International Journal of Psychology and Psychological Therapy

Motivation and Social Cognition: Enemies or a Love Story? [Motivación y Cognición Social: ¿Enemigos o Una Historia de Amor?]

Volume 1 Num. 1 - June 2001 - Pages 33-45

Authors:

Arie W. Kruglanski

Abstract:

This paper discusses four distinct models of conceptualizing the relationship between motivation and cognition in contemporary social psychology. The first one, referred to as “antagonistic” assumes that motivation and cognition are alternative, and potentially rival ways of reaching judgments. This claim rests on a rich tradition in Western thought stemming from Plato and Aristotle and more recently echoed by Freud. The second model referred to as “segregationist” assumes that different degrees of motivation combine with different cognitive contents to form separate clusters, or routes to judgment as in the case of the well-known models of persuasion advanced in the 1980s. The third conceptualization Lay Epistemic Theory (LET) proposes an integrated model in which any motivation may combine with any cognitive content to form a uniform route to judgment, also known as the “unimodel”. Finally, a fourth model proposes a “fusion” in which motivation is thought to possess a distinctly cognitive aspect and in a sense to constitute a unique type of cognition with motivational contents.

Key words:

Motivation, Cognition, Models

Full Article

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