Motivation

Phil Evans

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317358756
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Psicologia cognitiva e cognizione

The question of motivation in psychology is the fundamental problem of why organisms behave. In this book, originally published in 1975, various theoretical approaches – based on biological needs or on the way we perceive ourselves and our environment – are described and discussed, together with their supporting evidence, and the underlying relations between them are made clear.

1
A background to the study of motivation

It is not too difficult to see why motivation has become one of the central areas of investigation for psychologists. The science of psychology is more often than not defined as the study of behaviour and experience. When we witness an instance of behaviour, we want to ask the question: why? Why is that man, who is standing on the street corner, looking up at that tall building, and why now have half a dozen passers-by joined him in his gazing activity? Or in the laboratory, why is that white rat turning a wheel, now jumping over a barrier, and now running through the white door rather than the black one? The essence of the enquiring mind is not simply to observe behaviour but to find reasons for it and explain it. But reasons can be given at many different levels, depending on who is in search of the explanation, and when he is going to be satisfied. To illustrate this never-ending regress of explanation, we have only to look at the verbal behaviour of a typical five-year-old, who responds to every suggested explanation with a further 'why' question until we are in realms of explanation which present difficulties even for the omniscient parent.

Obviously there must be an end called somewhere, and this is achieved by the simple expedient of drawing rough boundaries for an area of enquiry. This is clearly seen in the field of motivation: psychologists may use purely psychological words such as 'motive' and 'purpose' in their explanatory schema; they might also find it useful to go to the limits of their discipline which border physiology and look at the physiological bases of motivation (see A2 of Essential Psychology); in other cases they may be interested in the border with sociology and look at the influence of society on the behaviour of the individual (see B1). But when all is said and done every psychologist has some idea, possibly difficult to define clearly, of what constitutes psychological explanation.

In order to open up and introduce the field of motivation, let us now look at how we in fact use motivational words and what their use implies in the way of explanation.

The use of motivational words and their implications

We have used three common motivational words so far: 'motive', 'purpose', and 'reason'. The words are not synonymous and we shall see that more clearly when we ask another very important question: where do we find explanations of behaviour? If the behaviour is human, we might well find the explanation with the person himself. We ask him the reason which lies behind his activity. In discovering the reason, we might feel this constitutes a sufficient explanation (see F7). Take the example given in the first paragraph of the man looking up at the tall building. When asked for an explanation of his behaviour, he might well reply that his intention is to play a rather well-known practical joke and get every passer-by gazing skyward with him. The discovery of his intention seems reason enough, and we require no further explanation, although we may well wonder whether he does this sort of thing often. Notice here, however, that the motivation is completely covert. No amount of observation would have yielded the correct explanation, although the absence of other explanations and our knowledge of the existence of this practical joke might lead our suspicions in the right direction. Now suppose that there were smoke billowing from the top storey of the building. We should not feel the necessity of asking the man the reason for his staring, rather we should ask him the reason for the smoke. Thus in the latter case we seem to be finding an explanation for his behaviour in the external environment. The explanation is completely overt. The word reason then seems to be wide in its scope. We can find reasons in many places.

Let us now return to the white rat in the laboratory. Since we are unable to ask the rat any searching questions, we simply carry on observing it. At the end of its numerous and bizarre activities, the rat finds a supply of sugar pellets and settles down to eat them. We assume that the rat was hungry and that the purpose of the animal in expending so much energy was to get to the food. We might, however, have some reservations about attributing such things as purposes to rats. But for the moment why not?

When we ask what motivates behaviour, we are interested at first in a broad spectrum of possible answers. At a very basic level, we may find that the environment itself is able to account fully for the behaviour in question. For example, if someone is forcibly, pushed to the ground by an aggressor, we do not ask the unfortunate victim why he fell (unless we wish to gain a fully justified reputation for sarcasm). When we trip over a kerbstone, we have little to do with our subsequent fall, except perhaps to ensure that we do not land on our heads. And if someone did ask us why we tripped, what else can we mumble other than: because of the lurking kerbstone.

Fortunately most of our behaviour does not consist of such involuntary responses to animate and inanimate assaults. It is when we start behaving as agents and initiators of action that real 'why' questions become appropriate. In answering such questions, we tend to use words which shift the locus of control away from the immediate environment and inside the person. We speak of drives and instincts or purposes and intentions. We eat because we are hungry and hunger is supposedly the drive which explains our eating behaviour. Men conduct wars because they have aggressive instincts. The purpose of my visiting the garage today was to realize my intention not to run out of petrol on my way to work. We use these words very freely and very commonly, but just how valid is their use? How much do they explain? These are questions which will be raised throughout the book.

So when it comes to initiated behaviour we see many motivational words which point inside the agent, but that does not mean all motivational words point in that direction. When organisms behave, apparently purposively, they achieve certain things in the environment — often concrete things like money, or sugar pellets. We talk about these things as incentives, goals, or rewards. And we accept the use of these words as explanations of motivational 'why' questions. Does this mean that internal constructs such as drives etc. are not primary in explanations of motivation? Well, not necessarily. After all, something can hardly be called an incentive unless it is in some sense wanted. 'Wants', of course, belong firmly in that first class of words — firmly inside the person. (Some readers, however, may already be asking whether the 'wants' themselves may not be explained by looking outside the person.)

We have now completed a quick perusal of some of the vocabulary of motivation. This makes possible a preview of some of the areas of debate which have existed and still do exist in the psychology of motivation, and which, in turn, are very much connected with the different shades of meaning which attend the use of these words. All these areas of debate are taken up in detail in later chapters of the book.

Mechanism versus cognition

When I say that I have chosen a course of action and give you a reason, you can accept that the reason motivated my choice. You can also, however, turn round and say that regardless of the reason I have given you, I would have chosen the way I did any way. It sounds a bit like the old free will versus determinism debate (see Fl, F7) — and in a sense it is. However, one can also think of it in the following way. In the former case I ask you to accept that a reason can serve as an explanation. But reasons are complex things, which imply a thinking, knowing organism. It is quite possible to eschew such cognitive words as reason and use words which imply a mechanistic process where an organism behaves solely as the victim of forces acting upon it. One need not thereby deny that a man has reasons for behaving; one simply denies that such reasons have any relevance in determining his behaviour. On this view reasons, intentions, and things of that ilk, are at most epiphenomena, things independent of the determining process.

Because we are so used to ascribing such things as intentions to human beings, it is better to look at examples from animal behaviour if we want to see the real difference between a mechanistic and a cognitive approach to motivation. When a rat runs a maze for food in the goal box, do we say that the rat has any kind of knowledge of the final reward, and do we go on to say that such knowledge of future consequences determines in any way the behaviour that occurs in the maze? If we do say this then we are propounding a cognitive theory of motivation. If, however, we maintain that the rat's behaviour can be fully explained without reference to cognitive terms (such as knowledge or intention), but only to forces already acting within an otherwise inert body then we are advancing a mechanistic theory. What are these forces which do not imply cognition? We look back to our vocabulary and discover words such as 'drive' and 'instinct'. They have no connotation of cognition, as indeed is attested by the phrase 'blind instinct'. Psychologists have differed and still do differ in the matter of espousing cognitive or mechanistic theories. Ultimately the issue between them must be resolved on the basis of evidence. If the mechanistic theorists are to be believed then the higher-level explanations of cognitive theorists will have to be shown to be redundant. If the cognitive theorists are right, then they must show that the mechanistic theories are inadequate to deal with the evidence. This debate is relevant to the next issue too.

Push versus pull

When an object moves from A to B, the force can either come from A in which case we say the object is pushed, or from B, in which case it is pulled. We have already seen above that a mechanistic theory treats an animal's behaviour in much the same way as that of a machine. What kind of force, push or pull, is more acceptable to this kind of theorist? The answer is clearly seen in the motivational word 'drive' — we think immediately of a force which pushes us, or goads us into action, where we would otherwise be as inert as a billiard ball resting on a table. Our behaviour results from the drive as a billiard ball's behaviour results from the push of the cue. To go back to the rat in the maze: without the push of his hunger drive he would stay in the start box. But can we not also conceive that the animal is pulled towards the goal box by the incentive (food)? There seems, however, to be a problem here for the mechanistic theorist, for the incentive presumably has to be known about in order to exert an effect. This implies cognition. If cognition is not to be invoked, one must find a way of getting round the apparent difficulty of a future event in the goal box influencing the prior behaviour of running the maze.

Innate versus learned

In the vocabulary of motivational terms which we have so far used, one word stands out very obviously as connected with innate behaviour. That word is instinct. To the layman the word instinct is more likely to conjure up ideas about animal behaviour than human. If the word is used to explain the motivation of human behaviour, it is a good bet that it is being applied to irrational animal-like behaviour. The Sunday press is quite likely to invoke the 'aggression instinct' or the 'sex instinct' as good motivational coat-hangers to account for a mutilated corpse in the canal or pornographic pictures in the vicarage. For the psychologist, however, it is not such an easy job to say how much of our behaviour can be accounted for by innate motivational factors, and how much of motivation is a matter of learning. It is true that we have little say in whether we eat, drink, or sleep. But even these apparently primary biological drives are not without their learned components, as we shall see when we discuss them in a later chapter. There is also the additional question of how far our obviously learned motives can be traced back to more primary sources. Do we work for the incentive of money, for example, because of some chain of associations back to a primary hunger drive? The way in which individual human motives are acquired is a question which any theory of motivation must consider.

Conscious versus unconscious

Most people have heard of Freud (see D3), and most people are aware that one of his major contributions to psychology was to emphasize the importance of unconscious factors in determining our day to day behaviour. Such a view, of course, considerably expands the meaning of the words we have been using. When we have talked of intentions or motives, we have wanted, if the subject be human, to ask the person what these are. But, according to Freud, he might not know. We shall be treating Freudian theory and its contribution to the psychology of motivation in a later chapter.

Such, then, is an outline of the area with which we shall be dealing. But our survey of the psychology of motivation cannot be considered in a void. Many people before twentieth century psychologists have addressed themselves to the question of motivation and their thinking must be considered in this introductory chapter.

An historical perspective

Sections on historical perspective, the tracing of the history of ideas in any area, usually begin with the ancient Greeks (see Fl, F7), and there seems no reason to depart from this tradition, but not first without a mention of anonymous men in our earliest antiquity. Probably as long as there have been men on this earth, they have felt the urge to provide some explanation of human behaviour, simply because human behaviour is so different from the other events perceived in the environment. The behaviour of inanimate objects, by comparison, tends to be easily explained. 'Things' don't do anything on their own. They are acted upon. Even animals seem to behave predictably. Human behaviour enters the picture as something rather bizarre and unpredictable. The easiest way to account for it was to credit men with something special: they were not just bodies or things like stones or trees; they had souls.

The philosophy that human beings have bodies and souls is known as the philosophy of dualism. Plato and Socrates were dualists. They believed men to be free agents who in possessing souls raised themselves above the level of mere animals. The system of ethics which Plato and Socrates espoused was based on men being able to choose the good and the beautiful. Dualism of body and soul was reflected in a dualism of qualities. Goodness and beauty resided inside things, but they were themselves also capable of an independent existence — there were such things as the ideals of goodness and beauty. According to these Greek philosophers behaviour was determined by either two things: passion or knowledge. Passion was shared with animals. Knowledge gained through the use of reason was peculiarly human, and the achievement of goodness was necessarily entailed by the exercise of knowledge. After obtaining knowledge it would be a redundant question for a Platonist to ask; but what should I do? This rationalism was present in other Greek thinkers too. Aristotle believed that the main aim of life was happiness rather than goodness. But like Socrates and Plato, he too believed that his aim was automatically realized by the use of reason and the acquisition of knowledge. Wisdom was happiness.

This dualism between body and soul was to continue into Christian thinking and dominate it for many centuries. It fitted the Christian ethic that there should be a soul capable of rational choice of the good, which competed with the body and its physical passions, shared with soul-less animals.

Any dominant tradition requires an antagonist, and the main antagonist in this case has been hedonism, or hedonistic theories of various types. The word 'hedonism' comes from the Greek word for 'pleasure'. It seems nowadays a fairly common-sense view that our actions are determined in the main by whether their consequences are pleasurable or painful, but surprisingly those early philosophies which are usually seen as the precursors of the hedonistic tradition are not at all deterministic. We have seen already that the main Greek tradition traceable to Plato and Aristotle emphasized the freedom of the human agent. It follows that they had little to say about the determinants of human conduct, since it was not determined. Early hedonistic doctrines, however, had just as little to say. In the classical world, Epicureanism (after the Greek philosopher Epicurus) held great sway for a time, and its followers believed that the pursuit of pleasure was the purpose of life. However, at no time did Epicurus deny free will. Man's conduct was not determined by pleasure; it was simply man's duty to pursue it. Nor, incidentally, did Epicurus have sensual pleasures in mind when he urged his doctrines on his followers. He often lived on bread and water, and looked disdainfully on mere physical comfort! In a way then, Epicureanism should be seen as a variant of the mainstream, rather than an early antagonist. The psychological aspect of hedonism did not really come to the forefront until the British empiricists. By psychological aspect I mean an empirical belief that we do as a matter of fact act according to some kind of pleasure principle — this opposed to a philosophical position which may merely exhort us to behave in a certain way.

Utilitarians, such as Bentham and John Stuart Mill, actually start with the view that human kind does in fact behave in such a manner as to seek and hopefully obtain pleasure, and the political message of the utilitarians is that a society should take note of this reality. Therefore, so their reasoning goes, the best society is bound to be that which creates the greatest happiness and thereby the greatest good for the greatest number. With psychological hedonism we are much closer to contemporary thinking, for without detracting from the richness and variety of human behaviour it allows us to conceive of it as to some extent lawful in obeying a very general guiding principle.

So far our discussion of historical perspective, has limited itself to questions of philosophy...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Contents
• Editor's Introduction
• 1 A background to the study of motivation
• 2 Instinct
• 3 Physiological aspects of motivation
• 4 Drive theory
• 5 Cognitive approaches to motivation
• 6 Psychoanalysis and the therapeutic tradition
• 7 Codetta
• References and Name Index
• Subject Index