Affiliation, Power, Sex: Social Motivation in Context

The Munich Symposium on Motivation (MSM) is a biannual international symposium organized by the Chair of Psychology, Munich University of Technology, Germany.

The symposium will take place from 21 to 24 July, 2016 in the Eibsee Hotel at Lake Eibsee (http://www.eibsee-hotel.de/). It is located in the foothills of the Zugspitze (2,962m or 9,718 feet), Germany’s highest mountain. Part of the symposium will be held at the summit convention center, which offers a magnificent view of the Alps (http://www.zugspitze.de/).

The title of the 5^th MSM is “Affiliation, Power, Sex: Social Motivation in Context”. We chose this theme for two main reasons:

Firstly, over the last few years, considerable progress has been made in social motivation research, both empirically and methodologically. Many of our colleagues have done substantial work on the causes and consequences of power, affiliation, and other social motives. We are interested in bringing together researchers from various fields of the social sciences, who share a common interest in motivational topics. The conference thus encourages multiple perspectives on social motivation research as well as a dialogue between basic and applied researchers.

Second, our lab has recently started to investigate sexual motivation, which expands classic approaches to motivation research. Sexual motivation shares much of its history with the unconscious, in that it has been mostly forgotten (“repressed”?) since early theorizing in our field. But two to three decades ago, the unconscious successfully re-entered the research agenda. We feel that now is the time for researchers to reinvigorate their interest in investigating the sex motive and its associated interpersonal processes. Much work lies ahead in terms of conceptual development and empirical research, but we are convinced that sexual motivation is worth the effort.

The MSM brings together international motivation researchers from diverse areas of psychology and the social sciences. We hope to foster interesting and enriching discussions and to help the invited researchers extend their networks.

Hugo M. Kehr

Chair of Psychology, TUM