Drive Reduction Theory
Drive Reduction Theory is a psychological concept that suggests that individuals are motivated to reduce physiological needs, such as hunger or thirst, to maintain homeostasis. According to this theory, when a person experiences a need, it creates a drive that motivates them to satisfy that need, leading to a state of equilibrium.
7 Key excerpts on "Drive Reduction Theory"
eBook - ePub- G Neil Martin(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...We are also motivated to relax and take a break from work when this becomes too onerous or boring. The motivation to drink is an example of a biological need; our bodies tell us that we need to behave in a particular way to meet its needs. Behaviours –called regulatory behaviours – are then observed, which help meet the physiological demands of the body and bring its internal state back into equilibrium. The process of ensuring that physical systems are working at optimum level is called homeostasis ('stable state'). When our stable state is imbalanced, or deficient in some way, we are motivated to correct the imbalance. Why? 6.2 Drive Reduction Hypothesis According to the drive reduction hypothesis, the imbalances in our physiology are generally unpleasant – we feel hunger if the body experiences a loss of nutrients or energy, for example – and we are thus motivated to reduce these unpleasant feelings. Hunger, in this example, is seen as a drive that needs to be reduced to keep the body's physiology happy. We search for food, which if eaten, reduces the hunger 'drive'. Consequently, the drive reduction becomes reinforcing – we learn that eating food reduces hunger and makes us feel positive – and therefore will be pursued again whenever we feel hungry. Drives need not be necessary for survival; the drive to have sex with a person, for example, does not affect your ability to survive but sexual intercourse is rewarding and reinforcing. If put in a featureless environment, we will be motivated to explore it but our physical survival would not depend on it. There are problems with the drive hypothesis, however. The first is that it is almost impossible to measure a 'drive'...
- Michael D. Breed(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Academic Press(Publisher)
...This reasoning led to Lorenz and Tinbergen to apply a psycho-hydraulic model of motivation in which energy for behavior pools in a metaphorical reservoir within the animal and then is drained through activity (e.g., Tinbergen, 1950). Hinde (1959, 1960) in his papers, shifted attention to actual neurobiological mechanisms and argued against the use of motivation and drive as concepts. Much of what the theory of drive and motivation attempted to explain can be assigned to specific appetites, such as hunger, thirst, sexual desire, each of which has its own underlying regulatory pathways via hormones and neurotransmitters. Drive and motivation are black boxes that had conceptual utility when we knew little about neurobiology and the endocrine system, but which, even when Hinde was writing on this topic in 1959 and 1960, had outlived much of their utility. Two remnants of drive and motivation theory, redirection and displacement, remain tantalizingly interesting. Redirection is when the supposed drive energy is directed at a seemingly unrelated or inappropriate target. An animal in a dominance hierarchy may be subjected to aggression by the dominant in the group. Unable to retaliate, the animal attacks a lower-ranking individual, basically an innocent bystander in the initial interaction. Lashing out at inanimate objects fits into this category as well. Displacement can refer specifically to grooming when an animal is confronted with a difficult behavior choice. This is often observed in approach/avoidance conflict, in which approaching a desirable object carries risks; an animal that pauses, attracted yet fearful, often grooms. Drive theory postulated that the grooming was an outlet for accumulated behavioral energy that could not be expended in either approach or avoidance. Causally, displacement appears related to a broader range of self-directed behaviors (SDBs), such as pathologically excessive paw licking in dogs and feather plucking in birds...
eBook - ePubThe Rat
A Study in Behavior
- S. A. Barnett(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Departure of any of these from a certain range of values sets up a state of need. The theory equates need state with ‘drive state’; and reduction of drive state is held to be the invariable accompaniment of reinforcement. Although, perhaps, nobody now holds this view in just this form, it is still instructive to consider the evidence which bears on it. Even if simple theories of drive reduction are not tenable, they have the merit of encouraging the objective analysis of behaviour in terms of measurable functions, such as body weight or the level of substances in the blood. We saw in § 2.2 that need, for instance for food, can increase activity: appetitive behaviour, as its name implies, is often a reflexion of need, and during this behaviour the animal learns how to satisfy the need, for instance by visiting a particular spot or by making some special movement. Once the need is satisfied the animal turns to another sort of activity or becomes quiescent. All this fits in with the assumption that need-reduction determines what acts an animal will learn to perform. But we also know (§ 2.2.5) that the opportunity to move around a relatively large area, or to watch moving objects, can itself act as a reinforcer. As far as immediate homeostatic needs are concerned, such acts are sheer waste of time. Admittedly, exploratory behaviour contributes indirectly to survival (§ 2.4.1); but at the time at which it is performed it merely depletes the animal’s energy resources. It might be argued that there is an ‘exploratory drive’, and that exploration serves to reduce this drive. But such an argument becomes no more than a tautology: it implies that an act is performed only because it leads to drive reduction; and when we ask how we know that drive reduction has occurred the only answer is that it must have occurred – because the act was performed. There are also many examples of reward value in activities which, by themselves, are of no biological use...
eBook - ePub- Phil Evans(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...Motivation has become totally a question of looking at the external determinants of behaviour. The question of internal drives has become redundant. But we cannot so easily relegate the importance of the intervening organism. It is true that we may sometimes be shaped unawares by the external stimuli which make up our environment. However it is also true that for the most part we have awareness; we also react to the external world as we perceive it. This is a suitable point to look at cognitive approaches to the study of motivation. Summary Mechanistic psychologists, interested in the most parsimonious approach to the explanation of behaviour, evolved a theory which viewed all behaviour as a function of drive (deriving ultimately from biological needs) and habit. Drive pushes an organism blindly into action. Habits are built up by contiguity of response to reinforcement (drive reduction). The variety of behaviour (particularly human behaviour) can be fitted into simple drive theory by postulating acquired reinforcement and acquired drive. Of crucial explanatory importance is the 'master' acquired drive of fear. There is a gigantic experimental literature which supports many of the postulates and predictions of drive theory. Some experiments on the non-specificity of drive, the predictions about conflict behaviour and verbal learning have been described. Drive theory's first major challenge came with the emergence of incentives as motivational variables. Modifications of the theory were possible, but the modifications only served to increase doubt as to whether drive was necessary at all as a motivational entity. The effect of the usual drive-induction procedures such as deprivation might merely be to increase the value of the incentive. In short, incentive motivation may be the whole story. Incentives do not necessarily have to be thought of as things which are 'known about'. Operationally incentives are reinforcers...
eBook - ePubPersonality as an Affect-processing System
Toward An Integrative Theory
- Jack Block(Author)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...The rise of the cognitive revolution has largely displaced thinking and empiricism regarding the problems previously considered under the rubric of drive and motivation more generally. True, some aspects of the drive concept are being obliquely studied by biologically oriented psychologists, but they invoke conjectured neural models of inhibition and activation without conceptual mention of what, psychologically, is being neurally inhibited or neurally activated. The present essay reasserts the conceptual usefulness of a notion of psychological drive. The view being espoused here is that a drive, once actuated, may then exist essentially independently of its initial actuating circumstances and will remain to influence subsequent experience and behavior if not processed during its immediate psychological moment. Certainly, the circumstances of arousal of the drive, via modal action patterns operating within expectable environments or via learning, may also provide the circumstances relevant for its processing, release, and cessation. In this case, the claimed separation of drive from its activation may not clearly appear or seem confounded. However, and importantly, drive often may not be reducible by behavior available within the arousing situation. Thus, an experiment involving participant humiliation may be terminated abruptly, leaving the participant still bursting with aroused hostilities but with no environmental opportunity for their release. A sexy person may simply tease and leave, with the other individual now vigilantly oriented toward unavailable sexual activity. In the “unnatural” situation now existing for the individual, the psychological motivations that have been developed by such external environmental stimuli must still be coped with if only ultimately by the subsequent attenuation of memory...
eBook - ePubMotivation
Biological, Psychological, and Environmental
- Lambert Deckers(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The result is to increase the likelihood of being socially included and satisfy the need to belong. A generalization regarding the needs for iron, sleep, and belonging is a three-step process. First, the need develops because something lacking, such as a substance, behavior, or stimulation. Second, this lack produces negative/unpleasant feelings. Third, these feelings help motivate behavior to reduce these feelings and hence fulfill the need. Drives and Psychological Needs According to Hull's theory described in Chapter 1, drive was the motivational construct that results when an animal is deprived of a needed substance, such as food, water, or environmental stimulation (Hull, 1943, 1951). Researchers created drives through incentive deprivation. Thus, food deprivation, water deprivation, and sensory deprivation produced hunger, thirst and curiosity drives, respectively. These different drives have one characteristic in common. They motivate the animal to seek out stimuli or experiences that reduce drive intensity. Thus, animals seek food, water, or novel stimuli for purposes of drive reduction. Psychological needs resemble drives but are not tried to prior experimental manipulations, such as food deprivation. Rather, psychological needs already exist as a result of an individual's evolutionary or personal history. Like drives, psychological needs motivate behavior when they are unfulfilled. For example, loneliness stems from not satisfying the need to belong, which then motivates a person to seek out other individuals (Mellor et al., 2008). However, needs also have a transitory nature, which means that they come and go. For example, the need for food only becomes apparent when an individual experiences hunger or feels weak, otherwise the need is dormant. Psychological needs are temporarily activated by the environment through a process known as redintegration Process by whereby an environmental stimulus activates a psychological need. (Murray, 1938)...
eBook - ePub- J.R. Maze(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Then we can think that a period of deprivation of the appropriate supplies, combined probably with appropriate external stimulation, will result in an input to the drive centre causing the drive–excitation pattern to develop, displacing that of the previously prevailing drive–satiation. This, in turn, will stimulate a particular high-level motor nerve channel and give rise to characteristic types of behaviour, the specific actions, which if successful bring about (in a way yet to be specified) the cessation of the drive–excitation pattern and the re-establishment of that of drive–satiation, with the consequent termination of that particular motor output. In this way the deterministic aspect of Freud’s principle of ‘tension-reduction’ can be retained. Instead of an accumulation of energy, one would think, as he did originally, of a continuing input of some specific type of nervous impulse, together in the case of some drives with specific biochemical factors, to the brainstem structure of which the instinctual drive mechanism basically consists. Rather than the consummatory action using up an accumulated store of tension, it would (through some feedback loop) terminate the input to the drive mechanism. In order that the consummatory action should not run off abortively in the absence of the necessary object, the output of the brainstem structure into the motor nerve system would have to be modified by those ongoing processes in the cerebral cortex that mediate the organism’s cognitions about the environmental situation; that is, its perceptions of what is present and its beliefs about the effects of possible actions. In these ways the model incorporates the motivational and cognitive aspects of the ‘desire plus belief account of so-called teleological behaviour...
