Motivation from control
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Volition
Motivation from control Baruch Eitam · Patrick M. Kennedy · E. Tory Higgins
Received: 10 September 2012 / Accepted: 5 December 2012 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract Human motivation is sensitive to value—to the outcomes of actions. People invest mental and physical resources for obtaining desired results or for stopping and reversing undesired ones. Accordingly, people’s motivation is sensitive to information about their standing in relation to outcome attainment (‘outcome feedback’). In this paper, we argue and present the first evidence for the existence of another motivational sensitivity in humans—a sensitivity to our degree of control on the environment and hence to information about that control (‘control feedback’). We show that when actions have even trivial and constant perceptual effects, participants’ motivation to perform is enhanced. We then show that increased motivation is not because more information about task performance is available and that motivation is increased only in conditions in which control over the effects can be firmly established by the mind. We speculate on the implications for understanding motivation, and potentially, physical and mental health. Keywords Motivation · Agency · Reward
Introduction Knowing what effect one’s action has had on the environment (henceforth, effect) is integral to the mechanics of human motivated behavior. In past and current ideomotor-based B. Eitam (*) Psychology Department, University of Haifa, 7080 Rabin Complex, 31905 Mount Carmel, Haifa, Israel e-mail: [email protected] P. M. Kennedy · E. Tory Higgins Psychology Department, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
theories of action control, effects play a central role in the selection of goal-directed actions (Hommel et al. 2001; James 1890; Prinz 1997; for recent reviews, see Hommel 2009; Shin et al. 2010). Effects are, of course, crucial information for knowing whether a purposive, goal-directed action was successful in obtaining a desired outcome (Carver and Scheier 1990; Lewin 1935; Miller 1960). Thus, in current theories of human action, effects provide information about how we are doing (or what we should do) in relation to obtaining desired outcomes. In other words, such theories emphasize the information that effects carry about valued outcomes. We term this role of effects, ‘outcome feedback’. When functioning as outcome feedback, action effects motivate by providing information about our standing in relation to a desired outcome. In this paper, we build on previous work in the psychological literature to suggest that effects carry another type of information as well—that the organism has control over the environment. We call this type of information, ‘control feedback’. We hypothesize that the exercise of control is itself motivating above and beyond the information it carries as outcome feedback. To differentiate control effects from valued effects, we term this hypothesis, Control Effect Motivation (CEM).
Motivation from control effects The idea t
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