The Purpose-Driven Life: Commentary on Kenrick Et Al.
Name
PPS Kenrick commentary final.pdf
Size
47.59 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
80230476797e14501c5b0e6415b05ad3
Author(s)
Bargh, John A.
Ackerman, Joshua
Date Issued
May 2010
Journal
Perspectives on Psychological Science
Publisher
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Citation
Ackerman, J. M., and J. A. Bargh. “The Purpose-Driven Life: Commentary on Kenrick et al. (2010).” Perspectives on Psychological Science 5 (2010): 323-326. Web. 16 Dec. 2011.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
The resurgence of motivation in social psychology has been a welcome addition to the cognitive revolution, though a theory-based approach to motivational content has remained conspicuously absent. Kenrick, Griskevicius, Neuberg, and Schaller (2010, this issue) dust off Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and find this content in the form of evolutionarily inspired, fundamental motives. Their new framework unites functional, developmental, and proximal levels of analysis by showing how these levels complement rather than compete with each other. We highlight what we see as the especially valuable features of this framework and discuss its relevance for research on goal conflict, multigoal priming, and recent studies of goal scaffolding. We also suggest one main tweak to the theoretical foundation presented here that may bear greater empirical fruit. In sum, Kenrick and colleagues have reinvigorated a classic theory by integrating it with a modern understanding of human behavior’s evolutionary roots.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691610369472
