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Studying Food Reward and Motivation in Humans
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Goals as Motives: Implications for Theory, Methods, and Practice.

J David Pincus1

  • 1Leading Indicator Systems & Motivation Metrics, One Franklin Street, Suite 2508, Boston, MA, 02110, USA. jdavid.pincus@leadingindicator.com.

Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science
|January 25, 2025
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Human goals are central to many fields but lack clear definitions. This study proposes a new motivation theory, linking goals to 12 fundamental emotional needs for better understanding and application.

Keywords:
Emotional needsGoalsHuman goalsMotivationValuesWell-being

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Area of Science:

  • Psychology
  • Sociology
  • Education
  • Management
  • Economics

Background:

  • Human goals are crucial across disciplines like psychology, sociology, education, management, and economics.
  • Despite their centrality, a lack of theoretical consensus exists regarding the definition of goals and their distinction from related concepts (needs, motives, values).
  • The proliferation of concepts and taxonomies in goal literature necessitates a return to theoretical foundations.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To advocate for a fundamental reconsideration of human goals within a new psychological theory of human motivation.
  • To demonstrate that current operational definitions of goals are attempts to address human emotional needs.
  • To introduce a comprehensive framework of 12 human emotional needs as a basis for understanding motivation.

Main Methods:

  • Reviewing leading definitions of human goals in existing literature.
  • Distilling these definitions to a fundamental set of human emotional needs.
  • Introducing a new theoretical framework based on 12 identified emotional needs.

Main Results:

  • Leading definitions of human goals can be distilled into a set of fundamental human emotional needs.
  • A comprehensive framework of 12 human emotional needs is proposed.
  • This new framework offers advantages over existing approaches by reducing conceptual proliferation.

Conclusions:

  • Reconceptualizing goals within a framework of emotional needs enhances theory and method development.
  • Clear operational definitions rooted in emotional needs benefit practical applications in various fields.
  • A unified motivational framework based on first principles provides a more parsimonious and advantageous approach.