Motivation Science, Vol 10(1), Mar 2024, 1-8; doi:10.1037/mot0000304
Motivation researchers study the forces that drive, select, and direct behavior. As such, we seek to understand how people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions work together as they choose and pursue goals in their world. The author begins by tracing the fortunes of the field of motivation over the course of her career, from its heyday, to its fall from prominence, to its current resurgence. In this context, she traces her own career in motivation, starting with reinforcement learning, moving to attribution theory, continuing with achievement goals, and then focusing on implicit theories or mindsets. Throughout, she and her collaborators have tried to zero in on (and often intervene on) the personal and contextual factors that enhance challenge-seeking, effective persistence, educational achievement, and mental health, as well as the factors that influence interpersonal judgments and stereotyping. More recently, she has developed an integrative theory that identifies motivation as the foundation of personality and its development, and she has collaborated on a neuroscience-based theory that identifies motivation as a key factor in intelligent decision-making. The driving theme throughout her career has been how to harness motivation to promote and fulfill human potential. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)