Motivational Aspects of Personality

1. Motivational Aspects of Personality

2. Lecture contents • Freud’s drive/instinct theory • Hull’s Stimulus-Response theory • Maslow’s hierarchy of needs • Deci & Ryan’s self-determination theory • What counts as evidence?

3. Motivation • Concerned in this lecture with: • Initial activation of movement • Selection among behavioural alternatives (direction)

4. Sigmund Freud’s instinct/drive theory • Instincts and drives • Life (ego and sex)  (libido) • Death (aggression)  (thanatos) • Key Concepts • Personality and behaviour are the result of interplay between the expression and inhibition of instincts. • Instincts are universal, but forms of instinct expression and inhibition vary developmentally and situationally. • Key Resource • http://users.rcn.com/brill/freudarc.html

5. Clark Hull’s Stimulus-Response (S-R) Theory • Drive as directionless ‘push’ • Physiological primary drives • E.g., Hunger, thirst, pain • Strengthen with deprivation • Reinforce behaviours that satiate drive • Reinforcing behaviours can thereby become secondary ‘drives’ • E.g., eating, drinking, money, risk • Instrumental learning • Reinforcing responses become habitual to stimuli • Requires that learning takes place in O • Requires that O moderates S-R association • Entails genetic-environment interaction

6. Dollard & Miller (1950)

7. Maslow’s need hierarchy

8. Self-actualisation • “the ability to act independently, self-acceptance or self-esteem, acceptance of one’s emotional life, and trust in interpersonal relationships” • Jones & Crandall (1986) • Itis always necessary that others approve of what I do. (F) • I am bothered by fears of being inadequate. (F) • I do not feel ashamed of any of my emotions. (T) • I believe that people are essentially good and can be trusted. (T)

9. Self-determination theory • Intrinsic motivation • (Self-determination Authenticity) • Competence Autonomy Relatedness

10. Self-determination theory • Not motivated • No regulation • Extrinsically motivated • Controlled motivation • External regulation • Introjected regulation • Autonomous motivation • Identified regulation • Integrated regulation • Intrinsically motivated • Intrinsic regulation

11. Nine criteria (Baumeister & Leary, 1995) • A ‘fundamental’ human motive should: 1. Be found in all societies and cultures. 2. Set satisfaction as a necessary goal, potentially with various substitutable contingent means. 3. Guide cognition. 4. Have emotional, hedonic consequences. 5. Have ill effects if not met. 6. Affect a wide variety of behaviours. 7. Operate in a wide variety of settings. 8. Be non-reducible to other motives. 9. Influence macro (economic, politic, historic) events.

12. Testing 10 candidate psychological needs (USA) • Meanaffect balance r • Self-esteem 3.65 .29 • Relatedness 3.21 .29 • Autonomy 3.12 .43 • Competence 2.98 .32 • Pleasure/Stimuluation 2.60 .16 • Physical thriving 2.49 .08 • Self-actualisation 2.54 .13 • Security 2.46 .28 • Popularity/Influence 2.50 .14 • Money/Luxury 2.14 -.07 • (Sheldon et al., 2001)

13. Two reminders • The over-justification effect (Lepper et al., 1973) • Providing anticipated extrinsic reasons (rewards, punishments) for behaviour formally engaged in for intrinsic reasons (enjoyment, duty) results in reduction of intrinsic motivation to engage in those behaviours, lower spontaneous expression of such behaviours, and lower quality behaviours when they do occur. • Functional autonomy (Allport, 1961) • “What was once extrinsic and instrumental becomes intrinsic and impelling. The activity once served a drive or some simple need; it now serves itself, or in a larger sense, serves the self-image…Childhood is no longer in the saddle; maturity is” (p. 229)