Beyond Pleasure and Pain: Value From Engagement

• In Event: Breaking Down Silos: Connecting Motivation Scholars From Two Major Research Organizations

Abstract

My research team studies the motivational underpinnings of perceptions, judgments, decisions, and behaviors across a wide range of domains, including the corporate workplace, the consumer marketplace, healthcare contexts, and educational settings. We take a motivated cognition perspective in pursuing both basic and applied questions relating to self-regulation. We have studied extensively how individuals’ valuing of different activities is determined.
Our research has shown that value is determined in part by whether the activity leads to the experience of pleasure or pain. But hedonic experience is not enough. I will summarize my program of research that supports the proposal that strength of engagement also contributes to experienced value—an experience of the intensity of the force of attraction to or repulsion from a value target. Although the subjective pleasure/pain properties of a value target influence strength of engagement, there are factors separate from the hedonic properties of the value target that also influence engagement strength and thus contribute to the value experience of attraction or repulsion. I will discuss research showing the effects on the current value of something from additional sources of engagement strength, including: (1) regulatory fit (or non-fit) between the motivational concern of a goal pursuit and the manner of the goal pursuit, (2) using the right or proper means of goal pursuit, and (3) opposing something that interferes with goal pursuit. All of these sources occur in educational settings and influence the value of learning. Thus, I will connect my research to work on the valuing of achievement conducted in educational settings.

Authors

• E. Tory Higgins, Columbia University

• Emily Nakkawita, Columbia University