However, a person who has just cut his finger on a knife and watches the

blood ooze over his palm has no uncertainty about the existence of objects

that can cause blood to flow, and is certain that he feels different than he did

moments earlier.

—Kagan (2002, p. 72)

The energy for initiating an intended action can come from the situation en-

countered... or it can be self-generated through a volitional process called

self-motivation.

—Kuhl (2000, p. 191)

The field of motivation addresses the issue of what determines–induces a per-
son to act or behave in a particular way. A dialectical-constructivist ap-
proach to motivation should add to this a causal account of how–why the
organism synthesizes performances vis-à-vis situations. This integrative per-
spective has not always been there. Research in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and
even 1970s often construed motivation as the cognitive–behavioral manifes-
tation of instinctual–innate drives such as hunger, sex, fear, attachment, and
other positive or negative affects. Research in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s
was dominated by an emphasis on social-learning determinants of motiva-
tion; and by a growing awareness that human motivation results from
complex structural learning processes that synthesize and adapt organismic
functional structures to constitute people’s plans–projects for action within
situations. Although the current literature on human motivation offers exten-

8

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Affect, Self-Motivation, and Cognitive

Development: A Dialectical

Constructivist View

Juan Pascual-Leone
Janice Johnson
York University

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