Unit II

Motivation
Today’s topics
• Motivation
• Need
• Drives
• Motivation cycle
• Achievement motivation, Power motivation, Affiliation motivation and
Competence motivation
Motivation-Definition
• The word ‘‘motivation’’ has many meanings, fundamentally they refer
to processes that impel an organism to act. Indeed, ‘‘motivation’’
comes from the Latin verb movere, which means ‘‘to move.’’ Hence,
motivation refers to the processes that lead to the instigation,
continuation, intensity, and quality of behavior.
Needs
• Needs are created whenever there is a physiological or psychological
imbalance. For example, a need exists when cells in the body are
deprived of food and water or when the personality is deprived of
other people who serve as friends or companions.
• Although psychological needs may be based on a deficiency,
sometimes they are not.
• For example, an individual with a strong need to get ahead may have
a history of consistent success.
Drive
• The approach to understand motivation through the concept of Drive
was explored most fully by Clark Hull in the 1940s and 1950s.
• Hull’s concept of drive was derived from Walter Cannon’s (1932)
observation that organisms seek to maintain homeostasis, a state of
physiological equilibrium or stability. The body maintains
homeostasis in various ways.
Drive
• For example, human body temperature normally fluctuates around
98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. If your body temperature rises or drops
noticeably, automatic responses occur: If your temperature goes up,
you’ll perspire; if your temperature goes down, you’ll shiver. These
reactions are designed to move your temperature back toward 98.6
degrees. Thus, your body reacts to many disturbances in physiological
stability by trying to restore equilibrium.
Drive
• Drive theories apply the concept of homeostasis to behavior.
• A drive is an internal state of tension that motivates an organism to
engage in activities that should reduce this tension.
• With a few exceptions, drives, or motives (the two terms are often
used interchangeably), are set up to alleviate needs.
• A physiological drive can be simply defined as a deficiency with
direction.
• Physiological and psychological drives are action oriented and
provide an energizing thrust toward reaching an incentive.
• They are at the very heart of the motivational process. The examples
of the needs for food and water are translated into the hunger and
thirst drives, and the need for friends becomes a drive for affiliation.
Drive
• These unpleasant states of tension are viewed as disruptions of the
preferred equilibrium. According to drive theories, when individuals
experience a drive, they’re motivated to pursue actions that will lead
to drive reduction.
• For example, the hunger motive has usually been conceptualized as a
drive system. If you go without food for a while, you beg in to
experience some discomfort. This internal tension (the drive)
motivates you to obtain food. Eating reduces the drive and restores
physiological equilibrium.
• Drive theories have been very influential, and the drive concept
continues to be widely used in modern psychology. However, drive
theories were not able to explain all motivation (Berridge, 2004).
Homeostasis appears irrelevant to some human motives, such as a
“thirst for knowledge.” Also, motivation may exist without drive
arousal.
• Think of all the times that you’ve eaten when you weren’t the least bit
hungry. You’re walking home from class, amply filled by a solid lunch,
when an ice cream parlor beckons seductively. You stop in and have a
couple of scoops of your favorite flavor. Not only are you motivated to
eat in the absence of internal tension, you may cause yourself some
internal tension—from overeating. Because drive theories assume that
people always try to reduce internal tension, they can’t explain this
behavior very well. Incentive theories, which represent a different
approach to motivation, can account for this behavior more readily.
• An incentive is an external goal that has the capacity to motivate
behavior.
Motivation cycle
• Motivational cycle means that behavior goes on in a sequence.
Types of drives
• Achievement motivation
• Power motivation
• Affiliation motivation
• Competence motivation
• American psychologist Henry Murray (1893-1988) developed a theory
of personality that was organized in terms of motives, presses, and
needs. Murray described a need as a, “potentiality or readiness to
respond in a certain way under certain given circumstances” (1938).
• Murray identified needs as one of two types:
• Primary Needs
Primary needs are based upon biological demands, such as the need for
oxygen, food, and water.
• Secondary Needs
Secondary needs are generally psychological, such as the need for nurturing,
independence, and achievement.
• McClelland has proposed a theory of motivation that is closely
associated with learning concepts. The theory proposes that when a
need is strong in a person, its effect is to motivate the person to use
behavior which leads to satisfaction of the need. The main theme of
McClelland's theory is that needs are learned through copping with
one's environment. Since needs are learned, behavior which is
rewarded tends to recur at a higher frequency.
• The need for achievement or n Ach involves the desire to
independently master objects, ideas and other people, and to
increase one's self-esteem through the exercise of one's talent.
(Wallace, Goldstein and Nathan 1987, 289).
• Based on research results, McClelland developed a descriptive set of
factors which reflect a high need for achievement. These are:
• 1. Achievers like situations in which they take personal responsibility
for finding solutions to problems.
• 2. Achievers have a tendency to set moderate achievement goals and
take "calculated risks."
• 3. Achievers want concrete feedback about how well they are doing
(McClelland and Johnson, 1984, 3).
Achievement motivation
• The most notable among these theories was that of David McClelland,
John Atkinson, and their colleagues (McClelland, Atkinson, Clark &
Lowell, 1953).
• For these researchers, achievement motivation was based in a
personality characteristic that manifested as a dispositional need to
improve and perform well according to a certain standard of excellence.
• This achievement motive, which the researchers labeled n Achievement,
or nAch, was believed to form during the first years of life through
parents’ child-rearing practices: primarily, how early parents expected
and rewarded—either tangibly or affectively with warmth and affection—
independence in their children.
• Achievement theories propose that motivation and performance vary
according to the strength of one’s need for achievement.
• ‘‘achievement motivation’’ denotes processes leading to behavior
that aims to achieve a certain criterion or standard.
• The criterion can be any goal or objective, formal or informal, set by
an individual or by others, in any professional or leisure domain (e.g.,
school, sports, work, music, gardening, even social relationships and
moral conduct), which provides a guide for evaluating success and
failure.
Power motivation
• Bertrand Russell (1938) views power as the fundamental, unifying
explanatory concept in the social sciences, analogous to energy as the
fundamental explanatory concept in physics.
• The sociologist Max Weber: "Power implies taking every opportunity
within a social relationship to assert one's will, even in the face of
resistance, regardless of the circumstances which gave rise to the
opportunity."
• The psychologist Kurt Lewin: "We might define power of b over a . ..
as the quotient of the maximum force which b can induce on a ... and
the maximum resistance which a can offer."
• Power is manifested by unilateral behavioral control and can occur in
a number of different ways.
Types of power
• 1. Reward power. Its strength depends on B's expectation about the
extent to which A is able to satisfy one of B’s motives, and to what
extent A makes such satisfaction dependent on B’s behavior.
• 2. Coercive power. Its strength depends on B’s expectation about the
extent to which A is in a position to punish B for undesirable action by
withdrawing the opportunity for satisfying certain motives, and to
what effect A makes such punishment dependent on B’s undesirable
behavior. The coercion consists of a restriction of B’s freedom of
movement through threat of punishment.
• 3. Legitimate power. This implies norms internalized by B, which tell
him or her that A is authorized to monitor the adherence to certain
behavioral norms and, if necessary, take actions to assure such
adherence.
• 4. Referent power. It arises from B’s identification with A, i. e., B’s
desire to be like A.
• 5. Expert power. Its strength depends on the extent to which B
perceives A to have special knowledge, insights, or abilities in relation
to a particular behavioral sphere.
Power motivation
• Power motivation indicates a need to control over one’s own work of
others. These persons are authority motivated.
• There is a strong need to lead and to succeed.
• Such individuals would like to control and influence others.
Power motivation
• power motivation can be considered with respect to incentive and
probability of success. There is evidence to indicate that the strength
of satisfaction of the power motive depends solely on incentive and is
unaffected by the probability of success (McClelland and Watson,
1973).
• Power motivated individuals select high-incentive goals, as achieving
these goals gives them significant control of the resources and
reinforcers of others.
Affiliation Motivation
• Affiliation refers to a class of social interactions that seek contact with
formerly unknown or little known individuals and maintain contact
with those individuals in a manner that both parties experience as
satisfying, stimulating and enriching (Heckhausen and Heckhausen,
2008).
• The need for affiliation is activated when an individual comes into
contact with another unknown or little known individual.
• Affiliation motivation indicates a need for love, belonging and
relatedness.
• Affiliation motivation is thought to comprise two contrasting
components: hope of affiliation and fear of rejection.
• Hope of affiliation prompts us to approach unknown individuals and
get to know them better.
• Fear of rejection urges caution and sensitivity in our dealings with
strangers.
• When unfamiliar people interact, the hope component is activated
first. Fear of rejection is activated later when the relationship
becomes closer and rejection would be more painful.
• Research on the need for achievement has revealed that people with
a high need for achievement tend to select more challenging tasks.
• Studies on the need for affiliation have found that people who rate
high on affiliation needs tend to have larger social groups, spend
more time in social interaction, and more likely to suffer loneliness
when faced with little social contact.
Competence motivation
• Competence motivation involves a concern with mastery. The motive,
or the impetus for action in a specific direction, is to develop, to
attain, or to demonstrate competence.