Hedonic motivation

Hedonic motivation refers to the influence of a person’s pleasure and pain receptors on their willingness to move towards a goal or away from a threat. This is linked to the classic motivational principle that people approach pleasure and avoid pain, and is gained from acting on certain behaviors that resulted from esthetic and emotional feelings such as: love, hate, fear, joy, etc. According to the hedonic principle, our emotional experience can be thought of as a gauge the ranges from bad to good and our primary motivation is to keep the needle on the gauge as close to good as possible.

Historically, approach and avoidance motivation have been linked to the hedonic characteristics of pleasure and pain. The root word hedonic comes from the Greek word for “sweet”, which means relating to or characterized by pleasure. This is interesting because even though hedonic motivation incorporates the pursuit of pleasure as well as the avoidance of painful situations, the concept has been traditionally linked to the positive connotation of pleasure. For example, hedonic goods are bought so that the consumer may gain pleasure and enjoyment from the good, and value experiences are also viewed as hedonic experiences. Pain and pleasure are the bodies’ natural compass, pointing us towards what should be done and help us decide what is going to be done in order to survive.

There are several theories that exert characteristics of Hedonic motivation and behavior, and rely on these qualities to better understand human purpose and human nature.

One of the oldest examples is probably the Greeks' theory of beneception and nociception. They believed that these two principles decided the motivation in all living things. Beneception is a term that is linked to pleasure and positive hedonic motivation; it is key to animal’s survival that they follow this instinct towards a purpose. Nociception is the opposite of beneception and is concerned with consequences and negative hedonic motivation. If an animal does not flee from or avoid nociception they are likely to be faced with unpleasant effects.

Another set of key terms similar to the two the Greek’s used to describe hedonic motivation is appetitive emotion and aversive motivation. Appetitive emotions are described as goals that can be associated with the positive hedonic processes of survival and pleasure, such as food and sex. Aversive motivation is about removing oneself from unpleasant situations.

...
Wikipedia