In daily social interactions, joint decision making is not just about the outcomes we reach but also about how partners experience reaching those decisions together. Across three studies, we examine how perceived co-creation - the subjective sense of building understanding together, rather than simply agreeing - shapes interpersonal relationships. Compared to low co-creation and pre-existing agreement, high co-creation consistently enhanced trust, rapport, and willingness to collaborate, whether participants envisioned, remembered, or directly engaged in a joint decision. In Study 3, high co-creation dyads were nearly twice as likely to leave the laboratory together, suggesting effects that extend beyond self-report to observable behavior. Mediation analyses revealed that generalized shared reality - the sense that partners see the world similarly across domains - partially explained these relational benefits. These findings highlight the relational importance of how agreement is formed: the process of building shared understanding together may be as valuable as the agreement itself.

People are motivated to feel effective in the domains of control (managing what happens in life) and truth (establishing what is real and right). However, previous research has not established whether individuals typically possess lay theories that either of these motives predominates over the other. Although major psychological theories have emphasized the primacy of control, converging evidence across five studies reveals that individuals tend to believe that truth predominates. Participants reported believing that truth-(versus control-) oriented motives and activities are more important. Furthermore, this prioritization of truth extended to participants' conceptualizations of God, whose omniscience (versus omnipotence) they saw as more central. These truth-dominant tendencies persisted even when assessed using implicit measures. Finally, a preregistered replication study found a consistent pattern of truth (versus control) motive predominance among U.S. and Indian adults. These findings provide new insight into lay theories about the relative importance of these two fundamental motives.

Murayama and Jach argue that it is not clearly specified how motivation constructs produce behavior and that this black box should be unpacked. We argue that the authors overlook important classic theory and highlight recent research programs that already started unboxing. We feel that without relying on the mechanisms that such programs uncover, the proposed computational approach will be fruitless.

We argue that there is a fundamental motivation to have one’s life be ‘well-tuned’ to reality, and that this motivation, when successfully achieved, corresponds to a distinct psychological experience. This experience, which we call Life Attunement Experience (LAE), represents a chronic combination of feeling as though one’s life is both “right” and “effective” and has implications for well-being and prosocial behavior. Across five studies, we demonstrate that a measure of LAE explains the relationship between life circumstances indicating successful attunement (higher income, employment, organizational fit, job satisfaction) and general measures of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Furthermore, in three studies, we show that LAE has a distinct relationship to prosocial behavior—including objective behavior observed by others—underscoring the importance of this relational element for understanding the truth of a life. These studies combine to provide evidence for LAE’s importance to researchers of motivation in the domains of well-being, morality, and organizational behavior.

How do people make sense of the world and determine what is real? We propose that conversation enhances the perceived realness of everyday objects and experiences by allowing conversation partners to develop a shared reality - the perception of sharing the same beliefs and feelings about the world. We found that conversation partners who spontaneously talked more about ambiguous images perceived them as more real, and this effect was mediated by their sense of shared reality (Study 1). A 5-day daily diary study revealed that on days participants talked with a close partner more than usual, their experiences felt more real, and this effect was mediated by shared reality (Study 2). Experimentally introducing doubt in romantic couples' beliefs about their shared reality disrupted the effect of conversation on realness, with effects persisting one week later (Study 3). These studies suggest that conversations may heighten perceived realness by enhancing shared reality, highlighting the importance of interpersonal relationships in shaping people's sense of reality.

Despite shared reality's ubiquity and importance in life, how the process of reaching it affects life’s meaning has not been explored yet. In three studies, we examine co-creation versus simple validation of opinions in enhancing life's meaning, controlling for the experience of inner states’ commonality. Study 1 shows that more co-creation correlates with greater life meaning beyond shared reality and personality traits. Study 2, a daily diary study, reveals that daily co-creation is positively associated with life's meaning via self-efficacy. Study 3 demonstrates that recalling co-creation events provides more meaning than mere agreement, an effect self-efficacy mediates.

Abstract Motivation researchers within the field of social cognition often examine types of motivation that are thought to be qualitatively distinct (e.g., autonomous vs. controlled regulation, promotion vs. prevention focus, and locomotion vs. assessment orientation). Research suggests that the benefits of one type of motivation relative to another depend on the demands of the task and the context in which it is situated (termed task–motivation fit). However, there is yet to be a detailed account of what makes a particular type of motivation qualitatively distinct from other types of motivation or to explain whether these different motivations are always mutually exclusive. To address these issues and to explore the psychological mechanisms that may underlie task–motivation fit, this chapter outlines a speculative framework for investigating motivational trade-offs that draws on concepts from dynamic systems theory. It also explores the implications of this framework for research on metamotivational self-regulation.

Shared reality—the experience of sharing common inner states (e.g. feelings, beliefs) with other people about a given topic or target—is a ubiquitous human experience. With research on the construct of shared reality burgeoning in various domains, we examined a fundamental, yet understudied topic: the role of experiencing shared reality about a target in real‐time conversations and real‐world contexts. Across five studies conducted in various contexts (total N = 973), we developed a measure of target‐specific shared reality (SR‐T) and examined its role in interpersonal interactions and protective health behaviours. In our initial Studies (1a‐2), we developed a measure of SR‐T and establish psychometric, construct and criterion validity. In Study 3, we established predictive validity by investigating the link between SR‐T and important interpersonal interaction constructs (e.g. interpersonal rapport and epistemic trust in the partner). In Study 4 (preregistered), SR‐T moderated the effect of close others’ attitudes on vaccination and precautionary behaviours against COVID‐19 during the Omicron‐variant peak (2022). Our findings suggest that the experience of SR‐T, assessed with a valid measure, is linked to important dimensions of interpersonal interactions and health decisions in the real world.

After communicators have tuned a message about a target person’s behaviors to their audience’s attitude, their recall of the target’s behaviors is often evaluatively consistent with their audience’s attitude. This audience-tuning effect on recall has been explained as resulting from the communicators’ creation of a shared reality with the audience, which helps communicators to achieve epistemic needs for confident judgments and knowledge. Drawing on the ROAR (Relevance Of A Representation) model, we argue that shared reality increases the cognitive accessibility of information consistent (vs. inconsistent) with the audience’s attitude, due to enhanced truth relevance of this information. We tested this prediction with a novel reaction-time task in three experiments employing the saying-is-believing paradigm. Faster reactions to audience-consistent (vs. audience-inconsistent) information were found for trait information but not for behavioral information. Thus, audience-congruent accessibility bias emerged at the level at which impressions and judgments of other persons are typically organized. Consistent with a shared-reality account, the audience-consistent accessibility bias was correlated with perceived shared reality about the target person and with epistemic trust in the audience. Among possible explanations, the findings are best reconciled with the view that the creation of shared reality with an audience triggers basic and "automatic" (spontaneous, low-level) cognitive mechanisms that facilitate the retrieval of audience-congruent (vs. audience-incongruent) trait information about a target person.

While motivation science is an active and thriving subfield in the domains of both educational psychology and social-personality psychology, we believe that motivation research in each domain would benefit from greater conversation between the two. In this article, we discuss how social-personality psychology might offer useful insights for educational psychology through regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997) and regulatory fit theory (Higgins, 2000). We highlight the breadth of education-relevant outcomes known to be influenced by regulatory focus and regulatory fit (vs. nonfit) by featuring a selection of illustrative research examples, noting both the potential benefits and drawbacks of each mechanism. Following this review, we suggest practical implementations of regulatory fit and regulatory nonfit in real-world educational contexts.

Leaders today must motivate followers to engage in organizational change. Although leader change visions are considered a key motivator, limited research and theory explore how leaders' use of different change visions influences the extent to which followers are motivated to pursue organizational change goals. Building on issue selling and sensemaking literatures, we offer an expanded typology of leader change visions that more fully represents how leaders can depict the future state of their organization to create a case for change. We further propose a framework that explains how and under what conditions leader change visions motivate followers—individually and collectively—to support change efforts. To explain how followers respond to change initiatives, we highlight the role of regulatory construal fit—the degree to which leader change visions fit with followers' understanding of the threats or opportunities facing the organization—and regulatory focus fit—the extent to which leader change visions fit with followers' goal pursuit focus. In addition to contributing to a fuller understanding of the motivational underpinnings of leader change visions, our framework can help leaders tailor their communication to engage followers in the pursuit of organizational transformation goals.

People do not form a coherent understanding of the world in isolation. Instead, people cocreate a sense of what is real and true through shared reality-the experience of shared attitudes and judgments about the world. However, little is known about when and with whom shared reality emerges. Building on the people-as-means goal framework, we tested in three studies (N = 851) whether people are motivated to experience more shared reality with instrumental others (those who support their goals) than with noninstrumental others. Experimentally manipulating another person's instrumentality led people to create more shared reality with them, as assessed by an implicit behavioral measure (Study 1). People reported greater shared reality with those in their social network who were instrumental for more (vs. fewer) of their goals (Study 2). Finally, experimentally heightening goal importance increased generalized shared reality with instrumental (vs. noninstrumental) others (Study 3). We discuss implications for relationships, shared reality, and motivated cognition research.

We present a novel theoretical framework to explain the impact of rank positions on decision-makers' choices between more risky and less risky options. We do so by providing an analysis of the motivational effects of ranks that progresses through three levels of specificity: the broad "motive" level, an intermediate "goal" level, and a low level at which tactical choices are addressed and where the complexity of rank-driven choices considers a dynamic multiple goal perspective. In particular, we theorize on how more risky versus less risky options are chosen in light of the combined influence of (a) rank goals, (b) rank changes relative to those goals, and (c) other aligned or competing goals. Deriving from our theorizing and review of existing evidence from different fields studying various rank phenomena such as power, status, education, and performance, we articulate seven propositions that specify when rank-ordered individuals will choose more risky or less risky options.

The "cognitive revolution" threw out motivation (the baby) along with animal S-R learning (the bath water). Carol Dweck wants to place motivation again at the heart of psychology. And she has been a leader in doing just that. She has made fundamental contributions not only to our understanding of major motivational mechanisms but also to solving real-world problems. Her history of continually asking "Why" defines "programmatic" research. When she finds an initial answer to her fundamental question, "Why do some people fulfill their potential while others do not?" she always asks a follow-up "Why?" to dig even deeper. In this way, she discovered that people have different mindsets about whether ability is fixed versus permits growth. Those who believe ability is fixed want to repeatedly affirm it. She developed interventions that can change a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, which significantly helps people to fulfill their potential.

A focal stimulus (object, end state, outcome, event, experience, characteristic, possibility, etc.) may represent a presence, an occurrence, or something, or it may represent an absence, a nonoccurrence, or nothing. This presence-absence distinction has received extensive and explicit attention in cognitive psychology (it is the central figure), but it has received minimal and primarily implicit attention in motivation science (it is the ground, not the figure). Herein, we explicitly place the presence-absence distinction in the role of figure in a motivational account of behavior, and we do so in the context of the foundational approach-avoidance motivation distinction. We review pertinent literature in cognitive psychology and motivation science, and we provide a model integrating the approach-avoidance and the presence-absence distinctions, along with numerous examples, illustrations, and observations. We believe that attending to the presence-absence distinction in motivation science holds great promise for theory, research, and application, and we encourage researchers to attend to this distinction moving forward.

When postgraduate students join their program, they establish commonalities of inner states (feelings, beliefs, concerns) with members of different, intertwined groups. Are those commonalities perceived as distinct based on group type? If so, which type affects students the most? We address these questions leveraging the shared reality construct: the perceived commonality of inner states with others. In two empirical, longitudinal studies, we survey graduate students as they establish shared realities with small teams, their class cohort (cluster), and the broader school community. We show that each shared reality with different groups is perceived distinctively, and the one shared with cohort members has the strongest relationship with students' engagement with the program. We explore a shared reality antecedent and discuss interventions.