Motivation in Context: How Social Contexts Moderate Aspiration-Attainment Gaps

Abstract

This dissertation examines how and why social contexts moderate gaps between people’s aspirations and attainment. The broader aim is to understand how contexts moderate the motivational and goal pursuit processes that contribute to social disparities. I examine these processes across 10 studies drawn from three empirical papers. First, I present eight experiments documenting how and why different ways of framing goal-relevant information influences people’s motivation and behavior such as when they begin saving for future events and how much unhealthy food they consume (“When Does the Future Begin? Time Metrics Matter, Connecting Present and Future Selves”: Lewis & Oyserman, 2015; “Seeing More and Eating Less: Effects of Information Granularity on the Perception and Regulation of Food Consumption: Lewis & Earl, in press). Second, I present a field experiment documenting that the stereotypes that are activated in public health clinics can undermine African American patients’ willingness to pay attention to stigmatizing health information (“African American Patients’ Attention to Health Information is Influenced by In-Group Peers in Health Clinics”: Lewis, Kougias, & Earl, 2017). Third, I present a national survey documenting that people’s interpretations of experienced difficulty (an important motivational construct) are influenced by their positions in the social hierarchy – indexed by the interaction between their race and level of education (“No pain, no gain? Social demographic correlates and identity consequences of interpreting experienced difficulty as importance”: Aelenei, Lewis, & Oyserman, 2017). Together, the 10 studies in this dissertation converge to suggest that if we wish to understand and address social disparities, researchers and practitioners must consider the interplay between social context and identity, and how it influences motivation and goal pursuit processes.