Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Goals

 

 

Eric Klinger, Ph.D.

 

Professor of Psychology, University of Minnesota

 

 

Tuesday, October 9

 4:00 P.M.  

Coffee and tea at 3:30

4448 East Hall

 

Précis

Adequate goal striving is in all motile classes of animal life the central fact and requirement for survival. It must have been the ultimate criterion for natural selection. Therefore, all other structures and systems in such organisms, including in humans, have evolved in the service of goal pursuit. Evidence indicates that cognitive processes--attention, recall, thought content, waking imagery, and dream imagery--are heavily influenced by current goal pursuits. Besides processes that initiate goal pursuits (motivation) and others that maintain and guide them (volition, including the latent brain processes called current concerns), motile organisms also need stop rules--processes that terminate failing pursuits. At least in higher organisms, emotional reactions and states help guide the choice, pursuit, and relinquishment of goals. The arousal and action dispositions associated with various emotions (including mood) facilitate goal striving. Depression is associated with and probably facilitates disengagement from goals. Apart from their pathological distortions, these systems are adaptive for either individuals or species.

 

 

Next Week, October 16

Charles Carver: Sadness tells you you should do something else, joy tells you can do something else, anger and eagerness tell you to focus on what you’re doing.

 

The Evolution and Human Adaptation Program Lectures are sponsored by the LS&A Dean's Office,

the Research Center for Group Dynamics at ISR, and the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry

To add your name to the mailing list of events sponsored by EHAP, send a note to ehap@umich.edu