Adaptive Motivation Theory

摘要

Traditional approaches to understanding motivation have not been successful. Middle range theories are necessary for progress in this area. Cognitive processes will play a major role in motivation theories of the future. Various middle range theories are likely to be more suitable for understanding some dependent variables than others. The work on adaptive motivation theory was intended to be preliminary, exploring the possible advantages of a reconeptualization of motivation theory. In this report, we see our goal as introducing some lines of speculation, sampling some recent research that gives rise to that speculation, and presenting specimens of new theory and research designs and, ultimately, persuading the reader to pick up the burden of a novel idea or approach and to carry it some distance for us. Various technical and quarterly reports have detailed the development of questionnaires and methods of measuring components of adaptive motivation theory. In this report, we identify the nature and extent of that conceptual work. In effect, we suggest that it may be valuable to explore more deeply the cognitive roots of many of the current approaches. Through such an exploration, it may be possible to develop a set of middle range theories capable, in aggregate, of explaining motivated behavior.