Under the framework of the traditional neoclassical economic growth model, we explicitly introduce the “love for growth rate”, or LGR for short, to the utility function, and analyze its potential impact on economic growth. It is shown that many properties of the new model are not the same as expected. Specifically, the steady consumption is not monotonically increasing in LGR - only through a moderate degree of LGR, can the new steady consumption exceed or equal the one for the traditional model. If the initial capital stock is already at a high level, a further increase in LGR will decrease the lifetime utility. A higher LGR tends to reduce the rate of convergence near the steady state. Unlike in the traditional model, factors such as time preference no longer have monotonic effect on the level of steady capital stock in our new model. These results also indicate that, some negative effects, such as overcapacity or utility loss, may occur if the government favors LGR too much or blindly loves the rate of economic growth regardless of developing stages. In addition, boosting growth through incentives associated with growth preferences, such as promotion tournament, can be very limited.