Often, scholars of motivation ask “why”—what are the underlying, supposedly universal reasons people do what they do? In these tumultuous, even chaotic times, by contrast, my research asks “how”—specifically, how do the psychological mechanisms which allow us to successfully pursue our goals also lead to unintended or unwanted behavior? Adopting this focus has led my research to insights regarding the evolution, structure, and consequences associated with the fact that people pursue and perceive others as pursuing motivations everyday. Empirically, I investigate particular motivations which are linked to societally harmful outcomes (e.g., disease avoidance is linked to increased prejudice and rejection of innovation), and explore how leveraging this knowledge about goal structures to interdict against their unwanted effects. In other lines of research, I also examine how consumers perceive other actors as holding motivations. When consumers perceive intentions in firms and individual producers, this can ‘taint’ evaluations of products– as I find in my research exploring instances in the U.S. where incarcerated individuals make products that are consumed by the (usually unaware) general public.