Hedonic motivation

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Hedonic motivation refers to the influence of a person's pleasure and pain receptors on their willingness to move towards a goal or away from a threat. This is linked to the classic motivational principle that people approach pleasure and avoid pain, [1] and is gained from acting on certain behaviors that resulted from esthetic and emotional feelings such as: love, hate, fear, joy, etc. [2] According to the hedonic principle, our emotional experience can be thought of as a gauge that ranges from bad to good and our primary motivation is to keep the needle on the gauge as close to good as possible. [3]

Contents

History

Historically, approach and avoidance motivation have been linked to the hedonic characteristics of pleasure and pain. [1] The root word hedonic comes from the Greek word for “sweet”, which means relating to or characterized by pleasure. [1] This is interesting because even though hedonic motivation incorporates the pursuit of pleasure as well as the avoidance of painful situations, the concept has been traditionally linked to the positive connotation of pleasure. [2] For example, hedonic goods are bought so that the consumer may gain pleasure and enjoyment from the good, [4] and value experiences are also viewed as hedonic experiences. [1]

Different views

As the term "hedonic motivation" occurred, different types of interpretations and views also occurred as well.

Socrates was one of the first few people to start interpreting Hedonic motivation. He viewed it as a person should follow a course of action for which pleasure exceeds pain and if a person does not follow that path, it is because they do not fully understand the knowledge of the pleasure or pain that can result.

Democritus viewed hedonic motivation along the same lines as Socrates’, but he did not have a defining definition of what was pleasurable and what was painful besides that people enjoy pleasure and people avoid pain. His take on hedonic motivation was that people have their own definitions on what is pleasurable and painful to them.

Epicurus viewed hedonic motivation as that pain and pleasure eventually even out and people learn how to do things in moderation.

As these early views of hedonic motivation took place, later philosophers also took an interest in their own interpretations.

Thomas Hobbes’ viewed hedonic motivation as people tend to approach pleasurable/positive environmental events and avoid painful/negative environmental events, also known as incentive motivation. Our learned remembrance on whether something was pleasurable or unpleasant sets our motivation to approach that event.

To go off on Hobbes’ views, Jeremy Bentham believed people are slaves to pleasure and pain and that hedonic motivation is determined by positive or negative consequences. Bentham believed in decision theory in which of all the possible end-states, which one would we choose? As people weigh pros and cons of each outcome, people will choose the one with the most positive outcomes. He also believed in the phrase principle of utility which is an idea that people choose their actions based on if it increases or decreases their happiness. Examples of utility is money because it increases a person's happiness.

Sigmund Freud viewed hedonic motivation as people tend to look at the long-term pleasure/happiness of things and would rather take the immediate discomfort if they know they will have a pleasurable outcome later on, also known as the reality principle. Freud presented the term pleasure principle which refers to a person's pursuit of pleasure that is obtained from a decrease in psychological tension.

Herbert Spencer viewed hedonic motivation by stating that pain and pleasure motivate behavior when those feelings reach a person's consciousness. He believed that people bring feelings or pleasure into their mind of consciousness while also driving out feelings of pain. He believed that pleasure supported behaviors that benefit life while pain supported behaviors that bring harm into their lives. He further explained that the longing anticipation of pain or pleasure is the guide of motivation for a person and their behaviors.

To follow up with Spencer, Edward Lee Thorndike viewed hedonic motivation the same way and stemmed many of his ideas from Spencer. Thorndike formulated the idea of law and effect which explains the idea that behavior followed by satisfying consequences is strengthened and if followed by unsatisfying consequences weakened. [5]

Theories

There are several theories that exert characteristics of Hedonic motivation and behavior, and rely on these qualities to better understand human purpose and human nature.

Beneception and nociception

One of the oldest examples is probably the Greeks' theory of beneception and nociception. [6] They believed that these two principles decided the motivation in all living things. Beneception is a term that is linked to pleasure and positive hedonic motivation; it is key to animal's survival that they follow this instinct towards a purpose. Nociception is the opposite of beneception and is concerned with consequences and negative hedonic motivation. If an animal does not flee from or avoid nociception they are likely to be faced with unpleasant effects. [6]

Appetitive and Aversive emotions

Another set of key terms similar to the two the Greeks used to describe hedonic motivation is appetitive emotion and aversive motivation. [6] Appetitive emotions are described as goals that can be associated with the positive hedonic processes of survival and pleasure, such as food and sex. [6] Aversive motivation is about removing oneself from unpleasant situations.

Affect-rich and affect-poor

When it comes to consumers buying goods, affect-rich and affect-poor items help determine how the consumer views and desires different products. [4] Affect-rich items are those that can produce associative imagery in the mind of the consumer, portraying it in a pleasing light and making it desirable. This kind of strategy plays with positive hedonic motivation and convinces the consumer to buy the product because they will enjoy using it. Affect-poor items do not offer that kind of imagery and are therefore connected with utilitarian purposes. [4] While income facilitates item purchase behaviour, income's influence on purchase motivation is unclear. A survey of 403 rich and poor Chinese fashion consumers have, for example, no significant difference in their motivations to purchase fashion items. [7]

Operant conditioning theory

Operant Conditioning theory is a well-known theory that also deals with hedonic processes; it is a model that includes three different changing and molding behavior. [6] Positive reinforcement is the first area of this it offers giving a reward to increase the probability of changing a certain behavior. This presents a positive hedonic impact by them . Negative reinforcement follows the idea that getting rid of an unpleasant hedonic motivation that animals will move towards acquiring a pleasurable stimulus and attempt to end or escape a painful or uncomfortable stimulus. The third part of Operant Conditioning Theory is punishment. Punishment believes that introducing a painful or unpleasant stimulant will smother a behavior into changing. [6] These theories exemplify how this motivation is by showing how hedonic processes are able to fit into a wide variety of situations while still maintaining the same function.

Hedonic versus utilitarian goods

Under the study for Hedonic motivation, there is substantial research on how this type of motivation can influence people's shopping habits. Hedonic goods are consumed for luxury purposes, which are desirable objects that allow the consumer to feel pleasure, fun, and enjoyment from buying the product. This is the difference from Utilitarian goods, which are purchased for their practical uses and are based on the consumer's needs. [4] Because of this, the consumer is generally willing to spend more on luxury hedonic items because they can rationalize that these items are more enjoyable, and won't be purchased very frequently, which allows the buyer to be less price sensitive towards these items. [4] It is, however, important to note that in any purchase situation a consumer evaluates both hedonic and utilitarian motivation values simultaneously, both leading toward a purchase decision. [8] Hedonic and utilitarian motivation are, however, different between geographic regions. China has, for example, different shopping motivations to Western nations. [7]

These goods could constitute anything from pedicures to art to furniture to new power tools to fine chocolate; basically anything that a consumer enjoys on less than a regular basis. Utility goods are items that are purchased frequently and are a regular part of the consumer's life, which allows the consumer to be more price sensitive towards these goods because they are purchased and used frequently. [4] These items can be cleaning fluid, laundry detergent, clothing, toilet paper, or other items that a consumer uses regularly. Guilt also has a tendency to be associated with hedonic purchases. This is due to these items being bought for means that are associated with pleasure and excess, not items that are necessary for daily life and are therefore not as easy to justify buying as utilitarian items. [4]

Luxury goods and utilitarian goods both serve purposes for consumers when shopping. The positive hedonic influence comes from the buying of luxury goods for enjoyment and stimulation, and utilitarian goods are items bought out of necessity and don't necessarily bring any joy to the consumer. These are both areas of hedonic motivation that work on the consumers preferences and are expressed through physical goods and services purchased. [4]

Pain and pleasure

Pleasure-seeking is the most basic of all motives, and social influence often involves creating situations in which others can achieve more pleasure by doing what we want them to do than by doing something else. Parents, teachers and governments often try to influence our behavior by offering rewards and threatening punishments. When the Republic of Singapore warned its citizens that anyone caught chewing in public would face a year in prison and a $5,500 fine, gum-chewing in that country fell to an all-time low. [9] It can also be difficult to remain in the confines that people simply do things to attain pleasure and move to avoid pain, because as we have grown and evolved as a species, so have our motives. People sometimes put themselves in harms way in order to experience emotional pain, and there are two explanations for this. [2] First, this could happen because a person feels that they need to learn how to handle painful or unpleasing events, or second, that they are better preparing themselves for future situations. [2] Both of these answers are coping mechanisms for events that have not come to pass, but do seek long-term positive hedonic impact by experiencing negative situations at the moment. Other situations involve a person overcoming initial resistance towards going on the journey to attain a goal because the path to it is unpleasant but the end result is hedonically positive. [1] Also, there are situations where, as a person attempts to attain a goal, an unpleasant obstacle may hinder that pursuit, this strengthens the level of engagement towards obtaining the goal and makes the end target seem more attractive. [1]

Related Research Articles

Hedonism refers to a family of theories, all of which have in common that pleasure plays a central role in them. Psychological or motivational hedonism claims that human behavior is determined by desires to increase pleasure and to decrease pain. Normative or ethical hedonism, on the other hand, is not about how we actually act but how we ought to act: we should pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Axiological hedonism, which is sometimes treated as a part of ethical hedonism, is the thesis that only pleasure has intrinsic value. Applied to well-being or what is good for someone, it is the thesis that pleasure and suffering are the only components of well-being. These technical definitions of hedonism within philosophy, which are usually seen as respectable schools of thought, have to be distinguished from how the term is used in everyday language, sometimes referred to as "folk hedonism". In this sense, it has a negative connotation, linked to the egoistic pursuit of short-term gratification by indulging in sensory pleasures without regard for the consequences.

Psychological egoism is the view that humans are always motivated by self-interest and selfishness, even in what seem to be acts of altruism. It claims that, when people choose to help others, they do so ultimately because of the personal benefits that they themselves expect to obtain, directly or indirectly, from so doing.

Persuasion Umbrella term of influence and mode of communication

Persuasion or persuasion arts is an umbrella term of influence. Persuasion can attempt to influence a person's beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviors.

Utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for all affected individuals.

Cognitive dissonance Stress from contradictory beliefs

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information. Relevant items of information include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.

Pleasure refers to experience that feels good, that involves the enjoyment of something. It contrasts with pain or suffering, which are forms of feeling bad. It is closely related to value, desire and action: humans and other conscious animals find pleasure enjoyable, positive or worthy of seeking. A great variety of activities are experienced as pleasurable, like eating, having sex, listening to music or playing games. Pleasure is part of various other mental states such as ecstasy, euphoria and flow. Happiness and well-being are closely related to pleasure but not identical with it. There is no general agreement as to whether pleasure should be understood as a sensation, a quality of experiences, an attitude to experiences or otherwise. Pleasure plays a central role in the family of philosophical theories known as hedonism.

Conspicuous consumption Concept in sociology and economy

In sociology and in economics, the term conspicuous consumption describes and explains the consumer practice of buying and using goods of a higher quality, price, or in greater quantity than practical. The sociologist Thorstein Veblen coined the term conspicuous consumption to explain the spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury commodities specifically as a public display of economic power — the income and the accumulated wealth of the buyer. To the conspicuous consumer, the public display of discretionary income is an economic means of either attaining or of maintaining a given social status.

Philosophy of pain may be about suffering in general or more specifically about physical pain. The experience of pain is, due to its seeming universality, a very good portal through which to view various aspects of human life. Discussions in philosophy of mind concerning qualia has given rise to a body of knowledge called philosophy of pain, which is about pain in the narrow sense of physical pain, and which must be distinguished from philosophical works concerning pain in the broad sense of suffering. This article covers both topics.

Consumer behaviour Study of individuals, groups, or organizations and all the activities associated with consuming

Consumer behavior is the study of individuals, groups, or organizations and all the activities associated with the purchase, use and disposal of goods and services. Consumer behaviour consists of how the consumer's emotions, attitudes and preferences affect buying behaviour. Consumer behaviour emerged in the 1940–1950s as a distinct sub-discipline of marketing, but has become an interdisciplinary social science that blends elements from psychology, sociology, social anthropology, anthropology, ethnography, marketing and economics.

Low frustration tolerance (LFT), or "short-term hedonism," is a concept utilized to describe the inability to tolerate unpleasant feelings or stressful situations. It stems from the feeling that reality should be as wished, and that any frustration should be resolved quickly and easily. People with low frustration tolerance experience emotional disturbance when frustrations are not quickly resolved. Behaviors are then directed towards avoiding frustrating events which, paradoxically, leads to increased frustration and even greater mental stress.

Content theory is a subset of motivational theories that try to define what motivates people. Content theories of motivation often describe a system of needs that motivate peoples' actions. While process theories of motivation attempt to explain how and why our motivations affect our behaviors, content theories of motivation attempt to define what those motives or needs are. Content theory includes the work of David McClelland, Abraham Maslow and other psychologists.

In sociology, taste or palate is an individual or a demographic group's subjective preferences of dietary, design, cultural and/or aesthetic patterns. Taste manifests socially via distinctions in consumer choices such as delicacies/beverages, fashions, music, etiquettes, goods, styles of artwork, and other related cultural activities. The social inquiry of taste is about the arbitrary human ability to judge what is considered beautiful, good, proper and valuable.

Opponent-process theory is a psychological and neurological model that accounts for a wide range of behaviors, including color vision. This model was first proposed in 1878 by Ewald Hering, a German physiologist, and later expanded by Richard Solomon, a 20th-century psychologist. American psychologist Benjamin Avendano contributed to this model by adding a two-factor model.

Customer satisfaction is a term frequently used in marketing. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals." Customers play an important role and are essential in keeping a product or service relevant; it is, therefore, in the best interest of the business to ensure customer satisfaction and build customer loyalty.

Desires are states of mind that are expressed by terms like "wanting", "wishing", "longing" or "craving". A great variety of features is commonly associated with desires. They are seen as propositional attitudes towards conceivable states of affairs. They aim to change the world by representing how the world should be, unlike beliefs, which aim to represent how the world actually is. Desires are closely related to agency: they motivate the agent to realize them. For this to be possible, a desire has to be combined with a belief about which action would realize it. Desires present their objects in a favorable light, as something that appears to be good. Their fulfillment is normally experienced as pleasurable in contrast to the negative experience of failing to do so. Conscious desires are usually accompanied by some form of emotional response. While many researchers roughly agree on these general features, there is significant disagreement about how to define desires, i.e. which of these features are essential and which ones are merely accidental. Action-based theories define desires as structures that incline us toward actions. Pleasure-based theories focus on the tendency of desires to cause pleasure when fulfilled. Value-based theories identify desires with attitudes toward values, like judging or having an appearance that something is good.

Regulatory focus theory (RFT) is a theory of goal pursuit formulated by Columbia University psychology professor and researcher E. Tory Higgins regarding people's perceptions in the decision making process. RFT examines the relationship between the motivation of a person and the way in which they go about achieving their goal. RFT posits two separate and independent self-regulatory orientations: prevention and promotion.

The hedonic music consumption model was created by music researchers Kathleen Lacher and Richard Mizeski in 1994. Their goal was to use this model to examine the responses that listening to rock music creates, and to find if these responses influenced the listener's intention to later purchase the music. The article begins with a discussion of why the issue of music consumption is important. Music is then explored as an aesthetic product, prior to a discussion of what hedonic consumption is, as well as its origins, and concludes with an in-depth look at the model itself.

Negative utilitarianism is a form of negative consequentialism that can be described as the view that people should minimize the total amount of aggregate suffering, or that they should minimize suffering and then, secondarily, maximize the total amount of happiness. It can be considered as a version of utilitarianism that gives greater priority to reducing suffering than to increasing pleasure. This differs from classical utilitarianism, which does not claim that reducing suffering is intrinsically more important than increasing happiness. Both versions of utilitarianism hold that morally right and morally wrong actions depend solely on the consequences for overall aggregate well-being. 'Well-being' refers to the state of the individual.

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation is a book by the English philosopher and legal theorist Jeremy Bentham "originally printed in 1780, and first published in 1789." Bentham's "most important theoretical work," it is where Bentham develops his theory of utilitarianism and is the first major book on the topic.

The optimal stimulation level (OSL) is the amount of stimulation individuals seek in life. In theories which consider human actions will be affected by motivational tendencies, the concept that for achieving a favorable stimulation level, social practices stimulated by pure desire plays a significant role. The medium levels of stimulation, which is also called the optimum stimulation level, are the most common one to be chosen, and due to individual difference, the determination of the optimal stimulation level (OSL) vary between each person.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Higgins, T.E. "Value from hedonic experience and engagement". American Psychological Association. Vol 113, No. 3, 439-460. (2006)
  2. 1 2 3 4 Ahtola, O.T. Hedonic and utilitarian aspects of consumer behavior: An attitudinal perspective (1985)
  3. ↑ Schacter, D. L., D. T. Gilbert, and D. M. Wegner. Psychology. 2. New York, NY: Worth Publishers, 2011.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Wertenbroch, K., Khan, U., Dhar, R. A behavioral decision theoretic perspective on hedonic and utilitarian choice(2004)
  5. ↑ Deckers, Lambert (2018). Motivation: Biological, Psychological, and Environmental. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 30–34. ISBN   978-1-138-03632-1.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Bozarth, M.A. pleasure: The politics and the reality. Pp 5-14 (1994)
  7. 1 2 Parker, Christopher J.; Wenyu, Lu (2019-05-13). "What influences Chinese fashion retail? Shopping motivations, demographics and spending". Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management. 23 (2): 158–175. doi:10.1108/JFMM-09-2017-0093. ISSN   1361-2026. S2CID   170031856.
  8. ↑ Parker, Christopher J.; Wang, Huchen (2016). "Examining hedonic and utilitarian motivations for m-commerce fashion retail app engagement". Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management. 20 (4): 487–506. doi:10.1108/JFMM-02-2016-0015.
  9. ↑ Schacter, Daniel, Daniel Gilbert, and Daniel Wegner.Psychology. 2nd. New York: Worth Publishers, 2009. 18. Print.
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