Two New Research Papers Unveil Groundbreaking Insights into Human Goal Setting and Team Dynamics

Our goals are expressions of our emotional needs

Team Emergent States are Emotional Need States

AgileBrain emotional-motivational technology

Can a Simple 3 x 4 Framework Unlock the Secrets to Goals, Values, Culture, Engagement, Leadership, and Team Effectiveness?

These papers are a big step forward in understanding what truly drives us. By linking goals and team effectiveness to basic needs, we build effective strategies for leadership, teamwork, & growth.”

— J. D. Pincus, Ph.D.

BOSTON, MA, UNITED STATES, March 6, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Dr. J.D. Pincus, a leading researcher in motivation and organizational behavior, has published two pioneering papers that offer fresh perspectives on human goals and team effectiveness. These studies, appearing in

Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science (Springer) and Small Group Research (Sage), contribute to the evolving understanding of goal setting and team emergent states, with implications for leadership, workplace culture, and personal growth.

Goals as Motives: A Unified Psychological Perspective

Published in Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science, Dr. Pincus’s paper, Goals as Motives, explores the deep interconnection between goals and fundamental human needs. Rather than viewing goals as limited objectives, they are positioned as grounded in intrinsic motives that shape behavior across personal, professional, social, and spiritual domains. This integrative approach unifies existing motivation theories and presents a structured framework for understanding why people pursue certain aspirations while neglecting others.

Team Emergent States as Emotional Needs: A New Framework for Organizational Research

Appearing in Small Group Research, Team Emergent States as Emotional Needs examines how team effectiveness can be understood through the lens of psychological needs. The paper addresses the ongoing theoretical challenges in defining and measuring Team Emergent States (TES), which are defined as dynamic, collective properties that emerge and evolve within a team over time and influence team performance and effectiveness. By aligning TES with a core set of emotional needs, the study provides a structured and theoretically grounded framework for researchers and practitioners seeking to enhance team performance, leadership effectiveness, and workplace engagement.

A Unifying Framework Across Disciplines

These two papers are the latest in a series of recent publications by J.D. Pincus, applying the AgileBrain framework of human emotional needs to a variety of fields beset by concept proliferation and lack of meta-theory. These include leadership effectiveness, organizational culture, human values, subjective well-being, employee engagement, and employee benefits. As such, the Pincus framework is proving to be an essential "theory of everything" that reveals the deep structure beneath a host of interrelated topics, allowing insights from any of these disciplines to translate to any other discipline.

Implications for Business, Education, and Society

Both studies have wide-ranging implications beyond academic theory. By grounding human motivation in a coherent, comprehensive framework, these findings offer valuable insights for business leaders, educators, policymakers, and individuals seeking to optimize goal-setting, team dynamics, and workplace culture.

Theory Meets Practice

The AgileBrain framework explored in these articles is brought to life through AgileBrain assessments -- 3-minute, image-based experiences that capture people’s unmet emotions needs. The resulting data measures their emotional state and pinpoints the source and meaning of those unmet emotional needs. Resulting AgileBrain profiles, and accompanying AgileBrain-enhanced AI Chatbots, help trained professionals and lay users alike quickly understand what’s going on beneath the surface to begin to address those unmet emotional needs in positive ways.

“We’re excited to be helping high school and college students, employees, and veterans build their emotional awareness and resilience,” explained John Penrose, CEO at AgileBrain.