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In: Psychology

How would a behaviorist explain motivation? How would a cognitivist explain motivation? Here is a more...

How would a behaviorist explain motivation? How would a cognitivist explain motivation? Here is a more difficult one: how would a freudian explain motivation?

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Expert Solution

  • The behavioristic approach examines how motives are learned and how internal drives and external goals interact with learning to produce behaviour.Behaviorists, such as Skinner, define motivation in terms multiple usage of positive and negative reinforcement, or as Skinner likes to call it Operant Conditionning. Behaviorists also believe that motivation is biological. Meaning we are all born with no motivation whatsoever, and thus, we need these reinforcements to be able to function or to create motivation.
  • One area within the study of human motivation that has proved fruitful is research on incentives. Incentive motivation is concerned with the way goals influence behaviour. For example, a person might be willing to travel across the city to dine at a special restaurant that served a favourite dish.
  • In his theory, Hull used the term drive to refer to the state of tension or arousal caused by biological or physiological needs. Thirst, hunger, and the need for warmth are all examples of drives. A drive creates an unpleasant state, a tension that needs to be reduced.In order to reduce this state of tension, humans and animals seek out ways to fulfill these biological needs.The reduction of the drive acts as a reinforcement for that behavior. This reinforcement increases the likelihood that the same behavior will occur again in the future when the same need arises. In order to survive in its environment, an organism must behave in ways that meet these survival needs.
  • One cognitive approach to motivation give by Vroom, called expectancy?value theory, stresses that the probability of occurrence of behavior depends upon individuals' perception of the value of a goal as well as their expectation of reaching it. People who expect to succeed at obtaining a goal and to whom the attainment of the goal is quite important, are more highly motivated to engage in actions that will ascertain attainment of the goal.
  • Another cognitive theory of motivation, the Goal-Setting Theory was proposed by Edwin Locke. The theory explains that goal setting has an influence on task performance. Specific and challenging goals are more likely to motivate a person and lead to a better execution of tasks, whereas vague and easy goals may result to poor task performance. In application, therefore, the goals should be set must be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-Bound.
  • Freudian motivation theory posits that unconscious psychological forces, such as desires and emotions, shape an individual's behavior. Unconscious motivation plays a prominent role in Sigmund Freud's theories of human behavior. According to Freud and his followers, most human behavior is the result of desires, impulses, and memories that have been repressed into an unconscious state, yet still influence actions. Freud’s View of Motivation believed that human behavior is motivated by the id, ego, and superego.
  • For example,When companies want to gauge the probability of success for a new product they will enlist market researchers to delve into the deep motivations of a group of consumers to determine what triggers them. They may utilize a number of techniques to discover such deeper meanings, such as role playing, picture interpretation, sentence completion or word association, among others. Such exercises can help researchers learn about how consumers react to products and how to best market them as a result.

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