Understanding Human Motivation: Needs, Drives, and Behaviors
Motivation is always related to the question “why?” There are hundreds of different definitions of motivation. Friedrich said that motivation is the psychological background, the driver, who holds the power to force action and said his leadership. It should be noted that:
- Behavior is multi-determined.
- Reasons energize behavior.
- Reasons route behavior.
- Reasons may change depending on maturational reasons, conflict, environmental factors, etc.
- Motives can be disguised.
McDougal’s Identified Propensities
- Propensity to search for food
- Propensity to aversion
- Propensity to sex
- Propensity to fear
- Propensity to curiosity
- Propensity to protectiveness and parental care
- Gregarious propensity
- Propensity to self-assertion
- Propensity to submission
- Propensity to purchase
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
Extrinsic motivation: A set of rewards, punishments, or incentives that come from outside the individual and that increase, maintain, or decrease the activity of the subject. Rewards motivate positively, while punishment motivates negatively. They come from past experience; if the experience was good, one will be motivated to do it again, and vice versa.
Intrinsic motivation: A set of internal psychological needs that regulate behavior. These are things we do because we like them and are interested in them.
Intrinsic Reasons
- Self-determination: Doing things because they are satisfying. It pushes us to face challenges, conflicts, or difficult situations because they stimulate us.
- Curiosity: The desire for knowledge, dominion, or control over the environment are reasons that make man an intelligent being. Animals repeat the behavior patterns they have inherited, while humans are curious.
- Effectiveness: The need to understand, monitor, and foresee events. To plan, rehearse, or perform those behaviors that are more effective in terms of personal control over one’s environment.
Physiological Reasons, Cognition, Expectations, and Responsibilities
Physiological reasons: Human behavior occurs in a body, and this body is regulated by physiological drives or needs. Meeting these needs motivates the subject to act toward a goal, such as obtaining pleasure and avoiding pain. The most universal are thirst, hunger, sex, and pain. The lack of water or food is a threat to survival. Once sated, these reasons disappear. In the sexual motive, man can choose the object of his desire. Pain is another strong motivating factor because it warns the subject of danger.
Cognitive motivation: A set of mental processes that causally determine action. The main cognitive reasons are:
- Consistency: Man needs and seeks consistency between what he does and what he wants.
- Consistency: Man must reconcile his thoughts and actions.
- Stability: An old theory of Gestalt psychology holds that man flees chaos.
Expectations and responsibilities: The behavior of individuals also depends on expectations and responsibilities. For example, when preparing for an exam and getting a good grade, we are motivated to continue, but if we feel discouraged, we might say, “I failed when I was suspended.”
Murray’s Grounds for Motivation
- Affiliation: Approach and cooperate or ally with another complacently.
- Aggression: Overcoming violent opposition.
- Attendance: Having one’s own needs met by an allied object.
- Autonomy: Freedom from limitation.
- Comprehension: Asking or answering general questions.
- Nurturance: Providing sympathy and meeting the needs of a helpless object.
- Defense: Protecting the self from attacks.
- Deference: Admiring and supporting a superior.
- Dominance: Control of one’s human environment.
- Harm Avoidance: Avoiding pain.
- Infavoidance: Avoiding humiliation.
- Exhibition: Making an impression.
- Humiliation: Submitting passively to external force.
- Play: Acting for fun without an ulterior purpose.
- Achievement: Accomplishing something difficult.
- Opposition: Dominating or repairing a failure by returning to the fight.
- Order: Putting things in order.
- Rejection: Separating from a negative view.
- Sentience: Seeking and enjoying impressions.
- Sex: Educating and promoting an erotic relationship.
The Motive for Affiliation and Power
The motive for affiliation is the universal tendency to establish close relationships with others. Several theories have been devised to explain the formation, development, and reactions to the loss of affiliate links. One of the best-known theories is Bowlby’s attachment theory, which justifies the formation of emotional bonds in the newborn due to the child’s vulnerability and the need to build their personality. It boils down to the need for acceptance and security that every human being experiences. The need to be socially acceptable is often expressed through a number of strategies. Individuals often feel happier when they feel part of a group.
The power motive is the need to own, control, or dominate other people or things. Those highly motivated by power use their aggressiveness and strive to be recognized for their merits. They can use power in a beneficent or megalomaniacal way. Its cause is the desire to overcome the feeling of vulnerability. The power motive is usually accompanied by fame, prestige, and display. When well-led, it can guarantee success in matters of affiliation.
The Motive for Achievement and Other Reasons
The motive for achievement is the tendency to seek success and an interest in achieving a standard of excellence. People with a high achievement motive strive to succeed in tasks that pose a challenge, such as completing a difficult crossword puzzle. Success produces pride, and failure produces shame. It has some obsessive features, is competitive, ambitious, and linked to high self-esteem.
In Freudian psychoanalysis, direct sexual desire is sublimated into the motivational basis of behavior, sometimes controlled and sometimes not. If not controlled, it can be based on repressed memories. The unconscious system not only houses intolerable or painful sexual desires but also contains emotions and aspirations. In the humanist approach represented by Maslow, there is a set of human needs represented in Maslow’s hierarchy.