Motives/Needs

1. Motives/Needs • Motives = internal forces that help determine particular behavior; internal source of motivation • Based in both psychology and biology patterns • Forces pushing for expression within an individual • Needs = readiness to respond in a particular way; responsible for pushing us into action • “Personal Striving = goals we want to achieve

2. Basic Question • What do people want? • 4 approaches to answering this question • Optimistic tradition • Pessimistic tradition • Neutrality • diversity

3. Optimistic tradition • People are basically good • People capable of rational thought • Reason guides behavior • People act in accord with conscious goals, which makes them happy • Carl Rogers, Maslow – humanistic approach • George Kelly and cognitive approaches

4. Pessimistic tradition • People are mainly bad and often miserable (because they want bad things) • Behavior is motivated by irrational and bodily instincts • Human reason is overrated • E.g. Old Testament idea of original sin; Freud; evolutionary psychology

5. Neutrality • People (at birth) are blank and unformed • Environment shapes goals and motives • E.g. John Locke (tabula rasa); behaviorism; Skinner

6. Diversity • People want different things • Different people have different goals • E.g. Henry Murray; contemporary goal theories

7. Henry Murray • Needs – located within an individual • Press – the environmental factors that impact the expression of needs • Needs>>>Motives>>>>Behavior

8. Needs are best understood as a personal hierarchy • i.e. compare needs within an individual rather than across individuals • E.g. friends having party night before exam • Need for achievement or need for affiliation – which is stronger?

9. Important Needs (the Big Three) • Need for achievement • Need for intimacy/affiliation • Need for Power • Others: Need for autonomy, dominance, harm avoidance, nurturance, understanding, exhibition

10. Need for achievement • Need to achieve success – engage in task oriented behavior • Doing things better than before or surpassing some standard of excellence (can be an internal standard or external standard) • Correlates

11. Need for Power • Need to have an impact on other people, influence other people • Strive to wield power and to feel more influential than others • Correlates

12. Need for Intimacy • Motive to have close and warm relationships with others. • (slightly different and more valid than Murray’s original need for affiliation = motive to spend time with others, to be involved in social relationships) • Correlates

13. Personal Strivings- Emmons • Characteristics, recurring goals that a person is trying to accomplish • Strivings are more specific than needs/motives and offer concrete information about a person • E.g. person with need for power: “Persuading my daughter she should stay away from drugs” “Becoming president of the local school council” “Getting to the top of my company.”

14. Personal Strivings • About ½ of reported strivings fit into big 3 motive categories of achievement, power, and intimacy/affiliation. • Other goals include: • Avoidance “To avoid letting anything upset me.” • Personal growth and health “To eat more vegetables” “To get in better shape” “To learn more about gardening” • Generativity “To make a lasting contribution to society” • Spirituality “To deepen my relationship with God”

15. Correlates of personal strivings • Intimacy& generativity strivings assoc. with independent ratings of psychological well-being. • Power strivings & avoidance strivings assoc. with lower levels of well-being and higher levels of anxiety. • Spiritual strivings assoc. with low levels of conflict among life goals.