Assessing Motivation Dynamically

Abstract

Abstract Motivation has a long history in psychology and other disciplines, becoming, by the mid-twentieth century, an active field of inquiry. When psychological theories began to increasingly incorporate cognition, beginning in the 1960s, motivation theories broadened their focus as well. Motivation is a dynamic, changing construct. Unfortunately, most research assesses motivation in static ways, as with the use of questionnaires. A significant development in motivation science in the next decade will be refinements in assessment methods to reflect fine-grained, real-time measures of motivation. Such measures will show moment-to-moment changes in motivation as a function of motivational outcomes and environmental influences. The future will also bring better integration of motivation research with neuroscience research to investigate how motivational processes are represented neurally.