Selecting tasks that match features of one's motivational state (e.g., performing an eager brainstorming task under a promotion focus) can lead to enhanced performance (e.g., regulatory fit; Higgins, 2000). To do so, people need insight into their motivational states. Drawing from research on metamotivation (Miele & Scholer, 2018), we propose that people use emotions to infer motivational states, which in turn guides strategic task selection. Seven experiments (four in the main text and three in the Supplemental Materials) explored this possibility using a task selection paradigm in the context of regulatory focus theory. Participants chose between tasks requiring eagerness versus vigilance as a function of emotions that differed in regulatory focus (promotion: cheerful, dejected vs. prevention: quiescent, agitated) and self-regulatory effectiveness (success: cheerful, quiescent vs. failure: dejected, agitated) dimensions. Experiments 1-3 revealed that task selection was guided primarily by the self-regulatory effectiveness dimension: participants preferred eager versus vigilant tasks when experiencing success (cheerful and quiescent) versus failure emotions (dejected and agitated). Albeit to a lesser degree, they were also sensitive to the regulatory focus dimension, preferring eager versus vigilant tasks when experiencing promotion (cheerful) versus prevention (calm) success emotions. Experiment 4 tests our proposed mechanism more directly by exploring whether people infer motivational states from emotions. We discuss alternative explanations, potential limitations, and implications.

Goals require considering the immediate present as well as distant times, places, people, and possibilities. Although proximal goals require sensitivity to local opportunities, distal goals require action plans robust to variability. Construal level theory proposes that people contract versus expand regulatory scope (i.e., the range of possibilities one accounts for) to address these challenges. A primary tool they use to do so is construal level: low-level construal (representation that highlights unique, idiosyncratic features of events) contracts scope; high-level construal (representation that captures essential, core features) expands scope. Fourteen experiments (4 in the main text, 10 in the Online Supplement) support these assertions by documenting meta-motivational beliefs. Lay people recognize the benefits of construal level for modulating scope across a gradient of temporal distance, and across multiple distance dimensions. They also appreciate diverse methods with which to induce differences in construal level, including social preferences. We discuss theoretical and methodological implications.

Our perceptions of reality are partly a byproduct of our goals. Past research has found that people are motivated to selectively share reality—shared inner states about the world—with those who help them achieve their goals (i.e., instrumental others). We argue that this desire to share reality with instrumental others depends on relational mobility: how free others are to leave relationships. Across 39 countries ( N ≈ 17,000), relational mobility predicted more shared reality with instrumental (vs. noninstrumental) others. Two network studies ( N = 353; N = 277) replicated this interaction, revealing that perceived relational mobility shaped the likelihood of sharing reality with instrumental versus noninstrumental others. An experiment ( N = 590) manipulating relational mobility found causal support: High (vs. low) relational mobility reduced shared reality with noninstrumental others. These findings suggest that cultures emphasizing social freedom influence how people “choose their reality” by selectively merging minds with instrumental others.

Self-regulation-the monitoring and control of thoughts, feelings, and behavior-plays a central role in guiding healthy social development. While the bulk of the literature examining children's self-regulation has focused on how much or how well children can regulate specific cognitive functions or behaviors (e.g., emotion control, delay of gratification), recent adult research demonstrates the role of metamotivation-the monitoring and control of motivational states-in self-regulation. Metamotivation is guided by metamotivational beliefs, including beliefs about which motivational state best fits the task at hand (beliefs about task-motivation fit). Research with adults demonstrates that having normatively accurate beliefs about task-motivation fit supports both individual achievement and social/occupational success. However, research has yet to investigate children's metamotivational beliefs. The current research addresses this gap by assessing children's beliefs about task-motivation fit. In Study 1, participants in middle childhood (N = 66; Mage = 7.7 years) rated how well they would expect to perform on expansive-eager tasks (tasks optimally performed with eagerness or expansion) and contractive-vigilant tasks (tasks optimally performed with vigilance or contraction) with eagerness (vs. vigilance) and expansion (vs. contraction). Study 2 was a direct replication of Study 1 with adult participants (N = 210; Mage = 39.3 years). Across both studies, participants had a general preference for vigilance over eagerness. While both children and adults reported some normatively accurate metamotivational beliefs about task-motivation fit, adults demonstrated these normatively accurate beliefs to a greater extent. These findings are discussed in terms of the importance of incorporating metamotivational beliefs into developmental models of self-regulation with the goal of supporting positive socialization and social developmental outcomes.

This study examines metamotivation—the beliefs and processes that allow for flexible regulation of motivational states to achieve desired outcomes. We investigated (1) metamotivational knowledge across grade levels, (2) the cultural and developmental generalizability of the metamotivational knowledge and performance association, (3) the role of the breadth of motivational strategy repertoire and metamotivational knowledge about discerning when to use distinct strategies, and (4) demographic factors contributing to differences in such discernment. Results reveal that middle-to-high school Singapore students generally possess accurate metamotivational knowledge regarding high-level versus low-level construal, with older students scoring higher than younger students. High-level knowledge significantly predicted exam performance. This finding held even when controlling for prior exam scores and strategy repertoire. Notably, there was no significant correlation between students’ strategy discernment and repertoire. Lastly, students from higher-income households exhibited higher knowledge levels, suggesting possible demographic disparities. These findings underscore the critical role of metamotivational knowledge in predicting real-world success.

Psychological research on self-control-the forgoing of immediate rewards in favor of global goals-focuses largely on how people monitor and control their thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Comparatively less work has examined the regulation of motivational states. This is surprising given the motivational roots of self-control dilemmas: people desire an immediate reward on the one hand, but also recognize that this reward precludes the ability to attain higher-priority concerns on the other. We describe an emerging perspective that highlights the monitoring and control of one's motivational states; i.e., metamotivation. We distinguish this approach from similar approaches (e.g., cognitive control, emotion regulation) and review initial supporting empirical results. Studying metamotivation is essential if we are to gain a comprehensive understanding into the questions of who, when, and why people succeed or fail at self-control.

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.

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.

Researchers from social and educational psychology have typically taken distinct approaches to investigating how individuals regulate their motivational states. The metamotivational framework that we describe in this article serves to bridge these approaches by drawing on insights from the literatures on metacognition and emotion regulation. Metamotivation refers to the psychological processes involved in monitoring and exerting control over one's motivational states. In contrast to prior approaches, which tend to concentrate on the strategies that individuals use to regulate the amount of motivation they have to pursue various goals (i.e., on motivation quantity), our metamotivational framework also focuses on how people determine which types of motivation (e.g., intrinsic vs. extrinsic, promotion vs. prevention, high- vs. low-level construal) are best suited for particular goals (i.e., on motivation quality). A central assumption of the framework is that people draw on at least three types of metamotivational knowledge when regulating the quantity and quality of their motivation: task knowledge, strategy knowledge, and self-knowledge. In this article, we provide a speculative account of how this occurs. We then review findings indicating that, on average, people have surprisingly accurate task and strategy knowledge about the adaptiveness of particular types of motivation for certain kinds of tasks (i.e., beliefs about task-motivation fit). The findings also suggest that individual differences in this knowledge may, at times, predict task performance and academic achievement. In the final section, we discuss some unexplored aspects of self-knowledge that could be the focus of new lines of metamotivational research.

Although intrinsic motivation is often viewed as preferable to more extrinsic forms of motivation, there is evidence that the adaptiveness of these motivational states depends on the nature of the task being completed (e.g., Cerasoli et al., 2014). Specifically, research suggests task-motivation fit such that intrinsic motivation tends to benefit performance on open-ended tasks (tasks that involve qualitative performance assessment; e.g., creative writing) and extrinsic motivation benefits performance on closed-ended tasks (tasks that involve quantitative performance assessment; e.g., multiple choice). We examined people's metamotivational beliefs about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the context of this task-motivation fit. Across 11 studies (seven primary, four supplemental; N = 3,544), participants provided beliefs about the utility of different types of motivation-regulation strategies: strategies that enhance one's interest and enjoyment in a task versus strategies that focus on the value associated with task outcomes (self-relevance strategies and reward strategies). Across all studies, participants recognized that the adaptiveness of these strategies depends on the nature of the task being completed. Consistent with an understanding of normative task-motivation fit, participants generally reported that interest-enhancing strategies were more useful for open-ended tasks and that reward strategies were more useful for closed-ended tasks; however, in some studies, participants reported that reward strategies were equally useful across task types (Studies 2, 3, and 5). More normatively accurate beliefs were associated with more normatively accurate consequential behavioral choices (Study 6) and better task performance (Study 7). We discuss the implications of these results for theories of motivation and self-regulation.

Previous research has found a consistent trade-off between speed and accuracy. Whereas completing work tasks quickly is generally associated with increased mistakes, slowing down allows individuals to work in a more careful and accurate manner. However, this previous work has not considered the implications that subjective speed perceptions have for accuracy. To this end, we draw on control theory accounts of goal progress velocity, which predict that feeling slow is associated with negative emotional experiences. We argue that slow perceived progress is frustrating, and that this frustration can hinder accuracy. We tested our hypotheses using an experiment in which participants (N = 92) completed a work simulation. Importantly, actual speed was held constant across conditions, and instead we manipulated participants’ subjective interpretations of their rate of progress. As expected, feeling slow was associated with increased frustration, which in turn was negatively associated with accuracy. The results of this study imply that, contrary to the typical finding of a trade-off between speed and accuracy, there are situations in which slowing down can actually hinder accuracy. Therefore, the current research adds important nuance to the literature on speed-accuracy trade-offs. Additionally, this research provides the most direct test of control theory predictions regarding velocity to date. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these results for both theory and practice.

Although persistence and tenacity in goal pursuit are often vaunted, at times, it is also critical to walk away from or give up one’s goals. Indeed, research over the past two decades has revealed that goal disengagement is an important part of goal pursuit and has well-being benefits. In this Review, we consider goal disengagement from a multiple-goal perspective, according to which the need for goal disengagement arises because people hold multiple goals that cannot be pursued simultaneously owing to limited resources. A multiple-goal perspective suggests commonalities among phenomena that are often considered distinct but that all reduce goal-striving efforts towards a given goal: goal abandonment, goal freezing and goal switching. A multiple-goal perspective also suggests that the relative attainability, desirability or goal affordance for a given goal determines whether goal disengagement is adaptive, broadens understanding of when and how goal disengagement is beneficial, and provides a framework to examine what factors are most influential in the decision to disengage versus continuing with a goal. Goal disengagement is typically conceptualized in terms of total abandonment. In this Review, Scholer and colleagues examine goal disengagement at multiple timescales and consider when and how goal disengagement is beneficial in the context of multiple goals.

Researchers across theoretical traditions have long recognized the need for people to monitor and modulate certain aspects of their subjective experiences (such as their thoughts and feelings) in response to situational challenges that interfere with the attainment of important goals. Comparatively less attention has been devoted to understanding the beliefs and mechanisms necessary to regulate motivational states-i.e., metamotivation, even though motivational states are often integral to people's subjective experiences of events. As particular types of motivational states are more adaptive in some contexts than in others, flexibly instantiating the right motivational state at the right time may be key to achieving one's goals. The current paper reviews the principles of the metamotivational approach to studying motivation regulation and briefly reviews supporting research. In addition, we highlight metamotivation research conducted in the context of self-affirmation theory to demonstrate the generative potential of this approach for researching phenomena that have traditionally been treated as separate from self-regulation. We conclude by discussing some of the novel questions that the metamotivational approach has prompted, both in and outside of the self-regulatory domain.

In this article, we argue that the relationship between workplace hazardousness and accidents is best characterized as an inverted-U, such that accidents are most likely to occur within moderately hazardous environments. Specifically, whereas highly hazardous work environments are strong situations in which there is a clear need for a high degree of safety behavior, the amount of safety behavior needed to minimize accidents within moderately hazardous environments is more ambiguous. Drawing on self-regulatory theories of work motivation, we argue that most individuals tend to exhibit a proportional response to hazardousness, such that moderately hazardous environments are met with a moderate degree of safety behavior. However, we demonstrate that proportional responses to hazardousness will ultimately yield an inverted-U relationship between hazardousness and accidents. Instead, a sharp, non-linear increase in safety behavior is needed to keep accidents at a low and constant level as hazardousness increases. We present four studies to test our hypotheses. Studies 1 and 2 used archival data to test our hypothesis of an inverted-U relationship between hazardousness and accidents in natural work settings. Studies 3 and 4 were experiments which replicated this finding, and more importantly, demonstrated that the inverted-U relationship between hazardousness and accidents was driven by a failure to sharply increase safety behavior in response to small increases in hazardousness. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these results for the safety literature, particularly the need to educate workers regarding the pattern of safety behavior needed to fully offset environmental hazardousness.

Self-control-the prioritization of valued global goals over immediate local rewards-is typically conceptualized and studied as isolated decisions. Goal pursuit, however, generally requires people to make repeated self-control decisions across contexts. We adopt a higher order, strategic level of analysis of self-control and explore, for the first time, people's preferences for abstinence (a pattern of choices in which one never indulges) versus moderation (a pattern of choices in which one indulges when doing so does not harm one's goals or even helps promote the pursuit of those goals). To understand when and why people may opt for one over the other, the present work explores one psychological feature that may support these strategy preferences: the representation of self-control conflicts as inherent (i.e., choice options are mutually contradictory) versus situational (i.e., choice options compete for limited resources). We present eight studies in the main text and three in the online Supplemental Materials documenting that people associate inherent and situational conflict representations with abstinence and moderation, respectively. By documenting that strategy preferences may differ as a function of conflict representations, this work questions the assumption of abstinence as the primary indicator of self-control success, raises methodological and conceptual questions about how best to assess these strategy preferences, and calls for greater understanding of self-control as a recurrent decision-making process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Desire is part of human nature, and being vulnerable to desire is part of what differentiates humans from machines. However, individuals with high self-control-who demonstrate impressive resistance to their desires-may appear to lack such human vulnerability. We propose that people perceived as high in self-control tend to be dehumanized as more robotic, relating to potentially negative social consequences. Across six studies (N = 2,007), people perceived those higher in self-control as more robotic. In addition, we found some evidence that this robotic-dehumanization was related to less interest in spending time with the high self-control person. This outcome was reliably linked to lower warmth perceptions that correlated with greater robotic-dehumanization. Together, our results offer new insights into the social dynamics of exhibiting high self-control.

The COVID-19 pandemic poses unique opportunities to explore how fundamental self-regulatory variables affect responses to the pandemic. We examine how two critical self-regulatory orientations, locomotion and assessment, relate to psychological distress and obeying public health guidelines using secondary data analysis. In the initial pandemic stages (April and May, 2020), North American participants (N = 924) completed measures of chronic locomotion and assessment, pandemic behaviors and feelings, and various individual-differences. Analyses revealed that assessment, but not locomotion, was indirectly associated with greater pandemic rule-breaking and psychological distress through the fear of missing out, difficulty engaging in activities, and engagement in negative activities. We discuss why the vulnerabilities of assessment, and not locomotion, may be particularly sensitive to pandemic-related constraints.

People often face conflicts where they must choose between their long-term goals and tempting alternatives. Using an open-ended daily diary design, we investigated the characteristics of self-control conflicts in daily life, both replicating and extending past work. Specifically, we examined the factors that affected self-control conflict success, as well as how the nature and resolution of the conflict affected general perceptions of self-regulatory effectiveness. Self-control conflicts varied considerably within-persons including the domain of the conflict, the use of strategies, and whether they were successfully resolved. There was also variability in people’s subjective perceptions of how pulled they felt towards the temptation and the opposing goal, as well as how difficult and important the overall decision was. Furthermore, these factors predicted whether a conflict was resolved successfully (i.e., in favor of the goal), with pull towards the temptation emerging as the strongest predictor. People were also more successful in resolving self-control conflicts when they reported using any type of self-regulatory strategy; no specific strategy emerged as most effective. On days when participants successfully resolved conflicts, they also felt more confident in their general ability to self-regulate. Overall, our findings largely conceptually replicate past work using an open-ended diary format, and suggest that factors influencing self-control conflict resolution are also linked to general feelings of self-regulatory effectiveness.

Metamotivation research suggests that people understand the benefits of engaging in high-level versus low-level construal (i.e., orienting toward the abstract, essential versus concrete, idiosyncratic features of events) in goal-directed behavior. The current research examines the psychometric properties of one assessment of this knowledge and tests whether it predicts consequential outcomes (academic performance). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed a two-factor structure, whereby knowledge of the benefits of high-level construal (i.e., high-level knowledge) and low-level construal (i.e., low-level knowledge) were distinct constructs. Participants on average evidenced beliefs about the normative benefits of high-level and low-level knowledge that accord with published research. Critically, individual differences in high-level and low-level knowledge independently predicted grades, controlling for traditional correlates of grades. These findings suggest metamotivational knowledge may be a key antecedent to goal success and lead to novel diagnostic assessments and interventions.

Employees often have a great deal of work to accomplish within stringent deadlines. Therefore, employees may engage in shortcut behaviors, which involve eschewing standard procedures during goal pursuit to save time. However, shortcuts can lead to negative consequences such as poor-quality work, accidents, and even large-scale disasters. Despite these implications, few studies have investigated the antecedents of shortcut behaviors. In this research, we propose that employees engage in shortcut behaviors to regulate their velocity (i.e., rate of progress). Specifically, we predict that when individuals experience slower-than-referent velocity, they will (a) believe that the goal is unlikely to be met via standard procedures and (b) experience feelings of frustration. In turn, we expect these psychological states to be related to the perceived utility of shortcuts, especially when shortcuts are perceived as viable means to achieve the goal. Finally, we predict that the perceived utility of shortcuts will be positively related to actual shortcut behaviors. We tested these predictions using a laboratory experiment in which we manipulated velocity and unobtrusively observed shortcuts (Study 1, N = 147), as well as a daily diary study in which employees reported their velocity and shortcut behaviors over 5 consecutive workdays (Study 2, N = 395). Both studies provided support for our predictions. In sum, this research provides evidence to suggest that the experience of slow progress can lead to shortcuts not only by casting doubt on employees' perceived likelihood of meeting the goal but also by producing feelings of frustration.