ABSTRACT
This chapter employs the phrase motivated cognitions to refer to this complex interplay in which cognition is at once the servant of motives, as Freud put it, and also the planner and clarifier. Indeed, motivational theorists and researchers of an information-processing persuasion seem to maintain a studious disregard for one another's accomplishments and insights. Some researchers within the information-processing tradition have attempted to integrate motivational concerns within a cognitive framework, with the result that motivation is relegated to the status of an epiphenomenon rather than an explanatory concept in its own right. The most widely known theory of achievement motivation holds that achievement behavior is the result of an emotional conflict between fear of failure and hope of success. Not only are self-serving tendencies moderated by rational considerations, but the relationship between cognitive and motivational elements has a developmental history as well.
