Chapter 5

The Motive Perspective

Modified: 2022-06-22 9:54 pm

Needs and motives dominate the motive perspective. People plan their careers and seek relationships. Research in this area has uncovered several strong needs: achievement, power, affiliation, and intimacy. The main methods have been PSEs and self-attributed tests. But, those appear not to measure the same things. The motive approach has had little to say about abnormal personality and therapy

• Learning Objectives:
  • •5.1 Explain how needs, motives, and press govern how people seek out or respond to objects or situations in the environment

    •5.2 Analyze the motive viewpoint to understand why different people display quite different patterns of behavior over time

    •5.3 Relate four major motive dispositions to the behavior that they have been tied to

    •5.4 Distinguish between implicit and self-attributed motives and how each influences behavior

    •5.5 Compare approach and avoidance processes in the context of motives

    •5.6 Evaluate the similarities and differences between motives and traits

    •5.7 Summarize the work done by prominent researchers in the study of narratives

    •5.8 Outline implicit assessment of personality from the motive viewpoint
  • •5.9 Examine the possibility of changing people’s achievement motivation and the criticisms against it
    •5.10 Summarize criticisms of the motive approach to personality
• 5.1 Basic Theoretical Elements (p. 51)
  • Do one's needs define one's personality?
  • 5.1.1 Needs
    • A need is an internal state that is less than satisfactory, a lack of something necessary for well-being
    • Needs become more intense over time
    • Behavior to satisfy a need becomes more intense over time
    • Needs, once satisfied, lead to other needs gaining prominence (See Figure 5.1 below). In other words, needs are directive
    • Needs create movement toward or away from objects

• Some needs are biological:
  • Food
  • Water
  • Air
  • Sex
  • Pain Avoidance
• Others are psychological:
  • achievement
  • power
  • intimacy
• 5.1.2 Motives
  • Motives are clusters of cognition with affective overtones organized around preferred experiences and goals
    • The are emotionally toned
    • Example: hunger is a motive state experienced subjectively based on the need for food.
• 5.1.3 Press
  • A press is an external condition that prompts a desire to obtain or avoid something
  • Figure 5.2 (below) illustrates the relationship between needs, press, motives, and behavior
  • Example: After satisfying a need (food) by eating a can of vienna sausages and some crackers, someone passes by eating a shrimp po boy. The po boy might rekindle the motive to eat even though the need has already been satisfied
  • Press also applies to psychological variables:
    • If all of your old friends are now married that press may increase your desire for a lifetime mate
  • Needs and motives, in practice, are often thought about and used interchangeably

• 5.2 Needs, Motives, and Personality (p. 52)
  • Strong motives influence behavior
  • Motives vary across time and situations
  • Motive dispostions are individualized and help form someone's personality
    • 5.2.1 Motive States and Motive Dispositions
      • People vary in their dispositional level of motives (See Figure 5.3 below)
      • In that figure John's need for achievement is high while George's is lower
      • Thus, John spends more time doing things to satisfy his need for achievement
      • Murray believed that basic needs were universal but that people had dispositional tendencies toward their own level of need

• 5.2.2 Measuring Motives Using the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
  • The TAT measures apperceptions or perceiving stimuli in the light of one's own experiences and motives
  • The TAT consists of series of ambiguous pictures
  • Participants respond by:
    • Telling what is happening
    • Describing the character's thoughts and feelings
    • Relating the character's relationships
    • Describing the outcome
    • Early studies showed:
      • that hungry participants told stories about food
      • participants experimentally manipulated by a failure told stories with greater achievement motivation
      • However, in another study, those manipulated into a success also told stories with greater achievement motivation
      • McClelland concluded that deprivation was not necessary to arouse a motivation
    • Below is an example from the TAT. Try testing yourself. Use the criteria above.

• 5.3 Studies of Specific Dispositional Motives (p. 53)
  • The TAT and related methods are sometimes called the picture story exercise or PSE
    • 5.3.1 Need for Achievement
  • Achievement motivation is the desire to do things well, to feel pleasure in overcoming obstacles
  • People high in need for achievement:
    • pick moderate difficulty problems
    • pick test questions high in diagnosticity
      • See Figure 5.4 (below)
    • persist in the face of failure
  • People low in need for achievement
    • pick easy or hard problems
  • Economics and Need for Achievement
    • Retrospective studies of need for achievement based on art and literature:
      • an increase in both in England from 1500 to 1800
    • A study of 23 cultures showed achievement imagery and economic growth
  • Politics and Need for Achievement
    • High need for achievement associated with lower effectiveness in US presidents
  • Business and Need for Achievement
    • High need for achievement valuable when control is high (Tesla?)
  • Gender and Need for Achievement
    • Early studies conducted on men only
    • Later studies conducted with females:
      • Showed achievement was expressed differently for women
      • Women invest in their achievement based on their views of themselves

• 5.3.2 Need for Power
  • The motive to have an impact on others, to have prestige, to feel strong
  • People high in the need for power:
    • Seek positions of authority
    • Surround themselves with power symbols
    • Hold executive positions in organizations
    • Control the image they project
    • Wish to enhance their reputations
    • Wish to be viewed as authoritative and influential
    • May be narcissistic
    • Self absorbed in their importance
    • More sexually active
    • Have higher cortisol levels after a failure
    • Men show larger increases in testosterone after a success and a reduction following a failure
    • Men are more likely to abuse their female partners during arguments
  • Other aspects
    • Those high in power motivation are less likely to make concessions in negotiations
    • They learn to keep doing what they have done to win
    • They learn to stop doing what they have done after a loss
    • Polticians high in power motivation are effective in managing others
    • Men high in power motivation find dependent women as ideal mates who seldom have outside careers
  • Need for Power and Gender
    • Women high in need for power are more likely to experience job satisfaction but also experience more job dissatisfactions
    • Both men and women high in need for power:
      • expect low-dominance expressions from others
      • are disrupted by high-dominance expressions from others
      • get angry when others fail to respond to their efforts to exert influence
    • Need for Power and Socialization
      • Depends on sense of responsibility
        • Those with high responsibility:
          • pursue prestige conscientiously
          • express power in socially acceptable ways
        • Those with low sense of responsibily
          • may be aggressive
          • sexual exploiters
          • substance abusers
      • War and need for power
        • Those high in responsibility may be more likely to see war as a logical outcome according to Winter
• 5.3.3 Need for Affiliation
  • The motive to spend time with others and form friendly social ties (but dominance is not involved)
  • Social interactions are a goal
  • People high in the need for affiliation:
    • Desire acceptance from others
    • Do not want their interpersonal skills to be judged
    • Prefer warm interaction partners
    • Are more likely to concede during negotiations
    • Make more phone calls
    • Are more likely to be involved in social activity
  • Need for affiliation and relationships
    • Complex issues
    • Balance is essential
      • Well adjusted couples have affiliation needs that correlate
        • Example: if individual's need is low, so should partners and vice versa
    • Positive relationships are more satisfying for those with higher need for affiliation
• 5.3.4 Need for Intimacy
  • The desire to experience warm, close, and communicative exchanges with another person, to feel close to another person
  • Intimacy and Affiliation correlate highly
  • People High in Intimacy:
    • Have more one on one exchanges (but not more group interactions)
    • Self disclose more
    • Share hopes, fears, and fantasies
    • Listen to others
    • Recall events with high intimacy content
    • Men have higher marital and job satisfaction
    • Women are happier and satisfied with their jobs
  • Intimacy and Power coexist badly and those high in both tend to be maladjusted
• 5.3.5 Patterned Needs
  • Low need for affiliation combined with a high need for power is a commonly studied personality pattern called inhibited power motivation
    • In leadership contexts:
      • this pattern predicts success in organizational structures such as business
      • often, this people with this pattern move on to higher management quickly
      • people with this pattern are good persuaders
      • people with this pattern may cause wars (see Figure 5.6 below)
        • British leaders speeches were higher in power motivation than affiliation in years before the onset of wars
        • The Cuban Missile Crisis showed the opposite pattern, higher affiliation and the avoidance of war

• 5.4 Implicit and Self-Attributed Motives (p. 59)
  • The motive perspective balances the intensity of motives at a particular time along with the existing context
    • 5.4.1 Incentive Value
      • Needed to explain diversity of behavior
      • Similar to interactionism
      • Similar situations will have different incentive values to people
        • Example: watching sports, watch golf or baseball
      • McClelland:
        • Need strength relates to long-term frequencies of any type
        • Incentive values relate to choices within a domain of action
• 5.4.2 Implicit Motives Are Different from Self-Attributed Motives
  • TAT and PSE measure implicit motives
  • Newer self-report instruments measure self-attributed motives or explicit motives
  • They correlate weakly
  • Implicit motives are more basic
  • Explicit motives relate to specific action goals (they predict better in structured settings)
  • Explicit:
    • work as energy boosters
    • predict recall of general memories
  • Implicit
    • work on decision making
    • predict recall of specific events
  • Possessing incongruent explicit and implicit motives:
    • may cause stress
    • unhealthy eating
    • dissatisfaction
  • Both types are now the subject of research
• 5.5 Approach and Avoidance Motives (p. 60)
  • So far, the chapter has looked mostly at approach
  • But, avoiding failure may be just as important in achievement motivation
  • Early studies confounded the issue
  • Newer studies looking at academic success found:
    • That approach strategies worked by elaborating on material
    • That avoidance strategies worked via memorization
    • Avoidance was linked to poor time management and less satisfaction with performance
  • Familiarity
    • People are better off when they work in familiar contexts
    • Stress may be the result of working in an unfamiliar context
• 5.5.1 Approach and Avoidance in Other Motives
  • Any approach motivation can be reconfigured by a complementary avoidance one
  • But the results may not be the same
    • Commitment Between Romantic Partner
      • Commitments based on approach predicted more satisfaction
      • Commitments based on avoidance (of being alone) predicted less satisfaction
    Adding approach and avoidance complicates the picture of human behavior greatly
• 5.6 Motivess and the Five-Factor Trait Model (p. 61)
  • Can the Five-Factor Model be integrated with the motive approach?
    • 5.6.1 Traits and Motives as Distinct and Complementary
      • Controversial area
      • Winter proposed:
        • motives are fundamental desires
        • traits channel and express those desires (traits may represent patterns of incentive preferences
        • Table 5.1 (below) shows the results of a study looking at women with high or low Affiliation-Intimacy levels who happen to be either introverts or extroverts
        • Extraversion-Introversion did not alter the pattern for introverts
        • But, it did for extroverts with women with high intimacy needs and who were introverts having relationship problems

• 5.7 Personology and the Study of Narratives (p. 62)
  • Murray pioneered personology, the ideographic study of individual lives and factors influencing their course
  • McAdams now looks at extended narratives:
    • Life stories that: chapters, heroes, and thematic threads
      • Themes and threads include: growth, safety, or betterment
    • This approach stresses the need to maintain a coherent narrative and reveals individual uniqueness
• 5.8 Assessment from the Motive Perspective (p. 62)
  • The PSE is the most used measure in the motive perspective
  • But, it can take time to give and complex to score
  • Simpler approaches assess:
    • Achievement by:
      • Types of events
      • Themes and images
      • Overcoming obstacles
      • Attaining goals
      • With positive feelings for all of the above
    • Affiliation by:
      • Choosing to be with others
      • Emphasizing relationships
    • Power
      • Controlling others
    • More than one motive can be assessed on each PSE given, just score them separately
  • PSEs have been criticized for:
    • Low internal consistency
    • Low test-retest reliability
    • It takes time to give and score it
• Box 5.1 The Process Underlying the TAT or the PSE (p. 63)
  • Look at the picture on page 63
    • What just happened?
    • What is their relationship?
    • What are they each thinking?
    • What will be the result?
    • Here's my story:
      • He just confessed to her, his wife, an affair. She's taking it stoically. Perhaps, she had her suspisions all along. She's mad, but not showing it. He's worried about what she will do. Divorce may be the result.
      • Affiliation is the motive in my story, the destruction of affiliation, that is.
      • What is your story?
• 5.8.1 Other Implicit Assessments
  • The Implicit Association Test (IAT) uses reaction time to assess:
    • Links among semantic properties of in memory
    • It appears that the PSE and the IAT may measure the same kinds of things
    • For a video (less than 5 minutes) on using the IAT in marketing, click HERE
• 5.9 Problems in Behavior and Behavior Change, from the Motive Perspective (p. 64)
  • The motive perspective has not concentrated as much on problems
    • 5.9.1 The Need for Power and Alcohol Abuse
  • One exception is the link between alcohol abuse and the need for power
    • Alcohol abusers may drink because alcohol enhances their feeling of power
    • Of course, the effect is temporary and unhealthy in the long run
    • Substituting other ways for them to achieve power has proven successful
  • 5.9.2 Focusing On and Changing Motivation
    • Can the motive orientation lead to behavior change?
    • People may be unaware of their own motives
    • Or, those motives may not be channeled into action
  • In one case, McClelland and his colleagues manipulated achievement motivation
    • The idea was to make people think about achievement as much as possible
    • They were also taught to link those thoughts to concrete patterns outside of the training program
    • It was effective, after two years:
      • They were more likely to have started a business
      • More likely to be employing more people
    • However, it was not clear that needs had changed or that the program would generalize to other needs
• 5.10 Problems and Prospects for the Motive Perspective (p. 65)
  • This approach avoids one criticism of trait theory--showing how dispositions create behaviors
  • Murray's original list of needs was incomplete, he left out intimacy
  • The fact that the revised lists mirror other issues in psychology suggests that needs are fundamental
  • However, despite Murray's plea that needs must be studied in toto and simultaneously, few modern researchers do so
  • The future of this approach to personality appears promising
• Summary (p. 65)
• Motive approach assumes:
  • the importance of underlying needs
  • the relationship of press and needs
  • individual differences in need strength
  • The main needs that emerged were:
    • need for achievement
    • need for power
    • need for affiliation
    • need for intimacy
  • The inhibited power pattern joined the need for power with the need for affiliation
  • Incentive value helps explain why different people may interpret the same situation in different ways
  • The PSE uncovered:
    • Implicit motives that are unconscious
  • Self-Attributed methods revealed:
    • Explicit motives that are conscious
  • These two types measure different aspects of personality
  • Murray's personology looked at the whole person
  • The motivational approach has had little to say about personality problems other than helping people identify a problem and possibly channel it motive into a different behavior
• Points to Remember
  • The motive approach to personality assumes that behavior reflects a set of underlying needs.
  • As a need becomes more intense, it’s more likely to influence behavior.
  • Behavior is also affected by press: external stimuli that elicit motivational tendencies.
  • Needs (and press) vary in strength from moment to moment, but people also differ in patterns of chronic need strength. According to this viewpoint, this difference is the source of individual differences in personality.
  • Murray catalogued human motives, several of which later received systematic study by others.
  • One (studied by McClelland, Atkinson, and others) was the need for achievement: the motive to overcome obstacles and to attain goals.
  • People with high levels of the achievement motive behave differently from those with lower levels in several ways: the kinds of tasks they prefer, the level of task difficulty they prefer, their persistence, and their performance levels.
  • Early research on achievement tended to disregard how approach and avoidance motives might separately influence behavior.
  • More recent work has begun to examine those distinct influences.
  • The need for power—the motive to be strong, compared to other people—has also been studied extensively.
  • People who score high in this need tend to seek out positions of influence, to surround themselves with the trappings of power, and to become energized when the groups they’re guiding have difficulties.
  • People with high levels of the power motive tend to choose as friends those people who aren’t influential or popular, thereby protecting themselves from undesired competition.
  • The power motive can lead to unpleasant forms of social influence, unless it’s tempered by a sense of responsibility.
  • The need for affiliation is the desire to spend time with other people—to develop and maintain relationships.
  • People who score high in this need are responsive to social influence, spend a large proportion of their time communicating with other people, and when alone, often think about being with others.
  • A related motive that isn’t represented in Murray’s list but has received attention in recent years is the need for intimacy.
  • People high in this need want warm, close, and communicative relationships with others. People with strong intimacy needs tend to spend more time in one­to­one interaction and less time in groups.
  • They tend to engage in interactions that involve a lot of self­disclosure and are concerned about their friends’ well­being.
  • Research has also investigated patterns of motives, such as inhibited power motive. This pattern is defined by having more of a need for power than a need for affiliation and by restraining the power need.
  • People with this pattern do well in managerial careers, but the pattern has also been linked to political stances that preceded wars.
  • Theorists of this view use other concepts besides motives in talking about behavior.
  • Incentive value—the extent to which a given action will satisfy a given need for a person—helps to explain why people with the same motive express it in different ways.
  • Indeed, the concept of incentive provides an opening into a broader issue. Specifically, assessment of motives by the picture story exercise (PSE) technique does not relate well to assessment by self­report.
  • What’s assessed by the PSE has come to be called implicit motives, and what’s assessed by self­report has come to be called self­attributed, or explicit, motives.
  • Implicit motives are thought to function mostly unconsciously, and self-attributed motives are thought to function mostly consciously. One active area of interest is how these two aspects of motives function and relate to one another.
  • Murray emphasized the study of individual lives in depth over extended periods of time.
  • He coined the term personology to refer to the study of the whole person, and personology was his goal. This emphasis has not been strong in the work of most others, but it has reemerged more recently in the work of McAdams and his colleagues.
  • The contribution to assessment that’s most identified with the motive approach is the PSE.
  • It’s based on the idea that people’s motives are reflected in the imagery they “apperceive”—that is, read into ambiguous stimuli, such as a set of pictures depicting people in ambiguous situations.
  • There are also self­report measures of motives, but they appear to measure something different from what the PSE measures.
  • The motivational approach to personality has largely ignored the issue of analyzing problems in behavior, although at least some evidence links the need for power to the misuse of alcohol.
  • It’s possible to infer from this evidence, however, that many problems in behavior stem from inappropriate channeling of motives.
  • It’s also reasonable that people can be helped by increasing their awareness of the motive that underlies the problem and then channeling the motive in alternative ways.
  • Research on increasing the need for achievement suggests that it may be possible to alter people’s dispositional levels of the motives that make up personality.

  KEY TERMS

  • Apperception: The projecting of a motive onto an ambiguous external stimulus via imagery.
  • Diagnosticity: The extent to which a task provides information about something.
  • Implicit motive: A motive assessed indirectly because it is relatively inaccessible to consciousness.
  • Incentive: The degree to which an action can satisfy a particular need for a person.
  • Inhibited power motivation: The condition of having more need for power than for affiliation, but restraining its use.
  • Motive: Cognitive–affective clusters organized around readiness for a particular kind of experience.
  • Motive disposition: Dispositional tendency toward high or low level of some motive.
  • Need: An unsatisfactory internal condition that motivates behavior.
  • Need for achievement: The need to overcome obstacles and attain goals.
  • Need for affiliation: The need to form and maintain relationships and to be with people.
  • Need for intimacy: The need for close communication and sharing with someone else.
  • Need for power: The need to have influence over other people.
  • Personology: Study of the entire person.
  • Picture story exercise (PSE): Any one of a family of tests that uses stories written about pictures to assess motive strength through narrative fantasy.
  • Press: An external stimulus that increases the level of a motive.
  • Self-attributed motive: A motive that is consciously reported.
  • Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): A particular method of assessing the strength of a motive through narrative fantasy.

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