Another way of categorizing motivations is to consider them as either approach motivations or avoidance motivations. An approach motivation is a drive to experience a positive outcome, while an avoidance motivation is a drive to not experience a negative outcome. The relative strength of these motivations may not be equal and some research has suggested that motivations to avoid loss can overpower motivations for gains. In one study, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (1979) found that participants weren’t willing to risk losing $8 on a coin flip, even if a win would pay $10. While rationally these odds favor playing, this demonstrates how we can be more strongly motivated to avoid a loss than gain a win.
These two types of motivation can work together or be in conflict. When we make decisions, we often have multiple options and we must do a sort of mental accounting of approach and avoidance motivations in order to choose. For instance, when making your weekend plans there might be two movies that you’d like to see. In this case, you have approach-approach conflict, because you want the positive experiences of both, but you can only choose one.
You might also experience avoidance-avoidance conflict when you are faced with choosing between outcomes which are all negative, such as deciding whether to wash the dishes or vacuum the floor.
Finally, you can have approach-avoidance conflict when a single choice contains both positive and negative motivations. For instance, imagine you’ve been invited to a party. You want to go because some of your friends are going (approach). At the same time, a few people you dislike will also be at the party, and you don’t really want to interact with them (avoidance). Going to the party has positives you don’t want to miss, but negatives that can’t be avoided, so it’s a situation where you’re “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”.
This post is an excerpt from Master Introductory Psychology: Complete Edition
