Motivation and Self-Regulation across the Life Span [Hardcover]

A group of internationally renowned scholars discuss their research on motivation.Motivation used to be seen as a trait that people had or didn't have. Now we think of motivation as involving many processes (thoughts, feelings, and actions) that occur as people pursue their goals. These processes help us understand how one person differs from another motivationally , and how a given person can change over the life span. In this book, a group of internationally renowned scholars discuss their research on motivation, highlighting processes that both help people and hinder them over the life course as they attempt to reach their goals.Motivation used to be seen as a trait that people had or didn't have. Now we think of motivation as involving many processes (thoughts, feelings, and actions) that occur as people pursue their goals. These processes help us understand how one person differs from another motivationally , and how a given person can change over the life span. In this book, a group of internationally renowned scholars discuss their research on motivation, highlighting processes that both help people and hinder them over the life course as they attempt to reach their goals.In the past two decades, an approach to the study of motivation has emerged that focuses on specific cognitive and affective mediators of behavior, in contrast to more general traits or motives. This social-cognitive approach grants goal-oriented motivation its own role in shaping cognition, emotion and behavior, rather than reducing goal-directed behavior to mere information processing or to an enactment of a personality type. This book adds a developmental perspective to this process-oriented approach. Critical elements of motivational systems can be specified and their interrelations understood by charting the origins and the developmental course of motivational processes. Moreover, a process-oriented approach helps to identify critical transitions and effective developmental interveló@