Motivation: The Self and its Strivings

• defining and creating the self
• relating the self to society
• discovering and developing personal potential
• managing or regulating the self

• defining the self
• collection of domain-specific self-schemas

• the means by which the self relates to society
• the essence of who the self is within a cultural context
• assumed social roles directly behaviour in ways that express the role-identity's cultural value

• developing personal potential
• emerges from intrinsic motivation
• development through differentiation and integration

occurs as the self exercises its intrinsic interests. preferences, and capacities to grow and expand the self

occurs as the differentiated parts of the self are brought together into a sense of coherence or unity

• involves the person's metacognitive monitoring of how their goal-setting process is going
• mental stepping-back to monitor and evaluate process - comparing current and ideal selves
• acquired through social observational learning from an expert

• cognitive generalization about the self that are domain specific and are learned from past experience
• generate motivation via the consistent and possible self

self-schemas direct behaviour to confirm the self-view and prevent episodes that generate feedback that might disconfirm that self-view

• people dislike inconsistency
• the experience of dissonance is psychologically aversive
• people seek to reduce dissonance by striving to maintain consistency in their beliefs, attitudes, values and behaviours

• the individual observes others and proactively forecasts a view of the future self that the person would like to become
• generate motivation for developing and growing toward sought-after aspirations

• life goals that emanate out of the integrated/core self
• enhanced effort -> greeter likelihood of need-satisfying experiences -> well-being and future gains in self-concordance

the superordinate goals people try to accomplish