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Beyond Pleasure and Pain
E.
Tory Higgins
Columbia University
People approach pleasure and avoid pain. To discover
the true nature of approach-avoidance motivation, psy-
chologists need to move beyond this hedonic principle
to the principles that underlie the different ways that it
operates. One such principle is regulatory focus, which
distinguishes self-regulation with a promotion focus (ac-
complishments and aspirations)from self-regulation with
a prevention focus (safety and responsibilities). This
principle is used to reconsider the fundamental nature of
approach-avoidance, expectancy-value relations, and
emotional and evaluative sensitivities. Both types of regu-
latory focus are applied to phenonomena that have been
treated in terms of either promotion (e.g., well-being) or
prevention (e.g., cognitive dissonance). Then, regulatory
focus is distinguished from regulatory anticipation and
regulatory reference, 2 other principles underlying the
different ways that people approach pleasure and avoid
pain.
It seems that our entire psychical activity is bent upon procuring
pleasure and avoiding pain, that it is automatically regulated
by the PLEASURE-PRINCIPLE. (Freud, 1920/1952, p. 365)
People are motivated to approach pleasure and avoid
pain. From the ancient Greeks, through 17th- and 18th-
century British philosophers, to 20th-century psycholo-
gists, this hedonic or pleasure principle has dominated
scholars' understanding of people's motivation. It is the
basic motivational assumption of theories across all areas
of psychology, including theories of emotion in psychobi-
ology (e.g., Gray, 1982), conditioning in animal learning
(e.g., Mowrer, 1960; Thorndike, 1935), decision making
in cognitive and organizational psychology (e.g., Dut-
ton & Jackson, 1987; Edwards, 1955; Kahneman & Tver-
sky, 1979), consistency in social psychology (e.g., Fes-
tinger, 1957; Heider, 1958), and achievement motivation
in personality (e.g., Atkinson, 1964). Even when Freud
(1920/1952) talked about the ego becoming controlled
by the reality principle, and in this sense developing "be-
yond the pleasure principle," he made it clear that the
reality principle "at bottom also seeks pleasure--al-
though a delayed and diminished pleasure" (p. 365).
Environmental demands simply modify the pleasure prin-
ciple such that avoiding pain becomes almost equal in
importance to gaining pleasure. Thus, Freud's proposal
to move beyond the pleasure principle did not move be-
yond the hedonic principle of seeking pleasure and
avoiding pain.
The problem with the hedonic principle is not that
it is wrong but that psychologists have relied on it too
heavily as an explanation for motivation. After many cen-
turies, it continues to be the dominant way to conceptual-
ize approach versus avoidance. This dominance has taken
attention away from other approach-avoidance princi-
ples. Is people's entire psychical activity controlled by
the hedonic principle, as Freud (1920/1952) wondered,
or might there be other self-regulatory principles that
underlie both its operation and other psychical activities?
If there are, then psychologists' understanding of the he-
donic principle itself would be increased by understand-
ing more about these other principles. Moreover, these
other ways of conceptualizing approach versus avoidance
could have implications beyond the hedonic principle.
It's time for the study of motivation to move beyond
the simple assertion of the hedonic principle that people
approach pleasure and avoid pain. It's time to examine
how people approach pleasure and avoid pain in substan-
tially different strategic ways that have major conse-
quences. It's time to move beyond the hedonic principle
by studying the approach-avoidance principles that un-
derlie it and have motivational significance in their own
right.
This article begins by introducing the concept of
regulatory focus, a principle that underlies the hedonic
principle but differs radically in its motivational conse-
quences. I describe how viewing motivation from the
perspective of regulatory focus sheds light on the funda-
mental nature of approach-avoidance, expectancy-
value relations, and emotional and evaluative sensitivi-
ties. I discuss how relying on the hedonic principle alone
Editor's note. Denise C. Park served as action editor for this article.
Author's note. The research reported in this article was supported by
National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH39429.
I am indebted to Carol Dweck, Bob Krauss, Arie Kruglanski,
John Levine, Walter Mischel, Yaacov Trope, and Robin Wells for many
discussions of the ideas in this article as well as their extremely helpful
comments on the article itself.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to
E. Tory Higgins, Department of Psychology, Columbia University,
Schermerhorn Hall, New York, NY 10027. Electronic mail may be sent
via Internet to tory@paradox.psych.columbia.edu.
1280 December 1997
•
American Psychologist
Copyright 1997 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/97/$2.00
Vol. 52, No. 12, 1280-1300
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