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,[1] and is gained from acting on certain behaviors that resulted from esthetic and emotional feelings such as: love, hate, fear, joy, etc.
Epicurus viewed hedonic motivation as that pain and pleasure eventually even out and people learn how to do things in moderation.
To go off on Hobbes’ views, Jeremy Bentham believed people are slaves to pleasure and pain and that hedonic motivation is determined by positive or negative consequences.
He also believed in the phrase principle of utility which is an idea that people choose their actions based on if it increases or decreases their happiness.
Sigmund Freud viewed hedonic motivation as people tend to look at the long-term pleasure/happiness of things and would rather take the immediate discomfort if they know they will have a pleasurable outcome later on, also known as the reality principle.
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.
[6] Appetitive emotions are described as goals that can be associated with the positive hedonic processes of survival and pleasure, such as food and sex.
[4] Affect-rich items are those that can produce associative imagery in the mind of the consumer, portraying it in a pleasing light and making it desirable.
[6] These theories exemplify how this motivation is by showing how hedonic processes are able to fit into a wide variety of situations while still maintaining the same function.
[7] These goods could constitute anything from pedicures to art to furniture to new power tools to fine chocolate; basically anything that a consumer enjoys on less than a regular basis.
When the Republic of Singapore warned its citizens that anyone caught chewing in public would face a year in prison and a $5,500 fine, gum-chewing in that country fell to an all-time low.
[9] It can also be difficult to remain in the confines that people simply do things to attain pleasure and move to avoid pain, because as we have grown and evolved as a species, so have our motives.
[2] Both of these answers are coping mechanisms for events that have not come to pass, but do seek long-term positive hedonic impact by experiencing negative situations at the moment.
Other situations involve a person overcoming initial resistance towards going on the journey to attain a goal because the path to it is unpleasant but the end result is hedonically positive.