Goals as Motives: Implications for Theory, Methods, and Practice

The concept of human goals is central to the study of psychology (i.e., motivation, behavior, and well-being), sociology (i.e., social structure, culture, and dynamics), education (i.e., setting objectives, student motivation, and growth strategies), management (i.e., leadership, employee motivation, productivity, organizational behavior), and economics (i.e., consumer and market behavior, decision making, labor relations), among others. Because it represents the ultimate desired destination that orients decisions and actions, it plays a central role in the theory and practice in these fields. Despite its centrality, the concept lacks theoretical consensus regarding its definition and distinctiveness from related concepts such as needs, motives, and values. Like these concepts, the goals literature suffers from the proliferation of both concepts and taxonomies, suggesting a need for a return to theoretical foundations. In this article, we advocate for a fundamental reconsideration of the concept of goals, anchoring it within a new psychological theory of human motivation based on first principles. The paper's primary contribution lies in demonstrating that the operational definitions utilized by academics and practitioners alike can be thought of as attempts to approach concepts of human motivation, specifically, emotional needs, without fully getting there. We review the leading definitions of human goals in the literature, concluding that they can be distilled to a fundamental set of human emotional needs, each associated with extensive literatures of their own. A comprehensive framework of 12 human emotional needs is introduced; it is argued that a comprehensive motivational framework offers significant advantages over current theoretical approaches, which tend to spin off an ever-expanding list of concepts. We consider the impact of embedding goals concepts within existing motivational constructs with clear benefits for: (a) theory development, (b) method development, and (c) practical applications, emphasizing the advantages of clear operational definitions.