TABLE OF CONTENTS -- 1. MEANING, GOALS, AND ACTION -- The Meaning of Meaningfulness -- The Social Significance of Meaning -- How Can We Study Meaning? -- Meaningfulness and Inner Experience -- Incentives and Action -- Goals Govern Life and Behavior -- Goals and Incentives: Straightening Out the Terminology -- Evidence That Incentives Control Behavior -- Incentives Work. What Else Do We Need to Know? -- 2. INCENTIVES AND THOUGHTS -- The Nature and Organization of Thought -- Kinds of Thought Segments -- Blank States -- Operant Segments -- Respondent Segments -- Commitment and Concern -- Concerns and the Content of Thought -- Concerns and Thoughts: The Control of Attention -- Concerns and the Control of Attention: Some Evidence -- The Induction Principle: Concerns, Cues, and the Content of Thought -- Induction in Respondent Thinking -- Induction in Operant Thinking -- Summary -- 3. INCENTIVES AND EMOTIONS -- Keeping the Terms Straight -- What Are Emotions? -- Emotions and Instincts -- Kinds of Emotions -- Components of Emotion: Affect and Gross Physiology -- Implications of This View -- The Roles of Emotion in Human Functioning -- Emotions as Incipient Behavior -- Emotions and Incentive Value -- Emotion as Evaluative Feedback -- Happiness, Mood, and Incentive Relationships -- Conclusions -- 4. THE UPS AND DOWNS OF VALUE -- The Growth of Value -- Learning to Value -- Changes in Value Resulting from Changes in Context -- Obstacles -- Summary -- The Decline of Value -- Satiation, Extinction, and Habituation -- Is It All One Process? -- What Habituates? What Does Not? -- Habituation and Satiation of Innately Valued Incentives -- Implications for the Meaningfulness of Human Lives -- On Finding Habituation-Resistant Incentives -- Reviving Sensory Pleasures -- Moderation and Restraint -- Synergy and Peak Experiences -- 5. CONSEQUENCES OF LOSING.

The Phases of the Cycle: Features and Evidence -- Invigoration -- Aggression -- Depression -- Recovery -- Do the Disengagement Phases Really Constitute a Cycle? -- Behavioral Evidence for a Cycle -- Evidence on Brain Mechanisms -- Adaptive Functions -- Individual Differences -- Factors That Dispose People to Give Up -- Inner Experience and the Incentive-Disengagement Cycle -- How Thought Is Organized during the Cycle -- Gloomy Views of Self and World -- Fluctuations and the Stability of Mood -- The Sense That One's Life Is Meaningful -- Clinical Implications of the Incentive-Disengagement Cycle -- Implications for Clinical Research -- Implications for Treatment -- Education for Mental Health -- Summary -- 6. ALIENATION, FUTILITY, DISCONTENT -- Alienation and Discontent -- Problems of Measurement -- Opportunity and Aspiration: Social Class and Education -- Alienation from Work -- Factors in Satisfaction with and Alienation from Work -- Work Enrichment -- Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction in Marriage -- Factors Related to Marital Satisfaction and Stability -- Factors Related to Marital Dissatisfaction and Divorce -- Conclusion -- Satisfaction and Advancing Age -- The Gradual Decline of Happiness -- Individual Differences in Aging -- The Changing Incentive World -- Social Constraints on the Behavior of Old People -- Engagement, Disengagement, and Satisfaction with Life -- Incentives and the Psychological Deficits of Aging -- Conclusions -- Alienation and Inner Experience -- Affect in Alienation -- Alienation, Attention, and Thinking -- Personality Dispositions to Become Alienated -- Developing a Sense of Effectiveness -- Becoming Immobilized by Conflict -- Options for the Alienated -- 7. TAMPERING WITH THE MESSAGE SYSTEM -- Methods for Manipulating Affects -- Harnessing Natural Incentive Systems -- Spiritual Approaches.

Passive Massage of the Affect System -- Intervention with Chemicals -- Value Judgments -- Incentives and the Mass Media -- Functions of Television -- Who Watches Television? -- Drugs and Life Situations -- Drug Use and Social Context -- Drugs and Incentive Impoverishment -- Enhancing the Incentive World: Marijuana and the Psychedelics -- Escape from Unpleasantness: Opiates and Other Downers -- Manufactured Optimism: Alcohol and the Amphetamines -- Preference versus Addiction -- Conclusion: Drugs and Incentives -- 8. SELF-ANNIHILATION -- What Kinds of People Are Most Likely to Kill Themselves? -- Group Statistics -- Special Conditions That Affect Suicide -- Patterns -- Events That Precipitate Suicide -- States of Mind at the Point of Suicide -- The Wish to Change Events -- Clearheadedness -- Meaninglessness -- The Decision for Suicide: Conclusions -- 9. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SOCIAL SCIENCES -- Incentives, Inner Experience, and Behavior -- The Linkages between Incentives and Behavior -- Incentives and Thought -- Incentives and Affect -- Value -- Reactions to Loss and Impoverishment of Incentives -- Meaning and Void -- The Nature of Human Nature -- Human Rationality -- Hedonism -- "Free Will" -- Implications for the Social Sciences -- Innate Symbols and Universal Meanings -- Commitment and the Impact of Incentives on Behavior -- Social Organization and Role Theory -- Political Theory -- Economic Theory -- The Concept of Incentive in the Social Sciences: Conclusion -- NOTES -- REFERENCES -- INDEXES -- Author Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z -- Subject Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W.