicit achievement motive. Personality and Social

Psychology Bulletin, 35, 983–996.

Johnsen, B. H, Laberg, J. C., Cox, W. M., Vaksdal, A., & Hugdahl, K. (1994). Alcoholics’

attentional bias in the processing of alcohol-related words. Psychology of Addictive

Behaviors, 8, 111–115.

Kasser, T., & Ryan, R. M. (2001). Be careful what you wish for: Optimal functioning and the

relative attainment of intrinsic and extrinsic goals. In P. Schmuck & K. M. Sheldon (Eds.),

Life goals and well-being: Towards a positive psychology of human striving (pp. 116–131).

Seattle, WA: Hogrefe & Huber.

Keller, M. C., & Nesse, R. M. (2006). The evolutionary significance of depressive symptoms:

Different adverse situations lead to different depressive symptom patterns. Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 316–330.

Kenrick, D. T, Neuberg, S. L., Griskevicius, V., Becker, D. V., & Schaller, M. (2010). Goal-

driven cognition and functional behavior: The fundamental-motives framework. Current

Directions in Psychological Science, 19, 63–67.

Kensinger, E. A. (2009). Remembering the details: Effects of emotion. Emotion Review, 1,

99–113.

King, L. A. (1995). Wishes, motives, goals, and personal memories: Relations of measures of

human motivation. Journal of Personality, 63, 985–1007.

King, R. A., Schwab-Stone, M., Flisher, A. J., Greenwald, S., Kramer, R. A., Goodman, S. H.,

et al. (2001). Psychosocial and risk behavior correlates of youth suicide attempts and

suicidal ideation. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 40,

837–846.

Klinger, E. (1971). Structure and functions of fantasy. New York: Wiley.

Klinger, E. (1975). Consequences of commitment to and disengagement from incentives.

Psychological Review, 82, 1–25.


Klinger, E. (1977). Meaning and void: Inner experience and the incentives in people’s lives.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Klinger, E. (1978). Modes of normal conscious flow. In K. S. Pope & J. L. Singer (Eds.), The

stream of consciousness: Scientific investigations into the flow of human experience (pp.

225–258). New York: Plenum Press.

Klinger, E. (1993). Loss of interest. In C. G. Costello (Ed.), Symptoms of depression (pp. 43–63).

New York: Wiley.

Klinger, E. (1996). Emotional influences on cognitive processing, with implications for theories

of both. In P. Gollwitzer & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), The psychology of action: Linking cognition

and motivation to behavior (pp. 168–189). New York: Guilford.

Klinger, E. (In press). The search for meaning in evolutionary perspective and its clinical

implications. In P. T. P. Wong (Ed.), The human quest for meaning: A handbook of

psychological research and clinical applications (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

Klinger, E., Barta, S. G., & Kemble, E. D. (1974). Cyclic activity changes during extinction in

rats: A potential model of depression. Animal Learning and Behavior, 2, 313–316.

Klinger, E., Barta, S. G., & Maxeiner, M. E. (1980). Motivational correlates of thought content

frequency and commitment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 1222–1237.

Klinger, E., & Cox, W. M. (1987–1988). Dimensions of thought flow in everyday life.

Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 7, 105–128.

Knutson, B., Taylor, J., Kaufman, M., Peterson, R., & Glover, G. (2005). Distributed neural

representation of expected value. Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 4806–4812.

Koestner, R., Lekes, N., Powers, T. A., & Chicoine, E. (2002). Attaining personal goals: Self-

concordance plus implementation intentions equals success. Journal of Personality and


Koo, M., & Fishbach, A. (2008). Dynamics of self-regulation: How (un)accomplished goal

actions affect motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 183–195.

Kotter-Gr€uhn, D., Scheibe, S., Blanchard-Fields, F., & Baltes, P. B. (2009). Developmental

emergence and functionality of Sehnsucht (life longings): The sample case of involuntary

childlessness in middle-aged women. Psychology and Aging, 24, 634–644.

Kouneiher, F., Charron, S., & Koechlin, E. (2009). Motivation and cognitive control in the

human prefrontal cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 12, 939–945.

Kuhl, J. (1986). Motivation and information processing: A new look at decision making,

dynamic change, and action control. In R. M. Sorrentino & E. T. Higgins (Eds.),

The handbook of motivation and cognition: Foundations of social behavior (pp.

404–434). New York: Guilford.

Kuhl, J. (2000). A functional-design approach to motivation and self-regulation: The dynamics

of personality systems and interactions. In M. Boekaerts, P. R. Pintrich, &M. Zeidner (Eds.),

Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 111–169). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Kuhl, J. (2001). Motivation und Pers€onlichkeit: Interaktion psychischer Systeme [Motivation

and personality: Interaction of psychological systems]. G€ottingen: Hogrefe.Kuhl, J., &Kaz�en,M. (1994). Self-discrimination andmemory: State orientation and false self-

ascription of assigned activities. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 66,

1103–1115.

Laran, J. (2010). The influence of information processing goal pursuit on postdecision affect and

behavioral intentions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 16–28.

Laran, J., & Janiszewski, C. (2009). Behavioral consistency and inconsistency in the resolution

of goal conflict. Journal of Consumer Research, 35, 967–984.

Larsen, R., & Diener, E. (1987). Affect intensity as an individual difference characteristic.

Journal of Research in Personality, 21, 1–39.


Ledoux, J. E. (1995). Emotion: Clues from the brain. Annual Review of Psychology, 46,

209–235.

Lehman, D. R., Wortman, C. B., & Williams, A. F. (1987). Long-term effects of losing a

spouse or child in a motor vehicle crash. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 52,

218–231.

Lewin, K. (1928). Wille, Vorsatz und Bed€urfnis [Will, intention, and need]. Psychologische

Forschung, 7, 330–385.

Lewin, K. (1938). The conceptual representation and the measurement of psychological forces.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Lewis, M., Haviland-Jones, J. M., & Barrett, L. F. (Eds.). (2008). Handbook of emotions

(3rd ed.). New York: Guilford.

Lewis, M., Sullivan, M.W., Ramsay, D. S., & Alessandri, S. M. (1992). Individual differences in

anger and sad expressions during extinction: Antecedents and consequences. Infant Behavior

& Development, 15, 443–452.

Liberman, N., & Trope, Y. (1998). The role of feasibility and desirability considerations in near

and distant future decisions: A test of temporal construal theory. Journal of Personality &


Little, B. R. (1983). Personal projects: A rationale and method for investigation. Environment

and Behavior, 15, 273–309.

Locke, E. A. (1968). Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives. Organizational

Behavior and Human Performance, 3, 157–189.

Locke, E. A. (2001). Motivation by goal setting. In R. T. Golembiewski (Ed.), Handbook of

organizational behavior (2nd ed., pp. 43–56). New York: Marcel Dekker.

Loewenstein, G. (1996). Out of control: Visceral influences on behavior. Organizational

Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 65, 272–292.

Loewenstein, G. F., Weber, E. U., Hsee, C. K., & Welch, N. (2001). Risk as feelings.

Psychological Bulletin, 127, 267–286.

Lucas, R. E., Diener, E., Grob, A., Suh, E. M., & Shao, L. (2000). Cross-cultural evidence for the

fundamental features of extraversion. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 79,

452–468.

Lykken, D. (1999). Happiness: What studies on twins show us about nature, nurture, and the

happiness set-point. New York: Golden.

Lykken, D., & Tellegen, A. (1996). Happiness is a stochastic phenomenon. Psychological

Science, 7, 186–189.

Man, F., Stuchl�ıkov�a, I., & Klinger, E. (1998). Motivational structure of alcoholic and

nonalcoholic Czech men. Psychological Reports, 82, 1091–1106.

Maner, J. K., Kenrick, D. T., Becker, D. V., Robertson, T. E., Hofer, B., Neuberg, S. L., et al.

(2005). Functional projection: How fundamental social motives can bias interpersonal

perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 63–78.

Mason, M. F., Norton, M. I., Van Horn, J. D., Wegner, D. M., Grafton, S. T., & Macrae, C. N.

(2007). Wandering minds: The default network and stimulus-independent thought. Science,

315, 393–395.

McClelland, D. C., Atkinson, J. W., Clark, R. A., & Lowell, E. L. (1953). The achievement

motive. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

McClelland, D. C., Koestner, R., & Weinberger, J. (1989). How do self-attributed and implicit

motives differ? Psychological Review, 96, 690–702.

McClure, S. M., Ericson, K. M., Laibson, D. I., Loewenstein, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2007). Time

discounting for primary rewards. Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 5796–5804.


McClure, S. M., Laibson, D. I., Loewenstein, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2004). Separate neural systems

value immediate and delayed monetary rewards. Science, 306 (Special Issue: Cognition and

Behavior), 503–507.

McCulloch,K.C.,Aarts,H.,Fujita,K.,&Bargh, J.A.(2008). Inhibitioningoalsystems:Aretrieval-

induced forgetting account. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(3), 857–865.

McDougall, W. (1921). An introduction to social psychology. London: Methuen.

Mellers, B. A. (2000). Choice and the relative pleasure of consequences. Psychological Bulletin,

126, 910–924.

Miller, N. E. (1944). Experimental studies of conflict. In J. McV. Hunt (Ed.), Personality and the

behavioral disorders (Vol. 1, pp. 431–465). New York: Roland.

Mogg, K., Mathews, A., & Eysenck, M. (1992). Attentional bias to threat in clinical anxiety

states. Cognition and Emotion, 6, 149–159.

Moskowitz, G. B. (2002). Preconscious effects of temporary goals on attention. Journal of

Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 397–404.

Murphy, S. A., Johnson, L. C., Chung, I., & Beaton, R. D. (2003). The prevalence of PTSD

following the violent death of a child and predictors of change 5 years later. Journal of

Traumatic Stress, 16, 17–25.

Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in personality. New York: Oxford University Press.

Myers, D. G. (1999). Close relationships and quality of life. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N.

Schwarz (Eds.), Well-being: The foundations of hedonic psychology (pp. 374–391). New

York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Nakajima, S., Tanaka, S., Urushihara, K., & Imada, H. (2000). Renewal of extinguished

lever-press responses upon return to the training context. Learning & Motivation, 31,

416–431.

Neumann, R., & Strack, F. (2000). Approach and avoidance: The influence of proprioceptive and

exteroceptive cues on encoding of affective information. Journal of Personality and Social


Newcomb, M. D., & Harlow, L. L. (1986). Life events and substance use among adolescents:

Mediating effects of perceived loss of control and meaninglessness in life. Journal of


Niemiec,C.P.,Ryan,R.M.,&Deci,E.L.(2009).Thepathtaken:Consequencesofattainingintrinsic

andextrinsic aspirations inpost-college life.JournalofResearch inPersonality,43(3), 291–306.

Nikles, C. D., II, Brecht, D. L., Klinger, E., & Bursell, A. L. (1998). The effects of current-

concern- and nonconcern related waking suggestions on nocturnal dream content. Journal of


Nikula, R., Klinger, E., & Larson Gutman, M. K. (1993). Current concerns and electrodermal

reactivity: Responses to words and thoughts. Journal of Personality, 61, 63–84.

Nurmi, J., Salmela-Aro, K., & Aunola, K. (2009). Personal goal appraisals vary across both

individuals and goal contents. Personality and Individual Differences, 47, 498–503.

Oettingen, G., Pak, H., & Schnetter, K. (2001). Self-regulation of goal-setting: Turning free

fantasies about the future into binding goals. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 80,

736–753.

Padoa-Schioppa, C., &Assad, J. A. (2006). Neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex encode economic

value. Nature, 441, 223–226.

Padoa-Schioppa, C., & Assad, J. A. (2008). The representation of economic value in the

orbitofrontal cortex is invariant for changes of menu. Nature Neuroscience, 11, 95–102.

Palys, T. S., & Little, B. R. (1983). Perceived life satisfaction and the organization of personal

project systems. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 44, 1221–1230.


Pervin, L. A. (1983). The stasis and flow of behavior: Toward a theory of goals. In M. M. Page

(Ed.), Nebraska Symposium of Motivation 1982 (pp. 1–53). Lincoln: University of Nebraska

Press.

Pessiglione, M., Schmidt, L., Draganski, B., Kalisch, R., Lau, H., Dolan, R. J., et al. (2007). How

the brain translates money into force: A neuroimaging study of subliminal motivation.

Science, 316, 904–906.

Quirin, M., Koole, S. L., Baumann, N., Kaz�en, M., & Kuhl, J. (2009). You can’t always

remember what you want: The role of cortisol in self-ascription of assigned goals. Journal of

Research in Personality, 43, 1026–1032.

Raymond, J. E., & O’Brien, J. L. (2009). Selective visual attention and motivation: The

consequences of value learning in an attentional blink task. Psychological Science, 20,

981–988.

Riemann, B. C., Amir, N., & Louro, C. E. (1995). Cognitive processing of personally relevant

information in panic disorder. Unpublished manuscript

Riemann, B. C., & McNally, R. J. (1995). Cognitive processing of personally-relevant

information. Cognition and Emotion, 9, 325–340.

Roberson, L. (1989). Assessing personal work goals in the organizational setting: Development

and evaluation of the Work Concerns Inventory. Organizational Behavior and Human

Decision Processes, 44, 345–367.

Rogers, C. H., Floyd, F. J., Seltzer,M.M., Greenberg, J., &Hong, J. (2008). Long-term effects of

the death of a child on parents’ adjustment in midlife. Journal of Family Psychology, 22,

203–211.

Rottenstreich, Y., & Kivetz, R. (2006). On decision making without likelihood judgment.

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 101, 74–88.

Rustichini, A. (2009). Neuroeconomics: What have we found, and what should we search for.

Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 19, 672–677.

Ryan, R.M., Sheldon, K.M., Kasser, T., &Deci, E. L. (1996). All goals are not created equal: An

organismic perspective on the nature of goals and their regulation. In P. Gollwitzer &

J. A. Bargh (Eds.), The psychology of action: Linking cognition and motivation to behavior

(pp. 7–26). New York: Guilford.

Salmela-Aro, K., Aunola, K., & Nurmi, J. (2007). Personal goals during emerging adulthood:

A 10-year follow-up. Journal of Adolescent Research, 22, 690–715.

Salmela-Aro, K., Read, S., Nurmi, J-E., Koskenvuo, M., Kaprio, J., & Rantanen, T. (2009).

Personal goals of older female twins: Genetic and environmental effects. European

Psychologist, 14, 160–167.

Salmela-Aro, K., & Suikkari, A. (2008). Letting go of your dreams: Adjustment of child-related

goal appraisals and depressive symptoms during infertility treatment. Journal of Research in

Personality, 42, 988–1003.

Schmuck, P. (2001). Intrinsic and extrinsic life goals preferences asmeasured via inventories and

via primingmethodologies:Mean differences and relations with well-being. In P. Schmuck&

K. M. Sheldon (Eds.), Life goals and well-being: Towards a positive psychology of human

striving (pp. 132–147). Seattle, WA: Hogrefe & Huber.

Schneider, W. (1987). Ablenkung und Handlungskontrolle: Eine ‘kognitiv-motivationale

Perspektive’. Diploma thesis, University of Bielefeld.

Schoenmakers, T.(In press). Clinical effectiveness of attentional bias modification training in

abstinent alcoholic patients. Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

Schultheiss, O. C., & Brunstein, J. C. (1999). Goal imagery: Bridging the gap between implicit

motives and explicit goals. Journal of Personality, 67, 1–38.


Schultheiss, O. C., &Hale, J. A. (2007). Implicit motivesmodulate attentional orienting to facial

expressions of emotion. Motivation and Emotion, 31(1), 13–24.

Schultheiss, O. C., Jones, N. M., Davis, A. Q., &Kley, C. (2008). The role of implicit motivation

in hot and cold goal pursuit: Effects on goal progress, goal rumination, and emotional well-

being. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 971–987.

Schwartz, B., Ward, A., Monterosso, J., Lyubomirsky, S., White, K., & Lehman, D. R. (2002).

Maximizing versus satisficing: Happiness is a matter of choice. Journal of Personality &


Seitz, R. J., Franz, M., & Azari, N. P. (2009). Value judgments and self-control of action: The

role of the medial frontal cortex. Brain Research Reviews, 60, 378–388.

Shah, J. Y., Friedman, R., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2002). Forgetting all else: On the antecedents

and consequences of goal shielding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83,

1261–1280.

Shah, J. Y., & Higgins, E. T. (1997). Expectancy � value effects: Regulatory focus as

determinant of magnitude and direction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,

73, 447–458.

Shamloo, Z. S., & Cox, W. M. (2010). The relationship between motivational structure, sense of

control, intrinsic motivation and university students’ alcohol consumption. Addictive

Behaviors 35, 140–146.

Sharma, D., Albery, I. P., & Cook, C. (2001). Selective attentional bias to alcohol-related stimuli

in problem drinkers and non-problem drinkers. Addiction, 96, 285–295.

Sheeran, P., Webb, T. L., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (2005). The interplay between goal intentions and

implementation intentions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 87–98.

Sheldon, K. M., & Elliot, A. J. (1999). Goal striving, need satisfaction, and longitudinal well-

being: The self-concordance model. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 76,

482–497.

Sheline, Y. I., Barch, D. M., Price, J. L., Rundle, M. M., Vaishnavi, S. N., Snyder, A. Z., et al.

(2009). The default mode network and self-referential processes in depression. Proceedings

of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 1942–1947.

Shidara, M., & Richmond, B. J. (2002). Anterior cingulate: Single neuronal signals related to

degree of reward expectancy. Science, 296, 1709–1711.

Simon, H. A. (1956). Rational choice and the structure of the environment. Psychological

Review, 63, 129–138.

Singer, J. A., & Salovey, P. (1993). The remembered self: Emotion and memory in personality.

New York: Free Press.

Snyder, C. R. (1994). The psychology of hope. New York: Free Press.

Soon, C. S., Brass, M., Heinz, H-J., & Haynes, J-D. (2008). Unconscious determinants of free

decisions in the human brain. Nature Neuroscience, 11, 543–545.

Stetter, F., Ackermann, K., Bizer, A., & Straube, E. R. (1995). Effects of disease-related cues in

alcoholic inpatients: Results of a controlled “alcohol Stroop” study. Alcoholism: Clinical &

Experimental Research, 19, 593–599.

Stocker, M. (1996). Valuing emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Stormark, K. L., Laberg, J. C., Nordby, H., &Hugdahl, K. (2000). Alcoholics’ selective attention

to alcohol stimuli: Automated processing? Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 61, 18–23.

Stuchl�ıkov�a, I., & Klinger, E. (2010). [Unpublished research].

Teasdale, J. D., Segal, Z. V., Williams, J. M. G., Ridgeway, V. A., Soulsby, J. M., & Lau, M. A.

(2000). Prevention of relapse/recurrence inmajor depression bymindfulness-based cognitive

therapy. Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology, 68, 615–623.


Thrash, T. M., Elliot, A. J., Maruskin, L. A., & Cassidy, S. E. (2010). Inspiration and the

promotion of well-being: Tests of causality and mediation. Journal of Personality and Social


Thrash, T. M., Elliot, A. J., & Schultheiss, O. C. (2007). Methodological and dispositional

predictors of congruence between implicit and explicit need for achievement. Personality

and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33, 961–974.

Tobler, P. N., Fiorillo, C. D., & Schultz, W. (2005). Adaptive coding of reward value by

dopamine neurons. Science, 307, 1642–1645.

Tomkins, S. S. (1962). Affect, imagery, consciousness: Vol. 1. The positive affects. New York:

Springer.

Townshend, J. M., &Duka, T. (2001). Attentional bias associated with alcohol cues: Differences

between heavy and occasional social drinkers. Psychopharmacology, 157, 67–74.

Toyomitsu, Y., Nishijo, H., Uwano, T., Kuratsu, J., & Ono, T. (2002). Neuronal responses of the

rat amygdala during extinction and reassociation learning in elementary and configural

associative tasks. European Journal of Neuroscience, 15, 753–768.

Uznadze, D. N. (1966). The psychology of set. New York: Consultants Bureau.

Van Eerde, W., & Thierry, H. (1996). Vroom’s expectancy models and work-related criteria:

A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81, 575–586.

Vohs, K. D., Baumeister, R. F., Schmeichel, B. J., Twenge, J. M., Nelson, N. M., & Tice, D. M.

(2008). Making choices impairs subsequent self-control: A limited-resource account of

decision making, self-regulation, and active initiative. Journal of Personality and Social


Warr, P. (1999). Well-being and the workplace. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz

(Eds.),Well-being: The foundations of hedonic psychology (pp. 392–412). NewYork: Russell

Sage Foundation.

Watson, D., & Kendall, P. C. (1989). Understanding anxiety and depression: Their relation to

negative and positive affective states. In P. C. Kendall & D. Watson (Eds.), Anxiety and

depression: Distinctive and overlapping features (pp. 3–26). San Diego, CA: Academic

Press.

Watson, D., Wiese, D., Vaidya, J., & Tellegen, A. (1999). The two general activation systems of

affect: Structural findings, evolutionary considerations, and psychobiological evidence.

Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 76, 820–838.

Wentura, D., Rothermund, K., & Bak, P. (2000). Automatic vigilance: The attention-grabbing

power of approach and avoidance-related social information. Journal of Personality and


Wiese, B. S., & Salmela-Aro, K. (2008). Goal conflict and facilitation as predictors of work-

family satisfaction and engagement. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 73, 490–497.

Williams, J. M. G., Mathews, A., & MacLeod, C. (1996). The emotional Stroop task and

psychopathology. Psychological Bulletin, 120, 3–24.

Williams, M. (1997). Cry of pain. London: Penguin.

Wilson, M., & Daly, M. (2004). Do pretty women inspire men to discount the future?

Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 271 (Suppl.), 177–179.

Wilson, T. D., Meyers, J., & Gilbert, D. T. (2001). Lessons from the past: Do people learn from

experience that emotional reactions are short-lived? Personality & Social Psychology

Bulletin, 27, 1648–1661.

Wilson, T. D., Wheatley, T., Meyers, J. M., Gilbert, D. T., & Axsom, D. (2000). Focalism:

A source of durability bias in affective forecasting. Journal of Personality & Social



Winkielman, P., & Berridge, K. C. (2004). Unconscious emotion. Current Directions in

Psychological Science, 13, 120–123.

Winkielman, P., Berridge, K. C., & Wilbarger, J. L. (2005). Emotion, behavior, and conscious

experience: Once more without feeling. In L. F. Barrett, P. M. Niedenthal, & P. Winkielman

(Eds.), Emotion and consciousness (pp. 335–362). New York: Guilford.

Winkielman, P., Knutson, B., Paulus, M., & Trujillo, J. L. (2007). Affective influence on

judgments and decisions: Moving towards core mechanisms. Review of General Psychology,

11 (Special Issue: Emotion and Decision Making), 179–192.

Wong, P. T. P. (In press). A dual-process model of what makes life worth living. In P. T. P. Wong

(Ed.), The human quest for meaning: A handbook of psychological research and clinical

applications (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

Wrosch, C., Heckhausen, J., & Lachman,M. E. (2000). Primary and secondary control strategies

for managing health and financial stress across adulthood. Psychology and Aging, 15,

387–399.

Wrosch, C., Miller, G. E., Scheier, M. F., Schulz, R., & Carver, C. S. (2007). Giving up on

unattainable goals: Benefits for health? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33,

251–265.

Wrosch, C., Scheier, M. F., Miller, G. E., Schulz, R., & Carver, C. S. (2003). Adaptive self-

regulation of unattainable goals: Goal disengagement, goal reengagement, and subjective

well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1494–1508.

Wrosch, C., Schulz, R., Miller, G. E., Lupien, S., & Dunne, E. (2007). Physical health problems,

depressive mood, and cortisol secretion in old age: Buffer effects of health engagement

control strategies. Health Psychology, 26, 341–349.

Xue, G., Lu, Z., Levin, I. P., Weller, J. A., Li, X., & Bechara, A. (2009). Functional dissociations

of risk and reward processing in the medial prefrontal cortex. Cerebral Cortex, 19,

1019–1027.

Young, J. (1987). The role of selective attention in the attitude-behavior relationship. Doctoral

dissertation, University of Minnesota.


Basic Concepts and Theories

Documents

Transcript of Basic Concepts and Theories