The Role of Metamotivation in Regulating Ourselves and Others

Research on self-regulation has often focused on how people exert control over their thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Relatively less attention has been paid to how or if people manage their motivational states in the service of achieving valued goals. I will discuss a program of research that focuses on the role of people's beliefs about motivation (i.e., their metamotivational knowledge) in effective goal pursuit. At the heart of this framework is the idea that qualitatively distinct motivational states often involve performance tradeoffs, such that a given motivational state (eagerness) may be relatively beneficial for some tasks (creative brainstorming), but detrimental for others (detailed editing). Thus, effective goal pursuit for both the self and others involves both discernment and flexibility in the regulation of motivation. I will present evidence that on average, people possess metamotivational knowledge of trade-offs of qualitatively distinct motivational states (highlighting work on those states posited by regulatory focus theory and construal level theory) and recognize strategies that can upregulate adaptive motivational states. At the same time, there is significant variability in the normative accuracy of this knowledge, which has implications both for individual success and for perceptions of effective leadership. I will discuss current and future directions in this program of research.