ABSTRACT
This program of research has been guided by the premise that the cognitive structure of the individual, representing opportunities for action as steps along a path to a goal, interacts with relatively stable dispositions of the individual to affectively react to the possible outcomes of those actions (e.g., motives), to determine the amount of motivation (tendency) aroused for a particular immediate activity faced by the individual. At the onset, we were primarily concerned with cognitive representations of the anticipated future consequences of immediate activity. Theory of achievement motivation was elaborated to take into account the impact of these distant future goals on motivation of immediate achievement-oriented activity. We became concerned with the distinctions between immediate success as “earning the opportunity to continue” along a contingent path where continuation required that success, immediate success as indicating a “personal accomplishment” independent of “moving on,” and immediate success as “evaluating the degree of possession” of prerequisite competences that are believed to be needed for future striving and success along the path. Thus the meaning of success to the individual came to be viewed in terms of these three distinct possibilities. We began to conceptualize the motivational effect of the immediate present primarily in terms of this “diagnostic testing” based on the outcomes of immediate skill-demanding activity. Most recently, we have become concerned with the possible effects of the retrospected past on motivation of immediate activity. These ideas and relevant research findings have led to the formulation of a motivational theory of personality functioning and change that builds on an expectancy x value approach to conceptualize the effects of the anticipated future, the retrospected past, and the evaluated present, on motivation of immediate activity—as well as on the person's perception of his own self-identity and self-worth as related to that immediate activity. The concept of “psychological career” has been introduced as representing opportunities for action that define self-identity and various sources of value that motivate immediate activity and provide self-esteem as a basis for psychological morale. The theoretical perspective represented here can best be viewed as an elaboration, extension, and specification of the approaches of Lewin (1938), McClelland (1951, 1961), and Atkinson (1957) to the study of the determinants of action/cognitive reorganization, as accomplished through the systematic study of achievement-oriented activity. The theory of personality functioning and change outlined here is meant to be a general theory that builds on and extends the earlier work in the area of achievement motivation.
