ABSTRACT
Although a great deal of human behaviour is not consciously driven, the lion’s share of research in psychology to explain why people act as they do has been centred on conscious and reportable experiences of intention and motivation. Over the past 15 years, however, the research climate has undergone considerable transformation in this respect, and the current environment is highly favourable for researching unconscious motivation. It has been increasingly accepted that the human mind contains two distinct processing channels – conscious and unconscious – that can have different effects on motivation, but this does not mean that the area is without any challenges. Questions abound about how the joint operation of the conscious and the unconscious mind takes place in actual practice, and there are heated arguments in the scholarly community about which is ultimately in charge of shaping human behaviour. Views also differ on how unconscious attitudes, goals and motives can be identified and investigated, given that the particular person who beholds them is actually unaware of them. This chapter offers an overview of these matters in order to create the foundation for further research on the role of unconscious motivation within the field of SLA.
