Contributed by researchers from the US, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Israel, and Europe, the 20 essays in this volume explore recent research and theoretical developments on social motivation and its control and management. They first consider basic issues and theories about the origin and control of human motivation, including how people experience valued outcomes, how active goal pursuits may override self-interests and central beliefs and values, modes of processing experience, the role of imagination in behavior control, and compulsive self-control. The second section examines the interaction between affective states and motivational mechanisms, including the adaptive role of distress in motivation to remediate aversive situations; the role of executive functions in emotion regulation; the role of higher-order attentional, motivational, and affective processes in shaping visual perception; the regulatory function of affective states; and how impulsive aggressive behaviors can be motivated by anger. Subsequent sections address the management of approach and avoidance processes, with discussion of bodily influences, how pursuing avoidance depletes self-regulatory resources, responding flexibly to changing situations, and how visual perception is biased to regulate action, and the interpersonal, social, and cultural implications of research on motivation and its regulation, including the links between motivation, self-regulation, and social cognition in human mating, the motivation to hold positive social perceptions in terms of inequality, the cognitive dissonance mechanisms of choice justification in different cultures, the role of death anxiety in religious beliefs, and motivational mechanisms in social ostracism. Annotation ©2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)