A better way of understanding The Hedonic Motive is to break it down into an example. For instance, if you have a room full of people and there's a table full of delicious foods with half the table full of unhealthy foods and the other half of the table full of healthy foods for everyone to divulge in without knowing what the outcome may be no matter what they chose. If the people who chose to eat the healthier side of the table would be praised or rewarded for their choice and the others who ate the unhealthy options weren't given any praise or reward then thus sets in the hedonic motive. The same people would come back to the same table and same foods but the people who ate unhealthy before would not choose to eat healthy because they weren't praised upon or rewarded previously which gives them motivation to just keep going on with their same choices/ways. We have all had our moments in life where we have the satisfaction of a nice juicy cheeseburger but the result of it isn't a parade of people cheering for you but yet you still choose to eat the hamburger because it's satisfying. On the other side of the spectrum, there could be a person who chooses to eat a vegetarian diet and they find pleasure in this because the reward of it is them saving animals lives and not paining them. We all have different pains and pleasures and different things that will give us both.
References:
Schacter, Gilbert, & Wegner (2011) Introducing Psychology: First edition. Social Psychology. New York: 41 Madison Avenue
Schacter, Gilbert, & Wegner (2011) Introducing Psychology: First edition. Social Psychology. New York: 41 Madison Avenue