Motivation and emotion/Lectures/Implicit motives and goals

Lecture 05: Implicit motives and goals
This is the fifth lecture for the motivation and emotion unit of study.

This lecture discusses:

• implicit motives
• goal-setting and goal striving

Key questions:

• What are implicit motives? How do they arise?
• What are the key elements for successful goal setting and goal pursuit?

Take-home messages:

• Implicit (unconscious) motives are socialised rather than innate, and include achievement, affiliation/intimacy, and power motivations.
• People perform best when they have a specific plan of action to pursue a difficult, specific, and self-congruent goal.

Implicit motives

• Explicit vs. implicit motives
• Achievement
• Affiliation
• Power

Goal setting and goal striving

• Corrective motivation
• Goal setting
• Goal striving

• David McClelland and three motivational needs (Management Courses, YouTube) (8:12 mins): Explains the three psychological needs proposed by David McClelland using a practical scenario – building a sales team.
• Locke and Latham's Goal Setting Theory (MindTools, YouTube) (1:29 mins): A lot of contemporary goal setting advice is derived from Locke and Latham's (1990) goal setting theory which is summarised in this video in terms of clarity, challenge, commitment, feedback and complexity.

• Chapter 07: Implicit motives (Reeve, 2018)
• Chapter 08: Goal setting and goal striving (Reeve, 2018)

• Implicit motives (Google Slides)
• Goal setting and goal striving (Google Slides)

• Images

Lectures

• Extrinsic motivation and psychological needs (Previous lecture)
• Mindsets, control, and self (Next lecture)
• Unconscious motivation (Related lecture)

Tutorial

• Functionalist theory and self-tracking

Wikiversity

• Achievement (Book chapters)
• Goal pursuit (Book chapters)
• Goal setting (Book chapters)
• Implicit motives (Book chapters)
• Power motivation (Book chapters)
• Social (Book chapters)

Wikipedia

• David McClelland
• Goal setting
• John Atkinson
• Need theory

• Lecture 05 (2024)

• BBC Interview with Rupert Murdoch (YouTube, 1968) (0:48 min) – Example of one type of social need – the need for power
• Keep your goals to yourself (Derek Sivers, TED talk, 2010) (3 min) – Conventional wisdom is to make our goals public to hold us accountable – but going public gives a (false) sense of satisfaction that can undermine future effort
• If you could achieve one goal in 24 hours (Brian Tracy) (2 min) – A "motivational guru" argues for putting everything aside to achieve one goal in 24 hours
• Locke's goal-setting theory: Setting meaningful, challenging goals (Mind Tools)
• Want to succeed? Don't set goals, set systems (Adam Alter, Big Think) (3:50 mins) – Goal setting and goal striving can be a motivational double-edged sword