Motive Perspective Flashcards
Are traits, motives & needs central units of personality ?
❖ Trait approaches emphasise the existence of dispositions & attempt to measure and catalogue them. Traits are descriptive NOT explanatory & are assumed to be relatively static intrapersonal characteristics,
❖ Dispositions can be viewed as enduring (dynamic) motivational characteristics that vary in strength from person to person (between people).
❖ The concept of motivation addresses questions about what influences us to behave as we do…make choices and actively seek desired goals or avoid what is considered undesirable.
Motives and needs
❖ Motives & needs – are present in our thoughts & major concerns
❖ Motives & needs - basic units of personality
❖ Needs operate via motives and direct behaviour
❖ Motives take an underlying need (e.g. thirst) & move it towards action (e.g. imagery of water/drinking)
❖ Henry Murray (1930’s) defined a need as an internal directional
force determining how people seek out & respond to objects or situations in their environment
❖ Murray distinguished between physical (primary) &
psychological (secondary) needs
Needs
❖Manifestation of an internal state
❖Needs direct behaviour
❖Can reflect an unsatisfactory state of being
❖Derived from biological sources (primary)
❖Derived from psychological sources (secondary)
❖Strength of need influences intensity of related behaviour
❖Directive in nature
• positive needs (approach)
• negative needs (avoidance)
Motives: Part 1
❖ Motives appear in a person’s thoughts usually
eventually to be reflected in actions
❖ Henry Murray (1930s) was the founder of the
motive view of personality which he defined “as
the study of human lives and the factors that
influence their course”.
❖ McClelland (1984) defined motives as “cognitions
with affective overtones, organised around
preferred expectancies & goals.”
Motives: Part 2
❖ Influenced by underlying needs ❖ Represent cognitive structures ❖ Have affective (feeling) overtones ❖ Provide a venue through which motives operate ❖ Pertain to goals and desires ❖ Ultimately reflected in actions
Press (Context)
❖ Influences motives
❖ Characterises an external event or condition
❖ Acts as trigger for motivational states
Press & Motive
PRESS: Family violence Lack of companionship Restriction & confinement Death of family member by drunk driver Illness of loved one
MOTIVE
Need for sense of safety in relationships
Desire for friendships and companionship
Desire for freedom to have many new experiences
Desire for revenge
Desire to heal
Summary of ‘need’ & ‘press’
❖ Need - an internal state of affairs that is less than satisfactory.
❖ Press - an external condition that creates a desire to obtain or avoid something /someone/ a situation
❖ Needs & press vary in strength minute-by-minute
❖ People differ in stable patterns of need intensity - these differences assumed to be the source of individual differences in personality
Murray’s theory of ‘Human Needs’
❖ Founder of the approach to the study of personality known as ‘personology’ which he defined as the study of human lives and the factors that influence their course. ❖ Developed catalogue of human needs ❖ Four most researched: 1. Achievement 2. Power 3. Affiliation 4. Intimacy
Murray’s ‘System of Needs’
❖ Emphasises universal needs
❖ Focuses on secondary (psychological) needs
❖ Recognizes differing dispositional need levels
among individuals
❖ Points out that:
• Single behaviors can satisfy multiple needs
• Needs can facilitate each other
• Needs can conflict
Need for Achievement: Part 1
❖ Tendency to seek excellence ❖ This motive underlies striving toward accomplishments or “success” in competitive endeavours ❖ Usually involves at least one of: • a standard of excellence • a unique accomplishment • long-term involvement • pleasure in overcoming obstacles
Need for Achievement: Part 2
❖ High achievement motive people - seek
opportunities of moderate difficulty to
test their abilities
❖ Gender differences find women’s scores
did not predict their behaviour as clearly
as men’s
❖ Explanations include career emphasis on
social acceptance not entrepreneurial
activity & fear of success & sex role
issues
❖ Cultural Differences
Need for Power
High need for power can include:
❖ desire to control ways of influencing others
❖ in social living - based on institutional roles, personal characteristics & physical power
• associated with patterns of friendship choice
• predicts behavior in interpersonal interactions
• manifests in less concessions in negotiations
• may be manifested differently depending on sense of responsibility
i. high responsibility = conscientious pursuit of power
ii. low responsibility = profligate, impulsive pursuit of power
Need for Affiliation
High need for affiliation:
❖ associated with more agreeableness and concern over being liked
❖ predictive of time engaged in social activities
❖ experiences most relationship satisfaction if matched with another who is high in need for affiliation
❖ attracted to careers that involve other people
❖ choose work partners on basis of friendship not ability
❖ may reflect more specific needs:
• social comparison positive stimulation
• emotional support attention from others
Need for Intimacy: Part 1
❖ motive emerged as a result of research into affiliation
❖ intimacy is a focus on the being there rather than the getting there of
affiliation seekers
❖ McAdams & collaborators (1980) define intimacy - motivation as:
“the desire to experience warm, close & communicative exchanges with another person & feel close with them”
Need for Intimacy: Part 2
❖ people high in this motive listen, laugh, smile & make more eye contact when conversing than others
❖ has been compared to secure vs insecure attachment.
❖ research indicates people high in this motive report greater life satisfaction
Personality assessment of needs & motives (1)
- Murray was a strong idiographic advocate focusing on what made a person unique & viewing nomothetic approaches focus on comparison between individuals as revealing superficial understanding only.
- Murray believed manifest motives & needs could be measured in overt actions/interviews / self-report BUT implicit or latent needs exist which may not be openly displayed or may be unknown to the person themselves.
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): Part 1
Murray devised the TAT
❖ Underlying assumptions:
• Manifest needs = needs reflected in overt behavior
• Latent needs = needs not reflected in behavior
❖ Assesses latent needs
❖ Presents an ambiguous picture
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): Part 2
❖ Provide a detailed story about picture (i.e., character’s thoughts, feelings and relationships)
❖ Latent needs are projected into the story’s content which also reflects press
❖ The process of projecting latent needs into ambiguous imagery is referred to
as apperception (i.e. the character’s feelings & thoughts, the r/ships among the characters
& the outcome of the story)
❖ Dispositional tendencies emerge over multiple pictures
Personality assessment of needs & motives (2)
❖ McClelland (1984) defined motives as “cognitions with affective overtones, organised around preferred expectancies & goals”.
❖ McClelland et al (1989) also distinguish between implicit and self-attributed motives
❖ This concept of motivation implies there are internal qualities playing a role in the activation & regulation of behaviour
❖ Motives emerge in a person’s thoughts and eventually are likely to be reflected in actions
Personality as a system of multiple needs: Part 1
❖ motives assumed to exist to a degree in every person but
actual behaviour determined by:
i. Intensity of the motives at given time
ii. Incentive value that particular activities have for a person
(different situations may have different incentive values even if
they fulfil the same need)
iii. Expectancy – the perceived likelihood of achieving one’s aims
Personality as a system of multiple needs: Part 2
❖ motivational viewpoint of personality is as an ever-changing system of multiple needs waxing & waning in intensity
❖ An additional factor which may contribute to expectancy is the presence or absence of skills needed to undertake action
Incentive Value
> . The degree to which a given behavior can satisfy a need.
❖determines how a motive expresses itself in behavior
❖ accounts for behavioral diversity
❖ relates to (conscious) choices of action within a domain
Example of ‘system of multiple needs’
Inhibited Power Motivation (IPM)
❖ low need for affiliation (want to influence people)
❖ high need for power (doesn’t worry about being
disliked)
❖ high in self-control (will follow orderly procedures and stay within framework of organisation)
Pervin (2002) divides theories of motivation into:
- Pitchfork- Drive
- Carrot- Incentive
- Cognitive
Pitchfork- Drive Theories
❖are hedonic theories of motivation pleasure pain ❖were popular in psychology until the 1950’s ❖in the 1950’s & 1960’s were criticised as it became apparent that humans not only avoid tension but often seek it out
Carrot- Incentive Theories
❖anticipate a future event
❖ emphasise an end point associated with pleasure which has the quality of an incentivepulling the person toward it
❖an end point associated with pain pulls the person in
another direction away from it
Cognitive Theories
❖ Don’t emphasise tension-reduction or
drive principles but movement toward cognitive clarity & consistency as a human motivator
❖ George Kelly, Theory of Personal
Constructs - people act like scientists seeking to make better predictions over a wider range of environmental phenomena
❖ Social/cognitive theories emphasise cognitive motivation
