Self-deception is a special kind of motivational dominance in belief-formation. We develop criteria which set paradigmatic self-deception apart from related phenomena of auto-manipulation such as pretense and motivational bias. In self-deception rational subjects defend or develop beliefs of high subjective importance in response to strong counter-evidence. Self-deceivers make or keep these bel...

The purpose of this study was to identify the motivational profiles of physically active older adults and to achieve a better understanding of their perceived motives to explain their regular physical activity behavior in relation to self-determination theory (SDT). To address these aims, this study used quantitative and qualitative approaches. Older adults (n = 92; M = 74.95, SD = 4.6) complet...

BACKGROUND Research has shown how academic emotions are related to achievement and to cognitive/motivational variables that promote achievement. Mediated models have been proposed to account for the relationships among academic emotions, cognitive/motivational variables, and achievement, and research has supported such mediated models, particularly with negative emotions. AIMS The study teste...

The efficacy of brief treatments for media-recruited pathological gamblers was tested in a randomized clinical trial design (N = 314). Two self-directed motivational interventions were compared with a 6-week waiting list control and a workbook only control. Brief motivational treatment involved a telephone motivational interview and a mailed self-help workbook. Brief motivational booster treatm...

This article presents a systematic review of the literature examining the relationship between self-talk and performance. "Second-generation questions" regarding potential mediators and moderators of the self-talk-performance relationship were also examined. A total of 47 studies were analyzed. Results indicated beneficial effects of positive, instructional, and motivational self-talk for perfo...

Using motivational intensity theory as a framework, the present experiment examined how individual differences in self-focused attention interact with task difficulty to predict effort, assessed via cardiovascular reactivity. Participants (n = 50) worked on a cognitive task fixed at an easy, medium, or hard level of difficulty, and individual differences in private self-consciousness and self-r...

In Dörnyei’s (2009a) theorizing, motivation is conceptualized to be generated by discomfort associated with the learner’s experience of a discrepancy between their current L2 self, and their ideal L2 self. However, in the L2 Motivational Self System, this discrepancy is not operationalized. A questionnaire containing measures of current L2 selves was administered to two cohorts of students lear...

Motivation for learning a new language is both self and time-oriented. The language learner’s motivation experiences gradual fluctuation over time and the view of oneself is different on each timescale of the study. Interaction among different timescales throughout the Second Language Development (SLD) is a novel area of investigation (de Bot, 2015). In order to probe this interactive nature, t...