1 Psychology and human development1.8 Motivation
1.8 Motivation
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Written by Resident Doctor Committee · Published
Needs, drives and incentives
Motivation starts, directs and sustains goal-directed behaviour.
Term | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
Need | A deficiency that impairs functioning while unmet | Low body water |
Drive | The internal tension a need produces, which pushes behaviour | Thirst |
Incentive | An external object that pulls behaviour by its own properties | A cold drink on a hot day |
Primary drives are innate and biological, such as hunger, thirst, temperature regulation, sleep and pain avoidance.
Secondary drives are acquired through association with need satisfaction and through social learning, such as money, approval and status.
Motivational salience is the property that makes an object, event or outcome drive behaviour towards or away from it, arising from external prompting or from within the person.
Delayed gratification is giving up a smaller reward now for a larger reward later, studied by Walter Mischel in the marshmallow experiments.
Drive reduction and homeostasis
Homeostasis is dynamic, feedback-driven regulation around a set point: when a variable is displaced from its optimal value, negative feedback corrects it back.
Hull's drive-reduction theory holds that a need creates a drive, the drive prompts behaviour, and drive reduction reinforces that behaviour. Homeostasis underlies such theories.
Drive reduction cannot explain motivation without a deficit, such as exploration, play, eating for pleasure and the pull of saccharin on animals.
Groups of theory
Theories of motivation are grouped as physiological (biopsychological), humanistic and socio-psychological.
Needs theories such as McClelland's are socio-psychological: they explain behaviour through cognitive motives acquired in a social context.
McClelland's need for achievement is a learned motive to meet standards of excellence, assessed from achievement themes in stories about Thematic Apperception Test pictures.
Intrinsic motivation and self-determination
Intrinsic motivation comes from interest in the activity itself, while extrinsic motivation seeks a separate outcome, such as money or approval.
Overjustification is when rewarding an enjoyable activity reduces later interest in it.
Self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan) holds that motivation lasts when it is internally endorsed, and is sustained by supporting the basic needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness rather than by external rewards.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
Abraham Maslow proposed that lower needs must be met before higher ones emerge, a principle called prepotency. His original 1943 hierarchy has five levels in fixed order.
Level | Need | Content | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
5 (apex) | Self-actualisation | Realising full potential; the most complex, growth-oriented need | Growth (B-need) |
4 | Esteem | Self-respect, competence and mastery, plus status and recognition from others | Deficiency (D-need) |
3 | Love and belonging | Affection, intimacy, acceptance | Deficiency |
2 | Safety | Security, stability, freedom from fear | Deficiency |
1 | Physiological | Air, water, food, warmth, sleep | Deficiency |
Deficiency needs (D-needs) motivate through their absence and quieten once met.
Growth or being needs (B-needs) motivate through the pull of growth, strengthen as they are fulfilled, and act only once the D-needs are met.
Esteem becomes the main motivator once social needs are met.
The later eight-tier hierarchy inserts cognitive and then aesthetic needs between esteem and self-actualisation and ends in self-transcendence, so no growth need sits beneath esteem.
Critics note that people sacrifice survival needs for love, faith or principle, that the model is individualist, and that self-actualisation is hard to measure.
Stages of change
The transtheoretical model of stages of change was proposed by Prochaska and DiClemente.
Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
Precontemplation | The person does not see the behaviour as a problem and has no intention to change |
Action | The person is making the change; this covers roughly the first six months |
Maintenance | The change has lasted more than six months and the person works to prevent relapse |