Motives and Personality

Chapter 11
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Introduction

Motivational psychologists ask, What drives
people to do the things they do?
They search for motives that propel people to
do what they do
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Introduction

Motives covered in this chapter view personality
as consisting of a few general motives
These motives operate through conscious or
unconscious mental processes that generate
intrapsychic influence on behavior
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Basic Concepts

Motive: Internal state that arouses and directs
behavior toward a specific object or goal
Motive is caused by a deficit, a lack of
something
Motives differ from each other in type and
amount
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Basic Concepts

Motives are based on needs: States of tension
within a person, and as need is satisfied, tension
is reduced
Motives propel people to perceive, think, and
act in ways that serve to satisfy a need
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Basic Concepts

Motives are part of the Intrapsychic Domain for
several reasons
Motivational psychologists stress the
importance of internal psychological needs
and urges that propel people to think,
perceive, and act in predictable ways
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Basic Concepts

Motives are part of the Intrapsychic Domain for
several reasons
Some motives are thought to operate outside
awareness
Reliance on projective techniques
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Henry Murrays Theory of Needs

Need refers to a readiness to respond in a
certain way under certain circumstancesIt is a
noun, which stands for the fact that a certain
trend is apt to recur
Needs organize perception, guiding us to see
what we want (need) to see
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Henry Murrays Theory of Needs

Needs organize action by compelling a person to
do what is necessary to satisfy a need
Needs refer to states of tension, and satisfying a
need reduces tension
Process of reducing tension that is satisfying and
not a tensionless state per se
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Henry Murrays Theory of Needs

Murray proposed a list of fundamental human
needs
Each need is associated with a specific desire or
intention, particular set of emotions, specific
action tendencies, and can be described with
trait names
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Henry Murrays Theory of Needs

Each person has a unique hierarchy of needs
individuals needs can be thought of as existing
at a different level of strength

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Henry Murrays Theory of Needs

High levels of some needs interacted with the
amounts of various other needs within each
personinteraction makes the motive concept
dynamic
Elements in the environment affect a persons
needs
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Henry Murrays Theory of Needs

Press: Need-relevant aspects of the environment
Alpha press: Objective reality
Beta press: Perceived reality
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Apperception: Act of interpreting
and perceiving meaning in the
environment
Thematic Apperception Technique (TAT):
Ambiguous pictures presented to a participant
for interpretation
Presumption that a person projects current
needs into the interpretation of a picture
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TAT and Questionnaire Measures of
Motives: Do They Measure Different
Aspects of Motives?

McClelland argues that responses to TAT and
questionnaire measures are not correlated
because they measure two different types of
motivation
TAT measures implicit motivation
unconscious desires, aspirations, and needs
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TAT and Questionnaire Measures of
Motives: Do They Measure Different
Aspects of Motives?

Questionnaires measure explicit or self-
attributed motivationreflect a persons self-
awareness of conscious motives
Implicit motives better predict long-term
behavioral trends over time
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TAT and Questionnaire Measures of
Motives: Do They Measure Different
Aspects of Motives?

Explicit motives better predict responses to
immediate, specific situations and to choice
behaviors and attitudes
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The Big Three Motives

Need for Achievement
Need for Power
Need for Intimacy
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Need for Achievement

People who have a high need for achievement:
Prefer activities that offer some, but not too
much, challenge
Enjoy tasks where they are personally
responsible for the outcome
Prefer tasks where feedback on their
performance is available
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Need for Achievement

Sex differences: Life outcomes and childhood
experiences
Promoting achievement motivation:
Independence training and setting challenging
standards for children
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Need for Power

Readiness or preference for having an impact on
people
People with a high need for power are interested
in controlling situations and controlling others
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Need for Power

Sex differences: Largest is that men but not
women with high need for power perform a
variety of impulsive and aggressive behaviors
Profligate impulsive behaviors (drinking,
aggression, sexual exploitation) is less likely to
occur if a person has responsibility training
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Need for Power

People with a high need for power do not deal
well with frustration and conflictshow strong
stress responses, including high blood pressure
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Need for Intimacy

Recurrent preference for or readiness for warm,
close, communicative interactions with others
People with a high (compared to those with low)
need for intimacy:
Spend more time during day thinking about
relationships
Report more pleasant emotions when around
other people
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Need for Intimacy

People with a high (compared to those with low)
need for intimacy:
Smile, laugh, make more eye contact
Start up conversations more frequently and write
more letters
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Need for Intimacy

Consistent sex difference: Women, on average,
have a higher need for intimacy
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Humanistic Tradition: The Motive to
Self-Actualize

Emphasis is on the conscious awareness of
needs and choice and personal responsibility
Approach is a counter-response to
psychoanalytic and behavioral traditions, both of
which are held that people have little free will in
determining their actions
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Humanistic Tradition: The Motive to
Self-Actualize

Emphasis is on the human need for growth and
realizing ones full potential
Human nature is positive and life-affirming
Focus on growth instead of deficiency
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Maslows Contributions

Hierarchy of needs
Lower needs must be satisfied before we can
proceed to higher needs
Need hierarchy emerges during development,
with lower needs emerging earlier in life than
higher needs
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Maslows Contributions

Hierarchy of needs:
Physiological
Safety
Belongingness
Esteem
Self-actualization
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Maslows Contributions

Characteristics of self-actualizing persons: 15
characteristics, including spontaneous, problem
centered, affinity for solitude, democratic values,
and creativity
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Rogerss Contributions

Focused on ways to foster and attain self-
actualization
Fully functioning person: Person who is en
route toward self-actualization
All children are born with a need for positive
regard
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Rogerss Contributions

Many parents and significant others place
conditions of worth on when one will receive
positive regard-conditional positive regard
Key to development of unconditional positive
self-regard and moving toward self-actualization
is the receipt of unconditional positive regard
from parents and significant others
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Rogerss Contributions

Anxiety results when people get off track in
pursuit of self-actualization
Rogers approach to therapy (Client-Centered
Therapy) is designed to get a person back on
path toward self-actualization
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Rogerss Contributions

Three conditions for therapeutic progress:
Must be an atmosphere of genuine acceptance of
the client by the therapist
Therapist must express unconditional positive
regard for the client
Empathic understandingclient must feel that
the therapist understands him or her
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Summary and Evaluation

Motives can be used to explain why people do
what they do
Motive explanations imply a goal that pulls
people to think, act and feel in certain ways.
The motivational approach has a long and
fruitful history of helping us understand why
people do what they do