| Summary: | "The present book is an outgrowth of some thirty years of teaching university courses concerned with motivation and emotion. One reason for writing this book has been to present the findings from our laboratory at the University of Illinois and to relate our work to that of others. The area of psychology covered by this book is exceedingly wide and complex. There is a good deal of confusion within psychology concerning the definition of terms and concepts. Psychologists do not yet agree upon the definitions of basic terms like drive, need, anxiety, attitude, and motive, and I doubt whether it would be possible to give a definition of emotion that all psychologists would accept. The present survey shows that there are many specific facts and principles within motivational psychology. In facing the complexity of the materials, the reader will discover that an attempt to structure the field of motivation and emotion is something like working a jigsaw puzzle. Many parts fit into the total picture, but there are obvious gaps and pieces that do not seem to belong. If the present book reveals some of these gaps in our knowledge, and if this revelation leads to further research, it will have served a useful purpose. This book, as the subtitle indicates, is a survey of the literature upon motivation and emotion. This book is intended for use as a college text in advanced courses on motivation and the affective processes. It can well be used as a collateral textbook or a reference work for courses on learning, adjustment, personality, and related topics. The book is intended for students who have had introductory courses in psychology and who also possess some background in physiology and general biology"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).
|
|---|