Motivation Science

Abstract Motivation science has advanced tremendously in the past decade. However, it is now clear that future progress is going to be stalled by the extent of disagreement among motivation scientists to some basic, yet controversial, questions. To help move motivation science toward greater coherence, the editors recruited prominent scholars to debate their contrasting perspectives. Such debate is not only interesting, but it also makes future research, discoveries, collaborations, and applications more fruitful. Because many excellent handbooks on motivation exist, the editors wanted to try something different—be provocative. They wanted to provoke creative ideas among the authors and readers. To achieve that end, they asked 10 thought-provoking questions that define contemporary motivation science’s most important, controversial, and provocative ideas. The questions deal with the nature of motivation, cultural differences in motivational processes, evidence-based strategies to enhance motivation, unresolved controversies, predictions of the future, and more. This volume features 67 individual author responses to these questions. Multiple authors shared their current thinking and insights to the same controversial question. This volume provides readers with a rare opportunity to see how different theorists and researchers recognize, evaluate, and prescribe solutions to the same motivation problem. By sharing current thinking and providing innovative insights into the important questions and controversies in the study of motivation, this volume informs readers about cutting-edge theory and research in motivation that they can use to generate fresh and effective applications and interventions.