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- Achievement motives: They refer to a drive towards some standards of excellence. People with high-level achievement motives prefer tasks that would promise success and are moderately difficult.
- Affiliation motives: Man cannot exist in isolation. The need to be with other people is known as affiliation need. This need is revealed through one’s attraction to others through friendship, sociability or group membership.
- Aggression motives: Intense frustrations after high expectations, verbal and nonverbal insults, fear and anxiety can trigger aggression. Television and cinema depicting violence can make youngsters model themselves to aggressive behaviour.
- Power motives: Social power is defined as the ability of an individual to produce intended effect on the behaviour or emotions of other people. Persons with power motives will be concerned with having impact, influence and reputation.
- Overview
- Physiological, psychological, and philosophical approaches
motivation, forces acting either on or within a person to initiate behaviour. The word is derived from the Latin term motivus (“a moving cause”), which suggests the activating properties of the processes involved in psychological motivation.
Psychologists study motivational forces to help explain observed changes in behaviour that occur in an individual. Thus, for example, the observation that a person is increasingly likely to open the refrigerator door to look for food as the number of hours since the last meal increases can be understood by invoking the concept of motivation. As the above example suggests, motivation is not typically measured directly but rather inferred as the result of behavioral changes in reaction to internal or external stimuli. It is also important to understand that motivation is primarily a performance variable. That is, the effects of changes in motivation are often temporary. An individual, highly motivated to perform a particular task because of a motivational change, may later show little interest for that task as a result of further change in motivation.
Motives are often categorized into primary, or basic, motives, which are unlearned and common to both animals and humans; and secondary, or learned, motives, which can differ from animal to animal and person to person. Primary motives are thought to include hunger, thirst, sex, avoidance of pain, and perhaps aggression and fear. Secondary motives typically studied in humans include achievement, power motivation, and numerous other specialized motives.
Motives have also sometimes been classified into “pushes” and “pulls.” Push motives concern internal changes that have the effect of triggering specific motive states. Pull motives represent external goals that influence one’s behaviour toward them. Most motivational situations are in reality a combination of push and pull conditions. For example, hunger, in part, may be signaled by internal changes in blood glucose or fat stores, but motivation to eat is also heavily influenced by what foods are available. Some foods are more desirable than others and exert an influence on our behaviour toward them. Behaviour is, thus, often a complex blend of internal pushes and external pulls.
Motivation has been studied in a variety of ways. For instance, it has been analyzed at the physiological level using electrical and chemical stimulation of the brain, the recording of electrical brain-wave activity with the electroencephalograph, and lesion techniques, where a portion of the brain (usually of a laboratory animal) is destroyed and subsequent changes in motivation are noted. Physiological studies performed primarily on animals other than humans have demonstrated the importance of certain brain structures in the control of basic motives such as hunger, thirst, sex, aggression, and fear.
Motivation may also be analyzed at the individual psychological level. Such analyses attempt to understand why people act in particular ways and seek to draw general conclusions from individual cases. Through studies of individuals, for example, it has been found that both men and women proceed through a series of identifiable stages of arousal during behaviours leading to and culminating in sexual intercourse. The finding may be applied to people in general.
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Motivation of an individual is also influenced by the presence of other people. Social psychologists have been active in discovering how the presence of others in a given situation influences motivation. For example, students and teachers behave in predictable ways in the classroom. Those behaviours are often quite different, however, from the way students and teachers behave outside the classroom. Studies of conformity, obedience, and helping behaviours (which benefit others without reward) are three areas in this field that have received considerable attention.
Finally, motivation is sometimes also approached from a more philosophical direction. That is, analyses of motivation are understood, at least in part, by examining the particular philosophical point of view espoused by the theorist. For example, some motivational theorists conceive motivation to be an aversive state: one to be avoided. Sigmund Freud’s view of motivational processes could be applied within this framework; his contention that blocked sexual energy could be displaced into acceptable behaviours implies that accumulation of sexual energy (motivation) is aversive. Other theorists see motivation as a much more positive experience. That is, motivation can produce behaviours that lead to increases in future motivation. The American psychologist Abraham H. Maslow’s concept of self-actualization could be applied within this framework (see below Self-actualization).
Jan 30, 2023 · This may be why motivation is often conceptualized in terms of drives. Our bodies aim to return to equilibrium and strive toward a desired end-state, reducing or eliminating the drive (Reeve, 2018). Needs are internal motives that energize, direct and sustain behavior.
In motivation. Motives are often categorized into primary, or basic, motives, which are unlearned and common to both animals and humans; and secondary, or learned, motives, which can differ from animal to animal and person to person. Primary motives are thought to include hunger, thirst, sex, avoidance of pain, and perhaps aggression….
Feb 23, 2017 · Goals and motives are fundamental to human behavior: they play a central role in its enactment and in our understanding of why people do what they do. Moreover, they have long been considered essential aspects of human personality (e.g., [ 1 – 12 ]).
- Jennifer R. Talevich, Stephen J. Read, David A. Walsh, Ravi Iyer, Gurveen Chopra
- 10.1371/journal.pone.0172279
- 2017
- PLoS One. 2017; 12(2): e0172279.
Jan 27, 2021 · Instead, a literature review suggests that at least seven distinct motives are likely to affect human decisions: “consumption/resource seeking,” “care,” “affiliation,” “achievement,” “status-power,” “threat approach” (or anger), and “threat avoidance” (or fear).
Explore Motivation. Motivation is the driving force (s) responsible for the initiation, persistence, direction, and strength of goal-directed behavior. It includes biological drives such as hunger, thirst, temperature regulation, and self-preservation, which are often referred to as 'primary' drives because of their importance to the organism.
