Motivation: Instincts, Needs, Drives, Arousal, Incentives and the Motivational Cycle; Psychoanalytic, Ethological, S–R, Cognitive and Humanistic Approaches; Curiosity, Zuckerman's Sensation Seeking, Achievement, Affiliation and Power, Motivational Competence, Self-Regulation and Flow
2. Approaches to the study of motivation
| Approach | Account |
|---|---|
| Psychoanalytic | Behaviour is driven by unconscious instinctual energies — the life instincts (Eros, libido) and, after 1920, the death instinct (Thanatos) — whose expression is shaped by defences. |
| Ethological | Lorenz and Tinbergen: fixed action patterns triggered by sign stimuli (releasers) through an innate releasing mechanism; Lorenz's hydraulic model of accumulating action-specific energy, with vacuum activity when it overflows; imprinting in a critical period. |
| S–R | Hull's drive reduction and habit, Spence's incentive motivation (K), and acquired drives such as conditioned fear (Miller, Mowrer). |
| Cognitive | Behaviour follows expectations and interpretations: Tolman's expectancies; Atkinson's expectancy × value; Vroom's valence–instrumentality–expectancy theory; Weiner's attribution theory (locus, stability, controllability); Festinger's dissonance; and Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory — intrinsic motivation rests on autonomy, competence and relatedness, and expected external rewards can undermine it (the overjustification effect; Lepper, Greene and Nisbett, 1973). |
| Humanistic | Maslow's hierarchy of needs (physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, self-actualisation), deficiency versus growth motives; Rogers's actualising tendency; Alderfer's ERG theory (existence, relatedness, growth). |
3. Exploratory behaviour, curiosity and sensation seeking
Drive-reduction theory could not explain why well-fed animals explore. Harlow's monkeys solved mechanical puzzles with no reward (a manipulation motive); Butler's monkeys (1953) worked just to open a window and look out; and volunteers in Bexton, Heron and Scott's sensory-deprivation study (1954) could not bear more than a few days of reduced stimulation. Daniel Berlyne explained curiosity by collative variables — novelty, complexity, surprise and incongruity — that raise arousal; he distinguished specific exploration (reducing uncertainty about a particular object) from diversive exploration (seeking stimulation to relieve boredom), and perceptual from epistemic (knowledge-seeking) curiosity.
| Subscale | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Thrill and Adventure Seeking (TAS) | Desire for physically risky, exciting activities — skydiving, mountaineering, fast driving |
| Experience Seeking (ES) | Seeking novel sensations through the mind and senses — travel, art, music, an unconventional lifestyle |
| Disinhibition (Dis) | Seeking stimulation through social activities — parties, social drinking, variety in partners |
| Boredom Susceptibility (BS) | Aversion to repetition, routine and dull people; restlessness when things are unchanging |
Marvin Zuckerman defined sensation seeking as the seeking of varied, novel, complex and intense sensations and experiences, and the willingness to take physical, social, legal and financial risks for them. High sensation seekers show low levels of the enzyme monoamine oxidase, strong orienting responses and an "augmenting" pattern of evoked potentials; the trait peaks in late adolescence, is higher in men, and is linked to risky driving, substance use and preference for stimulating occupations.
5. Self-regulation and flow
- Bandura's self-regulation: self-observation, judgement against personal standards, and self-reaction (self-reward or self-criticism), all resting on self-efficacy.
- Carver and Scheier's control theory: behaviour is regulated by feedback loops that compare the present state with a goal and act to reduce the discrepancy (the TOTE unit — test, operate, test, exit).
- Zimmerman's self-regulated learning: forethought, performance and self-reflection phases; Higgins's regulatory focus: a promotion focus on gains and ideals versus a prevention focus on safety and duties; Mischel's delay of gratification; and Baumeister's strength model of self-control, whose "ego depletion" findings have proved hard to replicate.
Flow (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1990) is the state of complete absorption in an activity done for its own sake. It occurs when both challenge and skill are high and in balance, and is marked by clear goals, immediate feedback, deep concentration, a sense of control, the loss of self-consciousness, an altered sense of time and an autotelic (intrinsically rewarding) quality. When challenge exceeds skill the result is anxiety; when skill exceeds challenge, boredom (or relaxation); when both are low, apathy.
Key takeaways
- Needs push and incentives pull; the motivational cycle runs need → drive → goal-directed behaviour → goal → relief; the Yerkes–Dodson law gives an inverted U with a lower optimum for difficult tasks.
- Motivation is explained by unconscious instincts, ethological releasers and fixed action patterns, S–R drive reduction, cognitive expectancies, attributions and self-determination, and humanistic hierarchies.
- Berlyne's collative variables explain curiosity; Zuckerman's scale has four subscales — thrill and adventure seeking, experience seeking, disinhibition and boredom susceptibility.
- McClelland scored nAch, nAff and nPow from TAT stories; Atkinson's Ts = Ms × Ps × (1 − Ps) makes intermediate difficulty most attractive to achievers; White's effectance motivation grounds competence.
- Self-regulation is modelled by Bandura, Carver and Scheier, Zimmerman and Higgins; flow arises when high challenge meets high skill.
Practice questions (10)
Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.
Which of the following are subscales of Zuckerman's Sensation Seeking Scale (Form V)? Select all that apply.
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Answer: A — Boredom susceptibility; C — Thrill and adventure seeking
The four subscales are thrill and adventure seeking, experience seeking, disinhibition and boredom susceptibility. Need for affiliation is McClelland's and effectance motivation is White's.In Atkinson's model, a person has a motive for success Ms = 2 and judges the probability of success on a task to be Ps = 0.3. With Is = 1 − Ps, what is the tendency to approach success, Ts = Ms × Ps × Is? Type a number.
Numerical answer — type the value.
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Answer: 0.42
Is = 1 − 0.3 = 0.7, so Ts = 2 × 0.3 × 0.7 = 0.42. The product Ps × (1 − Ps) peaks at Ps = 0.5, which is why achievement-motivated people prefer moderately difficult tasks.According to the Yerkes–Dodson law, as a task becomes more difficult the optimal level of arousal:
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Answer: B — Becomes lower
Performance follows an inverted U with arousal, and the peak shifts to lower arousal for complex or difficult tasks; simple, well-learned tasks benefit from higher arousal.Children who were promised a reward for drawing later spent less free time drawing than children who received no reward (Lepper, Greene and Nisbett, 1973). This is called:
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Answer: C — The overjustification effect
An expected external reward led children to attribute their drawing to the reward rather than to interest, undermining intrinsic motivation — a finding central to self-determination theory.In the ethological approach, a specific stimulus that triggers a fixed action pattern — such as the red belly of a rival male stickleback — is called a:
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Answer: D — Sign stimulus (releaser)
Tinbergen showed that crude models with a red underside elicited attack from male sticklebacks while realistic models without red did not; the red is a sign stimulus acting through an innate releasing mechanism.According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is most likely when:
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Answer: A — Both challenge and skill are high and balanced
Flow sits where high challenge meets matching high skill. High challenge with low skill produces anxiety, high skill with low challenge boredom, and both low apathy.Robert White's concept of effectance motivation (1959) proposes that organisms:
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Answer: D — Have an intrinsic need to interact effectively with and have an effect on their environment
White argued that play, exploration and mastery reflect a motive for competence — effectance — that does not depend on reducing a biological drive, which is why his paper is the source of "motivational competence".Assertion (A): People high in achievement motivation tend to choose tasks of intermediate difficulty. Reason (R): In Atkinson's model the incentive value of success is 1 − Ps, so the product of probability and incentive is greatest when success is about equally likely as failure. Choose the correct option.
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Answer: A — Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
Both are true and R explains A: Ps × (1 − Ps) peaks at Ps = 0.5, so a person dominated by the motive to succeed gains most from moderately difficult tasks.Which of the following are collative variables that Berlyne linked to curiosity? Select all that apply.
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Answer: A — Incongruity; C — Novelty; D — Complexity
Berlyne's collative variables — novelty, complexity, surprise and incongruity — involve comparing stimuli and raise arousal, prompting exploration. Satiation reduces motivation rather than provoking curiosity.The correct sequence of the motivational cycle is:
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Answer: B — Need → drive → goal-directed behaviour → goal → relief
A need gives rise to a drive, which energises instrumental behaviour toward a goal; reaching the goal reduces the need and brings relief until the need recurs.
4. Achievement, affiliation and power; motivational competence
David McClelland, building on Murray, measured three social motives by scoring TAT stories: the need for achievement (nAch — to excel against a standard), the need for affiliation (nAff — to establish warm relationships) and the need for power (nPow — to influence others). The Achieving Society (1961) linked a society's achievement imagery to its economic growth, and his training programmes raised entrepreneurial activity, including among businessmen in Kakinada. Effective managers often show the "leadership motive pattern" — high power, lower affiliation and high self-control.
John Atkinson's risk-taking model (1957) states that the tendency to approach success is Ts = Ms × Ps × Is, where Ms is the motive for success, Ps the subjective probability of success and Is the incentive value of success, with Is = 1 − Ps (easy tasks bring little pride). Because Ps × (1 − Ps) is largest when Ps = 0.5, people high in achievement motivation prefer tasks of intermediate difficulty, whereas those dominated by the motive to avoid failure choose very easy or very hard tasks. Worked: with Ms = 2 and Ps = 0.3, Ts = 2 × 0.3 × 0.7 = 0.42; at Ps = 0.5 it would be 2 × 0.25 = 0.5.
Motivational competence: Robert White's "Motivation reconsidered: the concept of competence" (1959) argued that organisms have an intrinsic effectance motivation — a need to interact effectively with the environment and produce effects on it — which explains play, exploration and mastery without any drive being reduced. Susan Harter developed this into competence motivation in children, and self-determination theory made competence one of three basic psychological needs.