Cognitive Science Quarterly (2002) 2, 233-247 © 2000 HERMES SCIENCE PUBLICATIONS Modelling Motivational Representations Maria Miceli & Cristiano Castelfranchi Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, National Research Council of Italy 1 As often remarked (e.g., Pervin, 1989), the cognitive revolution of the 1960s favored the decline of motivation theories. The rising cognitive science in fact displayed a certain disinterest for both motivational and emotional constructs, and in general for any phenomenon which could not be immediately addressed in terms of information processing and reasoning. Sander and Koenig (this issue) benevolently trace back this disinterest (in particular for emotions) to an “inferiority complex” of cognitive scientists with regard to such phenomena in that they were considered too complex for being investigated by cognitive science. However Sander and Koenig also suggest that a second reason for neglecting those aspects of human functioning was a view of the cognitive system as the “incarnation of reason”, which might orient toward an explanation of that disinterest in terms of a superiority complex! In any case, besides either the “too complex” or the “too irrational” bias, there is another basic reason for such a disinterest: The precognitive treatment of motivational and emotional constructs – whether in terms of internal drives or of external incentives – had not been representational , whereas for a cognitive scientist the use of a representational language for any construct was an implicit precondition for considering it worth of attention. True, goals and plans, which are no doubt a foundational contribution to motivation theory, have been among the cornerstones of most cognitive models. But their representational or image feature often had the better of, and dampened, their motivational properties in terms of driving forces, as well as of the feelings associated with goal generation, pursuit, and achievement or failure. 2 1 Address for correspondence: Maria Miceli, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR, Viale Marx 15, 00137 Roma, Italia. Email: miceli@ip.rm.cnr.it (Fax: +39 06 824737.) 2 This happened despite the auspices of the fathers of the cognitive revolution, who did not ignore the motivational facet of purposive behavior. In fact, Miller, Galanter and Pribram (1960) explicitly address the issue of motives, defining them in terms of two components: values and intentions. Also Simon (1967) posed the problem of motivational and emotional control of cognition.