The metamotivation approach: Insights into the regulation of motivation and beyond

Researchers across theoretical traditions have long recognized the need for people to monitor and modulate certain aspects of their subjective experiences (such as their thoughts and feelings) in response to situational challenges that interfere with the attainment of important goals. Comparatively less attention has been devoted to understanding the beliefs and mechanisms necessary to regulate motivational states—i.e., metamotivation, even though motivational states are often integral to people's subjective experiences of events. As particular types of motivational states are more adaptive in some contexts than in others, flexibly instantiating the right motivational state at the right time may be key to achieving one's goals. The current paper reviews the principles of the metamotivational approach to studying motivation regulation and briefly reviews supporting research. In addition, we highlight metamotivation research conducted in the context of self-affirmation theory to demonstrate the generative potential of this approach for researching phenomena that have traditionally been treated as separate from self-regulation. We conclude by discussing some of the novel questions that the metamotivational approach has prompted, both in and outside of the self-regulatory domain.