In the past decade or so, social psychology and psychology in general have been dominated by research and theory on cognition and social cognition. Motivational theories have either been ignored or cognitive alternatives substituted. Our research program has attempted to integrate both areas, pointing out the importance of each to the other. This work has resulted in what is now a continuing series of volumes entitled The Handbook of Motivation and Cognition (vol. 1: Sorrentino & Higgins, 1986a; vol. 2: Higgins & Sorrentino, 1990). In those volumes, contributors from both camps were forced to think about these issues in depth. We also presented our research and development of the construct we present in this chapter, uncertainty orientation (see Sorrentino & Higgins, 1986b; Sorrentino, Raynor, Zubek, & Short, 1990; Sorrentino & Short, 1986). Our feeling is that this construct could serve as a stepping-stone for a more complete integration of the areas of motivation and cognition.

Uncertainty orientation was originally designed to examine individual differences in cognition related to achievement behavior (see Sorrentino, & Hewitt, 1984; Sorrentino & Roney, 1986; Sorrentino, Short, & Raynor, 1984), but it is now seen as related to many areas of general psychology. Unlike much of the research in cognition and social cognition, however, we do not assume a “rational” model of human behavior.