Is this motive in psychology? Is motivation in psychology?

Is this motive in psychology? Is motivation in psychology? Examples of motives. Hierarchy of motives. What does a person want? Scientific experiment. Freedom to choose a motive.

Hello, friends!

Today we will consider another important component of the human mental sphere!

In our lives, we sometimes encounter difficult situations when the behavior of another person, and in some cases our own, causes bewilderment and we ask ourselves questions:

- Why did he do that?

– What motivates him?

– What are the true reasons for his behavior?

– What motivates him to behave this way?

In negotiations, the participant also asks himself similar questions in order to understand the opponent and the reasons for his actions. Such questions are relevant even in cases where the opposite party is happy to communicate the reasons for his behavior. Why? Because the opponent's answers may not reflect the true virtual reality that guides the person.

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The answers presented may be part of manipulation and a lie.

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Correct answers received to questions allow you to better understand a person and, accordingly, more effectively manage the process of mutual relationships.

Block 1. Motive. What is this?

Motive is an impulse to engage in activities that satisfy the needs and desires of an individual.
Motivation is a set of motivating factors that determine human behavior.

Motive is a motivator! The state of motivation that a person experiences can also be called ATTRACTION . A person’s own attraction is not always realized and sometimes remains “in the dark.”

The source of motivation for a person to act is a dominant need. Need is the cause of motive in most cases, but not all. Motive is the reason for activity, but not always. Activity is mainly determined by motive. Unmotivated activity occurs when the subject is not aware of his motives.

There are no specific connections between motive, need and activity.

WATCH THE VIDEO “Negotiations with the buyer. How to agree on payment?!”

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Examples

Let's look at the main motives in practice, as they can be traced in modern life, and give specific examples.

1. External motive: buying a status car, flying to another country (because it is fashionable to fly there, and not because the person himself wants it), purchasing branded clothing.
2. Internal motive: the desire to write a book, master a new profession, get an education (because the person himself wants it).
3. Motive for avoiding failure : working (avoiding dismissal), going to the gym (avoiding obesity), quit drinking or smoking (avoiding loss of health).
4. Cognitive motive: reading scientific books or articles, watching documentaries, interviewing or communicating with erudite people, specialists, independently obtaining information in practice.
5. Aesthetic motive: reading fiction, watching films, going to a museum or gallery, to the theater.

Knowledge of the patterns of motive formation allows you to stimulate activity , make it productive and long-lasting.

With the right motivation, a person can achieve maximum success at work and develop their own potential.

Types of motives and mechanism of motivation:

Block 3. Motive. Hierarchy.

1. Motives can compete with each other, which manifests itself in the problem of choice, sometimes acute and well known to everyone. Have you ever encountered a situation where you couldn’t quickly choose which T-shirt to wear on the street? And there are situations that are more complicated, this is a choice between death and the life of one’s own, a close loved one and some group of people. This is already a class of moral dilemmas.

2. In situations of choice, the motive is determined by the value category that dominates the individual in a given period of time.

3. Motives are arranged in a hierarchical order according to the degree of importance in each specific context of a life situation. One of the motives becomes the leader, the “ CONDUCTOR ”. This entire complex process occurs against the background of constant emotional accompaniment and is not always accessible to the subject’s awareness.

4. Rationalization of motives often occurs, and a rational explanation is involved. But irrationalism can dominate behavior.

5. The leading motive is the main regulator of human activity, thus giving personal meaning to actions. However, the actions of the subject do not always “shed light” on the leading motive, and therefore premature conclusions about the opponent’s motives in negotiations often represent “guessing from the tea leaves.”

6. The so-called meaning declared by the subject can be a “screen”, “veil”, “mask” hiding the true motives. A person may not be aware of the falsity of the actualized internal meaning of an action that does not coincide with the actual motive. At the same time, be in the grip of cognitive delusions. Giving internal meaning to something is a way to explain to yourself and others the reasons for your behavior. This is a way to bring rationality into your own actions.

7. A subject who is aware of his own hierarchy of motives in various contextual situations controls motives and is able to shift “leaders”, opening the way for those motives that correlate with the main value expectations of a person, forming a deep personal and transpersonal meaning.

Motives encourage meaning-supporting and meaning-forming activities.

Theories: briefly

Maslow's motivations

Based on the pyramid of needs he described.

Maslow believed that the simplest needs are primary in the hierarchy ; a person pays great attention to them.

The scientist also focused on the fact that satisfying a higher need is impossible without satisfying the previous one (a person will not be able to engage in self-development if he is hungry or is in an uncomfortable environment).

Expectations

According to this concept, the very fact of the presence of a need is not enough to form a motive . A person expects that the method he has chosen to fulfill a need is effective.

He hopes that a specific method will help him achieve his goal. Motivation theory considers the problem of a person’s choice from many alternative ways to achieve a goal. According to the theory, the more clearly a person sees a future result, the more motivated he is to obtain it.

Justice

According to it, a person compares the effort spent with the final result. And if he spent more resources than he received at the output, then discomfort arises.

Discomfort is transformed into a sense of justice. In simple words, the question arises: “Why did I work so much and get so little?”

Then the person begins to look for a way to restore justice: either deliberately make less effort (since the work will not be appreciated anyway), or demands “additional payment” for the effort (increase in salary, promotion, bonus or other status attributes).

This theory of motives is used in management and considers, first of all, the motivation of employees.

Block 4. Motive. What does a person want?

The ultimate target resource that the negotiator wants to access is the motive behind his behavior. A group of foreign authors led by Rita L. Atkinson believe that a person wants to “ eat a fish and not choke on a bone .”

A person wants to get what he wants and at the same time not bear any responsibility for the actions taken, and at the same time does not want to receive non-target results that will cause negative emotional experiences. At the same time, such an idyll would continue indefinitely, throughout his life.

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In fact, the general needs, desires, and also motives are to receive PLEASURE and avoid PAIN.

Ways to get pleasure vary greatly. A person’s desires are just objects with the help of which access to the main resource is achieved, which is a motivating factor - emotion, experience.

1. For one individual, the way to find “paradise” is to use stimulants: nicotine, alcohol, drugs, energy drinks, when dopamine and serotonin are immediately released into the synaptic cleft, and then an immediate reaction of the body follows, accompanied by pleasure.

2. In another case, sex ends with orgasm.

3. In the third, the subject runs a daily marathon or participates in an IRONMAN triathlon and thereby receives his share of the emotional charge.

4. In the fourth case, the “initiate” listens to the sonatas of the great composer on the organ in the cathedral and, along with a trembling in the body, religious bliss rolls over.

5. The fifth puts on a special wing suit and jumps in it from a kilometer-long cliff, flying one meter from the edge of a boulder.

6. The sixth person eats chocolate and cakes every day.

7. The seventh strives to gain the maximum possible POWER in the digital world of hackers in order to become like a creator and experience ecstasy.

8. The eighth cuts “his captive into straps” and finds great joy of liberation from oppressive mental discomfort.

The result in all cases is the same - RECEIVING PLEASURE, after which you really want to get pleasure again, and then again and again.

Arthur Schopenhauer years of life: February 22, 1788 - September 21, 1860 quite accurately noted:

“The same thing, finally, is noticed in human aspirations and desires: they always deceptively convince us that their existence is the final goal of the will; but as soon as we satisfy them, they lose their former appearance and therefore are soon forgotten, become antiquity for us, and we essentially always discard them as disappeared ghosts, although we do not admit it. And our happiness, if we still have something left to desire and what to strive for, in order to support the game of eternal transition from desire to satisfaction and from it to a new desire - a game, the rapid progress of which is called happiness, and the slow progress is called suffering; so that that torpor does not set in, which is expressed by a terrible, life-dead, languid boredom without a specific object, a murderous languor.”

Holistic-dynamic theory of personality by A. Maslow

Holistic-dynamic theory of personality by A. Maslow

Either you take a step forward towards personal growth, or you take a step back into safety.

Abraham Maslow's (Abram Samuilovich Maslov) personality theory has been variously called humanistic theory, transpersonal theory, the third force in psychology (the first force is psychoanalysis and its modifications. The second force is behaviorism and its modifications), the theory of needs and the theory of self-actualization. However, Maslow himself called the theory holistic-dynamic because it assumes that a person is constantly motivated by one need or another and that people have the potential to grow towards achieving full self-actualization. To achieve self-actualization, people must satisfy lower-level needs such as hunger, security, love, and esteem. Only after they have been relatively satisfied in each of these needs can they achieve self-actualization in the higher level needs.

A. Maslow criticized both psychoanalysis and behaviorism for their limited views of human nature and their inadequate understanding of the psychologically healthy person. Maslow believed that people have a higher nature than psychoanalysis or behaviorism described.

Maslow's personality theory is based on several basic assumptions:

• First, it is a holistic approach to motivation: the whole person, and not some separate part or function, is motivated.
• Second, motivation is typically complex, meaning that a person's behavior may stem from several distinct motives. For example, the desire for sexual intercourse may be motivated not only by the Freudian psychosexual genital need, but also by the need for dominance, communication, love and self-esteem. Moreover, the motivation for behavior may be unconscious or unknown to the person. For example, a college student's motivation to achieve a high grade may mask a need for dominance or power. Maslow's recognition of the importance of unconscious motivation is one important aspect. Any action, in addition to obvious and conscious motivation, may have other hidden and underlying motives.
• The third assumption is that people are constantly motivated by some need or another. When one need is satisfied, it usually loses its motivational power and is then replaced by another need. For example, as long as people's needs for food remain unsatisfied, they will strive to obtain it. But once they have enough food, they move on to satisfy higher-order needs, such as the needs for safety, friendship and self-esteem.
• The fourth assumption of the theory is that all people around the world are motivated by the same basic needs. The ways in which people in different cultures obtain food, build homes and relationships may vary widely, but basic needs such as food, safety and friendship are common to all humanity.
• A final assumption regarding motivation is that needs can be organized into a hierarchy, with basic physiological needs at the bottom and self-actualization needs at the top.

Nature of motivating needs

Maslow hypothesized that some human needs are initially determined by instincts, but can be changed through learning. Sex, for example, is primarily a physiological need as part of the reproductive instinct, but the way in which this need is expressed depends on learning.

One of the criteria for separating instinctive (instinctoid) needs from non-instinctive ones is the level of violations when they are dissatisfied. Suppression of instinctual needs leads to the development of pathology, while frustration of non-instinctoid needs does not produce such a negative effect. For example, when people are denied enough love, they get sick, just as when they lack food or a safe environment.

The second criterion for distinguishing between instinctoid and non-instinctoid needs is that instinctoid needs are persistent and their satisfaction is necessary to maintain mental health. Non-instinctoid needs, on the contrary, are usually temporary in nature, and their satisfaction is not a prerequisite for health.

The third difference is that instinctoid needs are species specific. Therefore, animal instincts cannot be used as a model for studying human motivation. For example, only a person can be motivated by self-esteem and self-actualization.

Fourth, although instinctual needs are difficult to change, they can be shaped, suppressed, or changed by environmental influences. Many instinctoid needs (for example, love) are weaker than the external forces of society (for example, aggression in the form of crime or war). Therefore, Maslow insisted that society must “protect the weak, subtle and gentle instinctual needs so that they are not suppressed by the harsher and more powerful culture.” In other words, instinctoid needs can be changed and even destroyed by more powerful forces of nature and civilization. Therefore, a healthy society must seek ways in which its members can receive satisfaction not only of physiological and safety needs, but also of love, respect, and self-actualization needs.

Lower and higher needs

Important similarities and differences exist between higher-level needs (love, esteem, self-actualization) and lower-level needs (physiological and safety). Higher needs are similar to lower ones in that they are also instinctoid. Maslow insisted that love, self-esteem and self-actualization are as biological as thirst, hunger and sex and love. The differences between higher and lower needs lie on a different plane.

First, higher level needs are found later at the phylogenetic or evolutionary level. For example, only humans (a relatively recent biological species) have the need for self-actualization. In addition, higher needs appear later in the course of individual development. Lower needs must be unconditionally met in infants and children so that they can progress to higher levels of needs.

Second, satisfying higher-order needs gives people greater feelings of happiness and more peak experiences. Peak experiences are a term coined by Maslow to describe sudden intense feelings of happiness, fullness of existence, which are often also accompanied by a feeling of unity with the world, nature, other people, works of art, awareness of some “absolute truth”, the unity of all things. Hedonic pleasure generated by the satisfaction of lower needs is usually temporary and incomparable with the quality and level of happiness experienced when higher needs are satisfied. In addition, satisfaction of a higher level of needs is more subjectively desirable for those people who have experienced both higher and lower level needs. In other words, a person who has reached the level of self-actualization will not have the motivation to return to a lower stage of development.

The concept of hierarchy of motives

Maslow's hierarchy of needs suggests that lower-level needs must be satisfied, or at least partially satisfied, before higher-level needs can become effective regulators of behavior. These needs are in a hierarchy (pyramid or ladder), where each subsequent level reflects more spiritual (higher) and less and less necessary needs for survival. For example, someone to be motivated by self-esteem or self-actualization must satisfy their needs for food and security in advance. Satisfaction of physiological needs is a priority for survival. Maslow listed the needs in order of their predominance: physiological needs, safety needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs and self-actualization needs. Maslow calculated that the hypothetical average person would have satisfaction in their needs to approximately the following levels:

• Physiological - 85%
• Safety - 70%
• Love and belonging - 50%
• Self-esteem - 40%
• Self-actualization -10%.

The more a need at a lower level is satisfied, the greater the need at the next level arises. The quantitative ratio of the expression of needs is graphically successfully displayed in the form of a layer pyramid. For example, if love needs are only 10% satisfied, then esteem needs may not appear at all. But if the needs for love are satisfied by 25%, then the need for respect can develop by 5%. If love is satisfied to 75%, then the need for respect expands to 50%, and so on. Therefore, needs arise gradually, and a person can be simultaneously motivated by needs from two or more levels.

For example, a self-actualizing creative person may be the guest of honor at a dinner given to him by close friends in a quiet, cozy restaurant. The act of eating satisfies a physiological need, but at the same time the guest of honor may be satisfied by security, love, respect and self-actualization needs.

Although the basic hierarchy of needs is the most common, sometimes 10.1, sometimes needs can be reversed. For some people, the desire for self-esteem or creativity (the need for self-actualization) may take precedence over safety and physiological needs. An enthusiastic artist may risk safety and health to complete important work. A person who considers human dignity and universal humanistic values ​​to be an absolute is capable of opposing the superior forces of totalitarian states and dictatorships, risking his safety. In some cases, the apparent inversion of the hierarchy of needs is not such, since the behavior is based on hidden motives of the basic hierarchy.

Physiological needs

The most basic needs of any person are physiological needs, including food, water, air, maintaining a constant body temperature, and so on. Physiological needs are the strongest motivators. Perpetually hungry people are motivated to get food and eat, not to make friends or gain self-esteem. When people do not have their physiological needs met, they live primarily to satisfy those needs and constantly strive to satisfy them. Starving people become preoccupied with food and will do almost anything to get it.

Physiological needs differ from other needs in at least two important respects:

First, these are the only needs that can be fully satisfied or even over-satisfied. People can become so full that food completely loses its motivational power. For someone who has just eaten too much, the thought of eating more can even have a nauseating effect.

The second characteristic characteristic of physiological needs is their recurrent nature. After people have eaten, they will eventually become hungry. Also, people constantly need to replenish their supplies of food and water, and after the deepest breath they will have to take more and more breaths. Higher level needs do not need to be constantly satisfied. For example, people who have at least partially satisfied their needs for love and respect will normally remain confident that they can satisfy these needs.

Need for security

When people partially satisfy their physiological needs, they become motivated to ensure their safety, including physical safety, stability, independence, and freedom from threatening forces such as war, terrorism, disease, fear, anxiety, danger, chaos, and natural disasters. The needs for law, order and regulation are also security needs.

Safety needs differ from physiological needs in that they cannot be oversatisfied. People can never be completely protected from the dangerous actions of others and emergency situations. In democratic societies not subject to war or sociopolitical upheaval, most healthy adults can easily satisfy their security needs, so that over time they become relatively unimportant. However, children in any society are almost constantly motivated by security needs, because for them there are many subjective and objective threats: darkness, animals, strangers and punishment from parents. Additionally, some adults also feel relatively insecure because they retain irrational fears from childhood that cause them to act as if they are still afraid of parental punishment. This condition is determined by acquired basic anxiety, which develops due to an unmet need for safety in childhood.

Needs for love and belonging

After people partially satisfy their physiological and safety needs, they become able to be motivated by such needs as the desire for friendship and love, the desire to get married and have children, and the need to belong to a family, club, community or nation. Love and belonging also include some aspects of sex and affection, as well as the need to both give and receive love. People who have had their needs for love and belonging adequately met from an early age do not experience fear or anxiety when they are denied love or friendship. Such people are confident that they are unconditionally accepted by those who are important to them, so when other people reject them they do not feel empty. See an example of how the needs for love and acceptance manifest themselves in the psychological analysis of the dialogue between the Little Prince and the Fox.

Another group of people consists of those who have never experienced love and a sense of belonging, and therefore are not capable of giving love themselves. As children, such people were never hugged or expressed their love in words. Maslow believed that these people over time devalue the meaning of love and take its absence for granted.

The third category includes those people who have received only a little love and community. Such people know the taste of love and will be highly motivated to find it. In other words, people who received only a small amount of love have a stronger need for affection and acceptance by others than people who received either a fair amount of love in childhood or no love at all.

Children need love in order to grow psychologically, and their attempts to satisfy this need are usually straightforward and spontaneous. Adults also need love, but their attempts to achieve it are often skillfully disguised. Adults may engage in self-destructive behavior by pretending to be aloof, cynical, cold, or rude in interpersonal relationships. They give the appearance of self-sufficiency and independence, but in reality they have a strong need to be accepted and loved by other people.

Other adults, whose need for love remains largely unmet, may take too obvious steps, putting too much effort into “catching love”, thereby undermining their own success. Their constant pleas for acceptance and obsessive attachment make others wary, unfriendly, and cause them to distance themselves from such a person.

Esteem needs

To the extent that people satisfy their needs for love and belonging, they become able to pursue the fulfillment of esteem needs, which include self-esteem, self-esteem, competence, and the knowledge that others value them highly. Maslow identified two levels of esteem needs: reputation and self-esteem. Reputation is how the world perceives a person, the level of prestige, recognition or fame that a person has achieved in the eyes of others. Self-esteem is a person's sense of self-worth and self-confidence. Self-esteem reflects a person's desire for achievement, mastery and competence, confidence in the face of society, and the desire for independence and freedom. In other words, self-esteem is based on a person's actual competence, and not just on others' opinions of him. Sooner or later, people achieve the desired level of self-esteem and find themselves on the threshold of the highest need - self-actualization.

Self-actualization needs

When lower level needs are satisfied, people move more or less automatically to the next higher level. However, after the needs for respect are satisfied, people do not always move to the level of self-actualization - there are no more than 10% of such people in the population. Only people who share such values ​​as absolute values ​​such as truth, beauty, justice and other values ​​of a higher spiritual order move to self-actualization. People who do not share these values ​​do not move to the level of self-actualization, even if all their other needs are satisfied. In addition to the blocks at the previous stages of satisfying needs, Maslow identified the Jonah complex as a significant internal resistance to its full realization. The Jonah complex is characterized by attempts to escape from one's destiny just like the biblical Jonah. The Jonah complex, which is found in almost every person, represents the fear of success, the fear of being the best, and the fear of being in awe of beauty and perfection.

Self-realization must include the realization of the individual's potential, and the desire to become a creative person in the full sense of the word. People who have reached the level of self-actualization become real people in the full sense of the word, capable of satisfying spiritual needs of a higher order that other people do not experience and will never experience. Self-actualized people are natural in life in the same sense in which animals and babies are natural in the world. They are able to express their basic human needs and do not allow other people to suppress them. Self-actualizing people retain their sense of self-worth even when they are despised or rejected by others. In other words, self-actualizers do not depend on the satisfaction of love or esteem needs. Such people become independent of lower-level needs.

Criteria for self-actualized individuals

First, self-actualized people are free from psychopathology. They are neither neurotic nor psychopathic, and do not have mental disorders. This is a very important criterion because some neurotic and psychotic individuals may have experiences and experiences that are superficially similar to the peak states of self-actualized individuals: a heightened sense of reality, mystical experiences, creativity, and detachment from other people. Maslow excluded from the list of possible self-actualizing people anyone who showed clear signs of psychopathology - with the exception of some psychosomatic diseases.

Secondly, self-actualizing people have moved up the hierarchical ladder of development of needs, and therefore live above the usual subsistence level of existence and have no threats to their safety. In addition, they have experienced love and have a well-developed sense of self-esteem. Because they have lower-level needs satisfied, self-actualizing people are better able to tolerate the deprivation and disappointment of satisfying lower-level needs, even in the face of criticism, contempt, and danger. They are able to love a wide variety of people, but do not feel obligated to love everyone.

Maslow's third criterion for self-actualization is the adoption of higher spiritual values. Only people who share them are able to become self-actualized. Among the population of developed democratic states, such people make up no more than 1% of the population. They must share and incorporate the highest “B-values”: truth, goodness, beauty, integrity or transcendence, naturalness or spontaneity, uniqueness, perfection, completeness, justice and order, simplicity, completeness, ease, playfulness or humor, self-sufficiency or autonomy.

Self-actualized people are:

• More effective perception, analysis and assessment of the surrounding reality.
• Accepting yourself, others and the world around as they are.
• Spontaneity, simplicity and naturalness.
• Problem-centeredness as opposed to egocentredness.
• The need for privacy with the ability not to be alone with oneself.
• Autonomy and knowing your worth.
• Sincerity of gratitude.
• The ability to experience peak emotional states.
• A sense of community and unity with humanity.
• The depth of personal relationships.
• Democratic views and behavior.
• Ability to differentiate between means and ends.
• Philosophical views.
• A friendly (not hostile) sense of humor.
• Creativity.
• Resistance to inculturation (imposition of cultural values ​​from the outside).
• The ability to “give” love, the special depth of intimate relationships.

The fourth criterion for achieving self-actualization is “full use and exploitation of talents, abilities, potentialities, etc.” In other words, his self-actualizing personalities fully satisfy their needs for growth and constant development in order to become what they are capable of becoming.

To assess the values ​​and behavior of self-actualized people, there is a Personal Orientation Inventory (POI) questionnaire [E. Shostrom, 1974].

Additional needs

In addition to the basic five needs, Maslow identified three more categories of needs: aesthetic, cognitive and neurotic. Satisfaction of aesthetic and cognitive needs ensures psychological well-being, while deprivation of these needs leads to the development of maladjustment or mental pathology. Formed neurotic needs lead to disruption of mental functioning, regardless of whether they are satisfied or not.

Aesthetic needs

Aesthetic needs are not universal, but at least some people in every culture are motivated by the need for beauty and the experience of aesthetic pleasure. From the time of cave dwellers to the present day, people have created art for art's sake. People with strong aesthetic needs desire a beautiful and orderly environment, and when these needs are not satisfied, they suffer in the same way as people who suffer if their basic conative needs are not satisfied. People prefer beauty to ugliness, and they may even become physically and spiritually ill when forced to live in squalid, disorderly surroundings.

Cognitive (cognitive) needs

Most people have a need to gain knowledge and information, solve mysteries, understand phenomena, and be curious. Maslow called these desires cognitive needs. When they are blocked, all the needs in Maslow's hierarchy are compromised, since cognitive abilities are required to satisfy each of the five basic conative needs. People can satisfy their physiological needs only by knowing how to get food, safety needs by knowing how to build a shelter, love needs knowing how to treat people, respect needs knowing how to gain some level of self-confidence, and self-actualization requires complete cognitive resource.

Maslow believed that healthy people want to know more in order to theorize, test hypotheses, solve mysteries, or figure out how something happens. However, people whose cognitive needs were not satisfied, who were constantly lied to, whose curiosity was suppressed, whose access to reliable information was limited, acquire certain personality deformations, which manifest themselves in distrust, skepticism, pessimism and cynicism.

Neurotic Needs

Satisfying conative, aesthetic and cognitive needs is the basis for healthy physical and mental development of a person. Unsatisfied needs lead to the formation of pathology, both at the physical and mental levels. The presence of neurotic needs in a person only leads to stagnation in development and the development of pathology. By definition, neurotic needs are counterproductive. They capture an unhealthy image and lifestyle, have no adaptive function and undermine the healthy desire for self-actualization. Neurotic needs are usually reactive, that is, they appear and serve as compensation when basic needs are not satisfied. For example, a person who does not have their security needs met may develop a strong desire to hoard money or possessions to protect themselves. The accumulative instinct is a neurotic need that leads to pathology, whether it is satisfied or not. Likewise, a neurotic with unmet needs for safety, love and affection may strive to form a close relationship with another person, but these relationships may be neurotic, consumerist, which will not lead to true love. A neurotic person either needs to have their needs met or to be disappointed in them (for example, people who want to be convinced that love or friendship does not exist, or that a psychologist cannot help them).

Unmet needs

Failure to satisfy any of the basic needs leads to one or another type of pathology. Deprivation of food leads to malnutrition, fatigue, and loss of energy. Threats to one's own safety lead to fear, uncertainty and terror. When love needs go unmet, a person becomes defensive, overly aggressive, or socially timid. Lack of self-esteem leads to painful self-doubt and self-abasement. Deprivation of opportunities for self-actualization also leads to pathology, or more precisely, metapathology: lack of values, lack of self-realization and loss of meaning in life

Unmotivated behavior

Maslow believed that some behaviors are not motivated. There are expressive behaviors that are caused by other factors, such as conditioned reflexes, maturation, or exposure to psychoactive substances (drugs, alcohol).

Expressive and coping behavior

Expressive behavior, which is often unmotivated, differs from coping behavior, which is always motivated and aimed at satisfying an actual need.

Expressive behavior is often an end in itself and serves no other purpose. This is often an unconscious behavior that occurs naturally and without much effort. It has no purpose, but is simply a way of expressing personality. Expressive behavior includes actions such as slouching, looking stupid, relaxed, angry, or happy. Expressive behavior may continue even in the absence of reinforcement or reward. For example, a frown, blush, or sparkle in the eyes is usually not specifically reinforced. Expressive behavior also includes gait, gestures, voice intonation and smiles. A person, for example, may exhibit compulsive behavior simply because he is an obsessive-compulsive personality, and not because he needs to (although this possibility cannot be completely ruled out). Other examples of expressive behavior include art, play, enjoyment, appreciation, surprise, awe, and excitement. Expressive behavior usually does not require training, occurs spontaneously, and is determined by conditions within the person rather than by the environment.

Coping behavior is usually conscious, requires effort, learning, and is determined by the external environment. It involves the individual's attempts to cope with the environment, provide food and shelter, make friends and be accepted, and establish self-respect. Coping behavior serves some purpose or task (although not always conscious or known to the person himself), and it is always motivated by some kind of deficit need.

Use in psychotherapy

According to Maslow, the goal of therapy is for clients to accept the values ​​of being, that is, they begin to value truth, justice, kindness, simplicity, and so on. To achieve this goal, clients must be freed from their dependence on others so that their natural impulse for growth and self-actualization can become active, since every person has an innate tendency to strive for the best, for a positive fullness of life and feelings.

Intervention goals stem from the client's position in the hierarchy of needs. If a person is dominated by lower physiological and safety needs, then such people will usually not be motivated to work with a psychologist in order to move towards higher life goals. Instead, they will seek food and protection. Most people who seek therapy have their lower needs met but have some difficulty achieving love and belonging. Therefore, psychotherapy, according to Maslow, is largely an interpersonal process. Through warm, loving, interpersonal communication in the relationship with the psychologist, the client receives the satisfaction of the need for love and belonging, thereby moving towards gaining a sense of confidence and self-esteem. Therefore, a healthy interpersonal relationship between client and psychologist is itself a significant therapeutic factor. Finding acceptance by others gives clients a sense of becoming worthy of love, which facilitates their ability to form other healthy relationships outside of therapy. This view of psychotherapy is almost identical to that of Carl Rogers.

Literature

Psychology.Theories of Personality, Seventh Edition. McGraw−Hill Primis, 2008

Andrey Demkin

Block 5. Motive. Scientific experiment.

In an experiment with a laboratory rat, the pleasure center was discovered in 1954 by James Olds and Peter Milner in the limbic system.

(Olds J., Milner P., Positive reinforcement produced by electrical stimulation of the septal area and other regions of the rat brain, "Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology", 1954, Vol. 47, pp. 419–427.)

The rats pressed a pedal connected to a mechanism that closed the current in electrodes implanted in the brain. As a result, the rat refused food, sleep, sex and constantly, every second, pressed the pedal, bringing itself to exhaustion, exhaustion, convulsions, but without parting with the pedal. The experimenters had to literally save the lives of the rats by interrupting the flow of current to the electrodes. And only after the stimulation stopped, the rat had difficulty returning to its normal life activities. At the same time, there are centers of displeasure in the hypothalamus, when irritated, the rats jumped away sharply and categorically did not approach the “bad” pedal.

Block 6. Motive. Pleasure and Pain.

In the case of a person, access to a “good pedal” is the realization of a desire, which is a dream, “heaven” on earth, while access to a “bad pedal” causes horror and pain, becoming “hell” on earth. And only regular feedback from conditionally objective reality reminds that the subject has a responsibility to other people for gaining access to pleasures and not gaining access to displeasures. This to some extent interrupts the rigid focus on obtaining “heaven” and avoiding “hell.”

The article “Is it social addiction? Stanley Milgram experiments."

In negotiations, the participant strives to obtain the target result, and as a reward - a positive emotional experience.

Article “Emotions, what are they? Classification of emotions in psychology."

At the same time, the subject wants to look good, like a moral, ethically correct person who does not violate the boundaries of what is permitted, as he subjectively understands this. Also, the individual does not at all want to receive a non-target result, when someone is angry with him, he experiences anger. This is fraught with the possibility that they may take revenge and offend you next time. And this is already displeasure.

Article “Game theory for dummies. Is this a human behavior strategy?

The combination of two oppositely directed vectors, movement towards pleasure and movement from pain, are the final target resources - human motives.

Intermediate desires are only determined by the quantity and quality of the objects “butter and toadstool in the basket of life.” It’s good that there are more “toadstools” than “toadstools,” but one “toadstool” can actually interrupt life itself, so an even more important factor is the quality of intermediate desires - results. At the same time, we should not forget that one “oil can” before death can look like the final happy result of a whole life, while in the basket there were only “toadstools”. And one “toadstool” can ruin the entire “oil” harvest, since “a fly in the ointment will spoil a barrel of honey.”

Personal stability to “hell” and “heaven”, i.e. the ability to consciously control your key motives allows you to balance between “Scylla” and “Charybdis”.

However, neither of the two vectors is a truly free choice, but only determines behavior, actually providing a false choice as a manifestation of the illusion of freedom.

Order the service “Negotiations – Mediation.”

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Methods for studying and diagnosing motivation

Let us briefly outline the most popular methods for studying and diagnosing motivation:

1. Q-sort by F. Stefanson . The test is suitable for studying human behavior in a group. The technique reveals the severity of six main motives: dependence, independence, sociability, unsociability, acceptance of the “struggle,” avoidance of the “struggle.” The essence of the test is that the subject needs to distribute a list of statements about himself for consistency: from “completely true” to “completely false.”
2. Test of humorous phrases by A.G. Shmeleva and A.S. Babina . This is a projective test. The subject is asked to distribute the aphorisms into groups and give a name to each group. This will be a motivational portrait of the individual. And the number of cards in each group shows how dominant each of the motives is.
3. List of personal preferences of A. Edwards . The test taker needs to choose one statement from a pair. There are several pairs in total. The result is a hierarchy of motives.

There are tests to determine group motivation, motivation for success and failure, the hierarchy of motives and needs, the study of educational motivation and many others. In general, questionnaires, personality questionnaires and projective techniques are used to diagnose motivation. Motivation of certain types of activities, its experimental studies

There are several theories regarding the motivation of activities. Let's look at the most popular one.

S. L. Rubinshtein identified the following types of activities and motivation: • play, • work, • educational, • creative.

Among the motives of gaming activity one can highlight: • the desire for pleasure (S. Freud, C. Jung); • the desire to “be like an adult” (A. N. Leontiev, L. S. Vygotsky, D. B. Elkonin).

Theories regarding work motivation: • the more people are satisfied with their work, the better and more willingly they perform it, it is important to encourage workers (V. Vroom and E. Deasy); • all people are lazy, you need to intimidate them, force them to work, but at the same time, work in itself can bring satisfaction, it is as natural as playing or relaxing (D. McGregor); • for women, relationships within the team are more important, for men the importance of work is more important (V.A. Yadov and A.G. Zdravomyslov).

Experimental studies of educational motivation can be divided into groups:

1. Motivation of first graders. It is the attendance at school itself that is attractive, not the learning (L.I. Bozhovich).
2. Motivation of younger preschoolers. Motivation predominates due to a sense of duty (I.M. Verenikina). Sometimes social motivation is noticeable, that is, the desire to please mom, dad, teacher (M.V. Matyukhina).
3. Motivating middle school students. Interest in a specific subject prevails. At the same time, there is a noticeable motive to earn one’s place among one’s peers (L.I. Bozhovich).
4. Motivation of high school students. The main motive is preparation for further education (V.L. Muntyan).
5. Motivation of students. Motivation is associated with the desire to get a prestigious job, as well as with an interest in a fun student life. Interest in studying is rare; more often the desire to get “crusts” is noticeable (A.N. Pechnikov and G.A. Mukhina).

All that remains is to consider creative activity. Its main motive is the need for self-realization, self-actualization, self-expression and self-improvement. As a rule, a true creator is not interested in the material side of the issue or the recognition of his works by society. Although the latter would be a nice bonus.