Motivation Science, Vol 10(3), Sep 2024, 155-159; doi:10.1037/mot0000342
The thesis of this special issue is that the siloing of research on human motivation is impeding the field’s overall progress in understanding it. Herein, we describe three important kinds of silos: (a) silos across different subdisciplines of psychology that occur due to different journals and conferences that service each; (b) construct-based silos where researchers focus on just one aspect of motivation; and (c) silos across different theoretical/epistemological traditions. This special issue contains eight articles that discuss different ways that researchers interested in human motivation can break down these and other kinds of silos that exist in the field. We close our piece by offering four macro suggestions for breaking down such silos: (a) Encouraging the leadership of research societies focused on motivation to work together to bridge those organizations more; (b) convincing funding agencies of the importance of such integrative work to develop a better understanding of motivation; (c) creating more special issues or sections of journals focused on a particular topic and how it is studied by different subdisciplines in the field; and (d) developing doctoral programs that are more integrative in their focus. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)