Motivation

Category: Fields of research

Motivation is the inner drive that compels us to take action toward a goal. Social sciences study initiation, intensity, frequency, and direction of motivation. There are two main types of motivation: Intrinsic motivation (drive comes from within a person) and extrinsic motivation (drive comes from external factors).

Psychological Theories of Motivation

Instinct theories explain motivation through the expression of instincts – innate, automatic, unlearned, and involuntary drives that direct behavior. Since William McDougall first proposed this theory in An Introduction to Social Psychology (1908), the instinctive basis of motivation has been the focus of several different psychological approaches, including ethology, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology.

Drive-reduction theory argues that there are two types of drives. primary drives are biological and instinctive, while secondary drives are nonbiological and learned. This theory states that people tend to achieve homeostasis (equilibrium) by adjusting to changes. Inbalances create an arousal which drives the action that will restore balance and reduce the drive.

Arousal theory states that people strive to achieve an optimal level of arousal, either increasing it when it is too low or reducing it when it is too high. Moderate levels of arousal are most conducive for completing difficult tasks. The positive and negative incentives resulting from environmental stimuli are the basis of the incentive theory of motivation. Cognitive theories of motivation argue that mental processes strongly influence are drives and goal-oriented behavior. Optimistic expectations, drive to success, and ability to overcome failure create a mental frame that allows a person to achieve goals. On the contrary, people who fear failure, don’t set realistic goals, and fear failure don’t succeed in achieving their goals. Those people possess a mental state known as learned helplessness.

Abraham Maslow is most famous for his theory of the „hierarchy of human needs“, which he first introduced in the article “A Theory of Human Motivation” (1943), and elaborated further in the book Motivation and Personality (1954). This theory states that human needs have to be satisfied in a specific tiered sequence, with biologically innate priority to first satisfy lower-level needs, before motivation to satisfy higher-level needs arises. This hierarchy of needs is the same for all humans and the sequence of needs is as follows: 1) physiological needs – air, food, water, shelter, sex, and sleep; 2) personal safety needs – physical, psychological safety, the safety of family, property, and employment; 3) love needs (later changed the name to “belongingness”) - affection and a sense of belonging; 4) self-esteem needs - self-respect and the respect of others; and 5) self-actualization. Self-esteem needs are divided into two sub-needs: (1) the need for achievement, strength, and adequacy; and (2) the need for reputation, prestige, recognition, attention, and appreciation. Maslow argued that higher-order needs appear later, both in evolutionary development and in an organism’s development. Maslow believed that people are innately inclined to achieve “self-actualization,” which he defines as the need for an individual to achieve what he or she was meant to do or be. When people achieve self-actualization, they enter into a more enlightened existence that he called eupsychia.

Carl Jung argued that the process of individuation is guided by several principles and by libidinal energy. Jung sees libidinal energy as a creative life-force, but unlike in Freud’s theory, libido isn’t limited to only sexual energy but has a much broader scope. For Jung, libidinal energy also includes the philosophical and spiritual needs of an individual. The libido functions as a type of generalized ‘psychic energy’, possessing both positive and constructive elements and negative and destructive elements. Libido serves as a motivation for individuals to create a balance of those opposing elements on various levels – social, emotional, spiritual, and creative.

Sociological Theories of Motivation

In The Social System (1951), Talcott Parsons posits that personality contains motivations, attitudes, and values that an actor has internalized; society consists of a set of positions and roles, while culture consists of values and symbols. Each of these three systems is autonomous, although there is a significant overlap among them with the other two systems. Parsons sees the social system as a system within which many individual actors strive to achieve the optimum of satisfaction, while the situations in which the action takes place are defined and mediated by a system of symbols organized by culture. The concept of "role" is the most important analytical tool because the role is the intersection of all three systems - personality, culture, and society. The social role is a set of expectations and mutual predictions of other people concerning the role holder; culture regulates the rules of role performance using common symbols and values, while the person is the one who takes over and plays social roles. Actors, as individuals, need to internalize the values that provide motivation for action that enables the successful performance of roles, which further strengthens social consensus. Every social system, regardless of size, must meet the following requirements, that is, functional pre-requisites: 1) adaptation - adaptation to the environment by changing and controlling it; 2) goal attainment - methodical mobilization of resources to achieve specific goals; 3) integration - solidarity and survival of the cohesive whole; 4) latency / latent pattern maintenance - production, accumulation, and distribution of energy that maintains the motivation of actors, but also the stability of cultural patterns that enable reproduction of that motivation. This theoretical scheme is often abbreviated in sociology as AGIL, the first four letters of the four functional prerequisites in English.

Max Weber argued that human social action is voluntary; however, it can be a product of conscious and intentional desire, just as it can be a product of unconscious motives. Unconscious motives are influenced by culture and tradition, as external factors, but also by personal emotional states, as internal factors. Weber believes that fully conscious and intentional social action is just a borderline case and that people are much more likely to act instinctively or routinely. In that sense, every social action can be directed by several different factors: values, goals, emotions, and rationality. These factors are expressed in different proportions in any particular social action of an individual, but they are also shaped in different ways by the broader cultural and historical context of social action.

Weber states that the scientific study of social action requires the application of the cognitive method of „understanding“ (verstehen). Understanding is made possible by the fact that there is an identity between the subject (researcher) and the object (individual that is studied) of cognition, and therefore understanding has a higher degree of clarity and certainty compared to other forms and methods of cognition. The identity of the subject and the object of knowledge, in essence, means that scientists, as well as people whose work is the object of the study, have similar psychology. This is what enables scientists to understand the subjective meaning that social action has for the person who performs the social action. Understanding has both an intellectual and an emotional component. This means that we can understand the rational aspect of one's social actions, while at the same time understanding the emotional motives of that social action. Understanding social action, as a sociological method, allows us to create causal explanations of individual events.

George Homans' theory of social exchange views social behavior as "an exchange of activity, tangible or intangible, and more or less rewarding or costly, between at least two persons" Social Behavior (Homans, 1961, 13). The process of exchange is not reserved only for the economy but takes place in all aspects of social life because all interactions between individuals include seeking a reward and avoiding negative consequences. Rewards can be social or psychological, such as: recognition, support, status, satisfaction, etc. It is this desire for personal gain that drives the motivation for social exchange, not collective or symbolic forces. Homans mostly focuses on exchange interactions between two people or within small groups and does not deal with general forms of exchange at a wider level of society.

Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration provides a new view on the actions of actors (agency). Similar to the individualistic approach, Giddens believes that actors act freely, have the ability to understand themselves, society, and their position in it, strive to achieve their own goals and are therefore able to direct or reshape the society in which they live. He adapts the scheme of dividing the personality into three parts by dividing the actor's consciousness into three aspects: 1) discursive consciousness, 2) practical consciousness, and 3) unconscious. Three psychic mechanisms are active in the action of the actors: reflexive monitoring, rationalization, and motivation. Practical consciousness and rationalization represent common knowledge that allows actors to act in a rules-limited social life. Analysis of practical consciousness is most important for understanding the structuration process.

Motivation and Crime

Edwin Sutherland, in Principles of Criminology (1924), developed the theory of "differential association" to explain the adoption of criminal behavior by individuals. Differential association refers to the understanding that people, during their lifetime, come into contact with different types of people, who have different perceptions about the acceptability of crime. This theory is based on the view that criminal behavior is, for the most part, acquired and learned through interaction in small groups. At the same time, individuals learn the techniques used to commit a crime, but also adopt the motivation to commit those crimes. Motivation, which consists of attitudes, urges, and definitions, is key to the process of learning criminal behavior. Sutherland stated that criminals do not become criminals just because they were in the company of other criminals, but because a situation arose in which the definition of the acceptability of a crime could be applied. He does not believe that criminal behavior is a product of the general needs and attitudes of the wider population, because only those who join small criminal groups actually commit crimes.

Motivation and Religion

Clifford Geertz argued that anthropology isn't an experimental science that searches for laws, but an interpretive endeavor that searches for meaning. The goal of anthropology is to discover the conceptual structures that motivate the actions of the subject and to construct a system of analysis. In the essay on religion, which is part of the book The Interpretation of Cultures, Geertz, based on his research of symbolism and the ecstatic psychic state that people go through in religious rituals, comes to his definition of religion. Religion is “(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic“.

Motivation and Economics

English economist Adam Smith was among the first authors to put forth a theoretical and ideological analysis of capitalism in his book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Smith believed that people naturally tend to seek self-interest and improve their material conditions. He also believed that people have a natural tendency to buy and sell goods. For him, the best economic system is the one that promotes selfishness, entrepreneurship, competition, a laissez-faire market, and international free trade. Friedrich Hayek argued that complex systems, such as economies and societies, emerge naturally from the interactions of individuals pursuing their own interests. That means that individuals are motivated to achieve the selfish goal of increasing their own economic prosperity. Hayek believed that the market is a form of communication system that uses unregulated and competitive prices as a signal to all market participants. A market that is guided by decentralized decision-making and price signals is a prime example of spontaneous order. In a similar vein, Peter Saunders, in Unequal but Fair ?: A Study of Class Barriers in Britain (1996), posits that people who receive higher economic rewards are the ones who make the greatest contribution to the development of society. Unequal economic rewards also contribute to motivating those who are most talented to give their best.

Motivation and Organizations

Etzioni Amitai argued that, according to the form of motivation of individuals to accept organizational authority, organizations can be divided into three types: utilitarian (in which the motive is personal gain), normative (the motive is morals and values), and coercive organizations (the motive is avoidance of punishment). Etzioni introduced the concepts of "scope" and "pervasiveness" of organizations. Scope refers to the amount of activity that members of the organization perform together, while pervasiveness refers to the level of sharing common normative values between the members of the organization. He believes that organizations have a huge impact on our lives, as evidenced by his famous statement: "We are born in organizations, educated by organizations, and most of us spend much of our lives working for organizations" (Etzioni, 1975). In the book Moral Dimension (1988), Etzioni studied the motives of individuals that influence their social behavior. The behavior of individuals is guided by two key types of motives: achieving happiness and fulfilling a moral duty. The relationship between these two motives is changing from society to society, as well as throughout history, so social theory must understand the dynamics of forces that affect these two forms of motivation.

Using a broad definition of organizations, Göran Ahrne posits that processes within and between different organizations have a crucial impact on the understanding of general social relations. Societies are shaped by interaction with organizations. Organizations provide resources and motivations to individuals and shape the frameworks within which they operate.

References:

Ahrne. Agency and Organization: Towards an Organizational Theory of Society (1990);

Etzioni. The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics (1988);

Giddens. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (1984);

Homans. Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms (1961);

Inglehart. Cultural Evolution: People's Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World (2018);

Luhmann. Social Systems (1995, in German 1984);

Parsons. The Social System (1951);

Sacks. Language Lectures on Conversation, 2 vols. (1992).

Saunders. Unequal But Fair?: A Study of Class Barriers in Britain (1996);

Sutherland. Principles of Criminology (1924);

Turner. A Theory of Social Interaction (1988);