Multifinality Without Awareness: Implicit Value Maximizing in Dynamic Goal Environments

关于动机的心理学理论通常假设人们的行为是为了从他们的选择中获得最好的结果，或者是最高的（主观决定的）价值。也就是说，人们以他们认为会带来预期结果的方式行事。它还假设个人有意识地意识到他们正在追求的目标，并且，在某种程度上，人们同时有几个目标，这些目标会相互冲突，导致人们为了其他目标而放弃一些目标。马里兰大学的阿里·克鲁格兰斯基博士和他的同事提出了一项挑战这些假设的研究，并探索了“多重性”的概念，即一种手段或行为可能同时服务于多个目标，甚至在意识之外。研究者提出：(1)当个体忙于追求各种显性目标时，新的目标往往会被环境特征和个体的动态联想所激活；(2)这些新激活的目标可能会在行动者的意识意识之外影响个体的行为；(3)在这些条件下，个体可能会寻求能够在不牺牲明确追求目标的情况下实现隐性目标的活动。寻找这样的多目标活动可以被认为是“理性的”，因为它通过同时获得多个理想的目标来最大化主观价值。拟议的工作审查了寻求多最终活动将发生的条件，以及追求多最终活动所涉及的潜在心理权衡。它还研究了个人对多目标活动的搜索如何受到显性和隐性目标之间价值差异的影响，以及人们对不同活动对显性目标和隐性目标的更好服务程度的敏感程度。总的来说，这项工作有望有助于对驱动人类行为的无意识动机的作用的一般理解；它还为选择和自我控制的心理学提供了重要的见解，包括成瘾、暴力行为和肥胖等话题。

Psychological theories about motivation often assume that people act so as to obtain the best outcomes from their choices, or the highest (subjectively determined) value. That is, people behave in ways that they believe will bring about the desired results. It is also assumed that individuals are consciously aware of the goals they are pursuing, and, to the extent that people had several goals at once, these goals would conflict with each other, leading people to relinquish some of the goals on behalf of the others. Dr. Arie Kruglanski of the University of Maryland and colleagues propose research that challenges these assumptions and explore the concept of "multifinality" in which a single means or behavior may simultaneously serve multiple goals, even outside awareness. The researchers propose that: (1) while individuals are busy pursuing various explicit objectives, new goals are often activated by features of the environment and by the individuals' dynamic stream of associations, (2) such newly activated goals may affect individuals' behavior outside the actors' conscious awareness, (3) in these conditions, individuals may seek activities that afford the attainment of implicit goals without sacrificing the explicitly pursued objectives. Finding such multifinal activities can be considered "rational" as it maximizes subjective value by simultaneously attaining multiple desirable ends. The proposed work examines the conditions under which the search for multifinal activities will take place, and the potential psychological tradeoffs involved in pursuing multifinal activities. It also examines how individuals' search for multifinal activities is influenced by the difference in value between the explicit and implicit goals, and how sensitive people are to the degree to which different activities serve better the explicit versus the implicit goals. Overall, this work promises to contribute to the general understanding of the role of unconscious motivation that drives human action; it also offers important insights into the psychology of choice and self-control, including topics like addiction, violent behavior, and obesity.