Principles of self-regulation

Abstract

(from the chapter) what is the nature of the basic processes that underlie overt human behavior / the concept of motivation . . . was developed as part of the attempt to answer this question / people act in particular ways because they are "motivated" to do so /// human behavior is a continual process of moving toward various kinds of mental goal representations, and . . . this movement occurs by a process of feedback control /// this view treats behavior as being the consequence of an internal guidance system that is inherent in the way humans are organized / for this reason, we tend to refer to the mechanism underlying human behavior as a system of "self-regulation" / our goal in this chapter is to create a sense of how such a model of behavior can be fit to the human experience (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)