What is motive
Motive is a process that controls human behavior, contributing to its organization, direction, activity and stability.
It is also believed that a motive is a certain generalized image of material or ideal objects that are valuable to an individual. Achieving these objects is the meaning of his activity for him. To a person, a motive is presented in the form of special experiences that can be both positive (when expecting to achieve these objects) and negative (when realizing the incompleteness of one’s position, the lack of this object). Schopenhauer was the first to use the concept of “motivation” in psychology.
Nowadays, the word “motivation” in psychology is understood in different ways. Some researchers believe that this is a set of processes responsible for motivation and activity; while others believe that it is a purely mental phenomenon, representing a collection of motives.
What is motivation in psychology in essence? This concept is used where they talk about achieving a certain goal and specific ways to achieve this. It is known that the same goal can be achieved in different ways. So, if a person wants to become rich, then he can get a job in a prestigious company, open his own business, write a good book, engage in criminal activity... And vice versa - the same action can be performed for different purposes. In addition, the desire to achieve a specific goal can also be explained by one’s own considerations. Why does a person want to get rich? Someone wants to buy a mansion by the sea, someone wants to get married, someone wants to professionally do what they love (and not something that just generates income). In such cases, they say that a person is guided by certain motives.
Usually, a person organizing some kind of activity and achieving a certain goal is guided by several motives at once, which is why psychologists talk about one or another motivation. The problem of motivation in psychology is one of the most difficult. Often a person himself does not realize exactly what motives he was guided by when he performed some actions. There are hidden motives associated with some memories, fears, etc. Such motives are not reflected in consciousness and act on a subconscious level; a person only feels some kind of vague tension, discomfort, which he strives to overcome with the help of certain actions.
Thus, a goal is what we want to achieve, and a motive is the reason why we want to achieve it. Motivation in psychology is understood as both the set of motives that control an individual’s behavior and the process of this control itself.
Personal motives
Personal motives are the need (or system of needs) of the individual for the function of motivation. Internal mental motivations for activity and behavior are determined by the actualization of certain needs of the individual. Activity motives can be very different:
- organic - aimed at satisfying the natural needs of the body and are associated with the growth, self-preservation and development of the body;
- functional - satisfied through various cultural forms of activity, for example playing sports;
- material - encourage a person to engage in activities aimed at creating household items, various things and tools;
- social - give rise to various types of activities aimed at taking a certain place in society, gaining recognition and respect;
- spiritual - they form the basis of those activities that are associated with human self-improvement.
Organic and functional motives together constitute the motivation for the behavior and activity of an individual in certain circumstances and can not only influence, but change each other.
Human needs manifest themselves in specific forms. People may perceive their needs differently. Depending on this, motives are divided into emotional ones - desires, desires, attractions, etc. and rational - aspirations, interests, ideals, beliefs.
There are two groups of interconnected motives of life, behavior and activity of an individual:
- generalized, the content of which expresses the subject of needs and, accordingly, the direction of the individual’s aspirations. The strength of this motive is determined by the significance for a person of the object of his needs;
- instrumental - motives for choosing ways, means, methods of achieving or realizing a goal, conditioned not only by the need state of the individual, but also by his preparedness, the availability of opportunities to successfully act to realize his goals in given conditions.
There are other approaches to classifying motives. For example, according to the degree of social significance, motives of a broad social plan (ideological, ethnic, professional, religious, etc.), group plan and individual-personal nature are distinguished. There are also motives for achieving goals, avoiding failures, motives for approval, and affiliative ones (cooperation, partnership, love).
Motives not only encourage a person to act, but also give his actions and actions a personal, subjective meaning. In practice, it is important to take into account that people, performing actions that are identical in form and objective results, are often guided by different, sometimes opposing motives, and attach different personal meaning to their behavior and actions. In accordance with this, the assessment of actions should be different: both moral and legal.
Types of personality motives
Consciously justified motives include values, beliefs, and intentions.
Value
Value is a concept used in philosophy to indicate the personal, socio-cultural significance of certain objects and phenomena. A person’s values form a system of his value orientations, elements of the personality’s internal structure that are especially significant for him. These value orientations form the basis of the consciousness and activity of the individual. Value is a personally colored attitude towards the world, arising on the basis of not only knowledge and information, but also one’s own life experience. Values give meaning to human life. Faith, will, doubt, and ideal are of enduring importance in the world of human value orientations. Values are part of culture, learned from parents, family, religion, organizations, school, and environment. Cultural values are widely held beliefs that define what is desirable and what is true. Values can be:
- self-oriented, which concern the individual, reflect his goals and general approach to life;
- other-oriented, which reflect the desires of society regarding the relationship between the individual and groups;
- environmentally oriented, which embody society's ideas about the desired relationship of the individual with his economic and natural environment.
Beliefs
Beliefs are the motives of practical and theoretical activity, justified by theoretical knowledge and the entire worldview of a person. For example, a person becomes a teacher not only because he is interested in passing on knowledge to children, not only because he loves working with children, but also because he knows well how much in creating a society depends on cultivating consciousness. This means that he chose his profession not only out of interest and inclination towards it, but also according to his convictions. Deeply held beliefs persist throughout a person's life. Beliefs are the most generalized motives. However, if generalization and stability are characteristic features of personality properties, then beliefs can no longer be called motives in the accepted sense of the word. The more generalized a motive becomes, the closer it is to a personality trait.
Intention
Intention is a consciously made decision to achieve a specific goal with a clear understanding of the means and methods of action. This is where motivation and planning come together. Intention organizes human behavior.
The types of motives considered cover only the main manifestations of the motivational sphere. In reality, there are as many different motives as there are possible person-environment relationships.
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Types of motives in psychology
Psychologists identify a large number of types of motives, dividing them into several categories. It is not easy to create such a classification, since there are a lot of circumstances that guide a person; Each direction of psychology and each school has its own system. However, the most widespread division of motives into four groups.
Internal and external motives
These types are important not only in terms of the choice of means and ways to achieve the goal, but also for the self-realization of human individuality. Internal motives are such as interests, hobbies, the need for positive emotions and avoidance of negative ones, the desire to increase self-esteem, etc. These circumstances are related to the person himself and his attitude to his activities.
External motivation is circumstances that do not depend on a person and his desires and lie outside his personal sphere. These may be motives such as public opinion, a change in weather, the desire to get a higher grade or avoid punishment, etc.
External and internal motivations can work simultaneously, or they can act separately. For example, a student diligently does his homework. He can do this both because he is interested in the topic, and in order to get a good grade, please his parents, brag to his friends, etc.
External motivation plays a fairly large role in human life, since most people need a certain socialization. Such motives are often more effective than internal ones; this is the same “kick in the ass” without which some people will not do anything at all. However, for personal development, internal motives are still the most preferable. Only with their help can you do your work truly productively. All creative activity is based primarily on internal motivation.
Positive and negative motives
Like needs, drives are associated with emotions. A person in his actions can be driven by the desire to receive pleasure, pleasure, and then this is a positive motivation, or he can also be driven by the desire to avoid punishment, pain, fear and other negative experiences, and then this is a negative motivation.
Researchers cannot yet definitively say which of these motives are more effective in achieving a goal. Negative motivation can encourage one to overcome obstacles, endure minor inconveniences, and work until exhaustion; but it also destroys a person who will never truly love or understand his business. Therefore, positive motives still seem more preferable.
Sustainable and unstable motives
Stable motivations are those that are based on human needs and do not require any additional reinforcement. Such motives have existed for quite a long time. Unsustainable motivation changes quickly. Thus, the internal motivations of the individual are stable, since changes in worldview, interests, and tastes occur rarely and gradually. External motivation, on the contrary, is unstable, since the demands of society, the mood of others, and the weather outside change quickly.
Achieving success
This is a separate type of motivation that has become relevant recently. Modern society sets a person up for success from childhood. It is not prestigious to be unsuccessful; success brings with it material well-being, public recognition, and other benefits. Success increases a person's social status.
It would seem that every person wants to achieve success. However, in reality, there are many obstacles on the way to achieving it, which sometimes discourage the desire to achieve success altogether. One of the reasons for this is a person’s lack of understanding of why he needs to achieve this goal. It happens that the set goal is too far away and gets lost among the many obstacles that arise; in this case, it is advisable to break the achievement of this success into several intermediate goals.
Often achieving great success involves leaving the so-called comfort zone. This means sacrificing something small in order to get something much bigger in the end; the ability to take risks, endure small troubles with the expectation that these problems will be more than compensated for when success is achieved. And this is where many potentially successful people give up.
Often the “comfort zone” is presented as a physical, mental, ideological or spiritual space in which a person feels good and comfortable, he does not suffer and, it would seem, is provided with everything he needs. In fact, psychologists understand something different by this concept. For some people, the “comfort zone” is associated precisely with suffering, inconvenience, pain, and leaving this zone can relieve suffering and bring happiness. But a person does not want to make this exit; he feels “good” when he feels bad. What is the reason for this paradox?
This situation is perfectly illustrated in the famous play “Dragon” by E. Schwartz, based on which a film was made in the late 80s. The inhabitants of the fairy-tale city come to terms with the fact that a terrible dragon has established dictatorial rule over them, who sets his own rules and, in particular, regularly demands that the most beautiful girls in the city be given to him. When a brave knight appears and kills the dragon and gives the inhabitants freedom, they immediately... elect a new dictator who makes them suffer in the same way. It turned out that the residents could not make an effort to learn to live without any dictators and suffering: in their minds, freedom, thinking, responsibility and hard work seem to be even greater suffering than the insane rules of this or that dictator, which one can get used to. The dragon freed people from the need to think and gave them, albeit unfair and deceitful, but a simple and understandable picture of the world, which was enough to learn by heart.
Maslow's Motivation and Personality
In his works on the relationship between motivation, Abraham Maslow refers to the fact that man is an eternally desiring being. He rarely has a feeling of complete satisfaction, and if he does, it doesn’t last long. Having satisfied one desire, another immediately arises, a third, and so on endlessly. Incessant desires are a characteristic feature of a person, and also act as motivation throughout life. The external manifestation of one particular motive often depends on general satisfaction, as well as dissatisfaction with the needs of the body. For example, if a person is hungry or thirsty, if he is threatened every day by earthquakes or floods, if he constantly feels the hatred of others, then he will not have the desire to paint a picture, dress beautifully, or decorate his house.
A. Maslow argues that multiple motivations of behavior guide a person. This is confirmed by physiological studies of eating or sexual behavior. Psychologists know that often the same behavioral act expresses very different impulses. For example, a person eats so that the feeling of hunger disappears, but there are other reasons. Sometimes a person eats to satisfy other needs. By having sex, a person satisfies not only sexual desire. Some assert themselves; others feel power, feel strong; still others are looking for sympathy and warmth.
Types of Human Motivation
Such types of motivation as “carrot” and “stick” are widely known. This is nothing more than an idea of negative and positive motives. These principles have long been used in economics, politics, management, education and other areas, including everyday life.
It is interesting that these types of motivations can characterize not only an individual, but also a certain society. It is known, for example, that since ancient times the Russian consciousness has been more characterized by “stick” motivation than “carrot” motivation. This is even reflected in the proverbs: “Until thunder strikes, a man will not cross himself.” A similar character of the Russian person was noted by researchers of culture and even religion. Thus, one church historian said that Russian Orthodox people have long believed not so much in God as in the devil, and in Russian religious (and for the most part folk-religious) culture, thousands of ways and advice have arisen on how to avoid meeting with evil spirits; at the same time, original Orthodoxy condemns such a practice, because if a person believes in “an all-powerful God,” then he should not be afraid of evil spirits.
“Gingerbread” is largely a Western system of motifs. Thus, in European countries there are a number of incentives for citizens who strictly comply with the law, and a relatively mild system of punishments for those who violate the laws. In our country, the opposite is true: practically nothing is provided for law-abiding citizens, but the system of punishments is extensive, confusing, cruel and clumsy.
However, in modern Western society the role of the “stick” in certain areas is also growing. There, cruel treatment of children and violation of discipline in enterprises are severely condemned. The existing problems, say, in public health care in themselves are a “stick” for Europeans, encouraging them to work hard to pay for private medical services.
Which of these motives are most effective? Each country and each people has its own answer to this question. History shows that European society was favorably influenced by the widespread increase in the “carrot”, that is, the development of positive motives; but opposite trends led to revolutions, strikes, spontaneous and organized mass protests. This has been evident in European history for centuries.
In modern Singapore, the “whip” played a key role in the prosperity of society. There are a great many restrictions and prohibitions in this city-state, and in order to maintain impeccable order, punishments such as caning are widely used. There are no “carrots” for citizens here. And it seems strange to many of us how such methods have led Singapore to an economic and social miracle, high standards of living, social cohesion (and this in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural country with a high population density) and the absence of mass discontent.
The countries of Eastern Europe, the USA, and China stand out in that their societies maintain a certain balance of incentives. For Eastern Europe, this was especially noticeable during the years of the Soviet bloc: citizens loyal to the state regime, who worked conscientiously and cared about their high “moral character” (from the point of view of the authorities), were guaranteed a fairly high standard of living, a certain degree of civil liberties, provision of consumer goods. And next to this is the brutal persecution of dissidents, dissidents, “parasites,” and the condemnation of an immoral way of life, elevated to ideology. Something similar could be seen in these countries both before and after the “Soviet era.” Only people who were characterized by a struggle between opposing systems of motives could build such a society. To compare this with the Western European system, just look at the prisons in these countries: Norwegian or Dutch ones are more reminiscent of resort hotels, and Polish or Romanian ones are more like a concentration camp.
This makes some sense. In the cultures of different countries, the image of a prison is given the role of a kind of “scarecrow”, with the help of which some people try to motivate others, thereby controlling their behavior. In Russia, the USA, China and the countries of Eastern Europe, a prison is not a correctional institution, but an “institution for the execution of punishments,” and its task is to oppress and destroy the individual, to destroy the criminal morally and often physically. And only the desire not to “slide” to the point of ending up behind bars gives the average person in these countries the impetus to perform socially useful actions (work, provide for their family, respect others, do not steal, do not kill, etc.). The first opportunity to avoid a prison sentence motivates a typical resident of these countries to commit a crime.
The behavior of Europeans is subject to different principles. Apparently, a prison term does not frighten them: after all, the existing restrictions in the prisons there do not humiliate the prisoner as an individual, the prison staff show him a certain respect. But at the same time, the discipline of Europeans, their politeness, and desire to work hard (but not overwork) is amazing. If you leave a wallet with money on a bench in some German city, then, most likely, a week later you will find it there completely untouched (currently the situation is much different due to the abundance of migrants in Germany and other European countries who have completely different psyche). The reason is that the average European is determined to achieve success and maintain his good reputation, and any “wrong” action can ruin this reputation. You won’t go to jail, but your friends will turn away from you, your girlfriend will stop loving you, your parents will kick you out of the house, you won’t be hired by a good organization...
If you delve into history, you can see what motivated people in different countries, creating similar inventions, performing the same actions. A good example is the creation of a printing press. Johannes Gutenberg was definitely positively motivated: with the help of his printing house, he wanted to improve his financial condition, gain fame and influence, become a pioneer of something new, and give people new opportunities for development. He was the creator, chief worker and owner of his enterprise. In fact, he succeeded in his plans: not only merchants and artisans, but also royalty and the church became his clients.
The Russian pioneer printer Ivan Fedorov was motivated by slightly different considerations. For him, his work was rather ritual; he wanted to “serve God.” The visible analogues of “god” for him were rulers, church hierarchs, and boyars. In the first Moscow printing house, opened by the Tsar and Metropolitan for personal needs, Fedorov was a powerless worker, and he did not want to have any personal benefits from this enterprise. For a long time, the pioneer printer was driven by circumstances that did not allow him to fully implement his plans: ordinary priests and book copyists were angry with him, the printing house was quickly burned and forced him to flee the country to Lithuania, and then to Ukraine. Outside Russia, the pioneer printer's business went much better, but again at the expense of strong rulers. The Russian pioneer printer never acquired his own personal printing house. Apparently, the Christian god and government officials were for Fedorov a kind of “whip” that should be feared and served.
“The Man in the Case” is another character, now literary, who was clearly motivated solely by the “whip”. His favorite saying was the expression “no matter what happens,” which he repeated whenever he saw something unusual. Those around him were surprised where this petty official, a quiet and inconspicuous man, suddenly awakened with remarkable energy, with which he began to scribble complaints left and right. All-encompassing fear prompted him to act, while those around him were motivated in their actions by positive considerations.
Motivation for personal activity
A motive is a conscious impulse aimed at achieving a specific goal and accepted by an individual as a personal necessity.
The motivation of an individual is often driven by several motives. Certain motives are of leading importance and give meaning to an individual’s activities. Motives can conflict with the possibilities of their implementation. In these cases, the individual experiences a suppression of the motive or a change in it.
All motives must be distinguished from motivation. Motivation is understood as justifying statements regarding the action taken. Little-conscious impulsive actions occur on the basis of unconscious motives.
The motivation of an individual’s activity is determined by attitudes. An attitude is a readiness for a certain behavior. Attitude is the most constant, stable basis of human behavior. There are two types of installation - differentiated and general. Attitudes are the basis of behavioral stereotypes that free one from making decisions.
A complex mechanism of behavior includes the following components: motive, goals, programming, decisions, choice of means of implementation.
So, the motivation of an individual’s activity includes a complex of interrelated factors. And the motivation of the individual itself acts as a manifestation of needs. To understand the motive of a person, inner work is necessary. The term motivation was first mentioned by Schopenhauer. Currently, there are many interpretations of personal motivation. Motive is often confused with purpose and need. A need is understood as an unconscious desire to remove discomfort, and a goal is understood as the result of a conscious desire. For example: hunger is a need, the desire to satisfy hunger is a motive, and the peaches to which a person is drawn is a goal.
Lecture 7. INTERNAL DRIVES
Motives of behavior
Let’s agree to call different types of internal motivations (needs, aspirations, desires, attractions, etc.) to activities, actions, and behavior motives. In various combinations with the mental and volitional abilities of the individual, they serve as the driving forces of his life.
Desires and feelings . A person initially has unconscious needs, emotionally charged desires that push him towards some poorly realized goal. Subjectively, drives are experienced as a special excitation of the nervous system.
Drives set the direction of movement towards a goal and are characterized by readiness for action. They are characterized by the impossibility or significant difficulty of resisting the impulse. At the same time, the goals of the drives are blurred, nonspecific, and scattered.
The sources of drives are located not only inside, but also outside of a person. Thanks to teaching and upbringing, the individual is mastered by ever new and often more complex impulses.
The objects of drives are a variety of entities external to a person (motives themselves): people, actions, things, even mental states.
Drives differ from instincts, which humans practically do not have in their pure form, in that they vaguely require some control, “censorship,” and sometimes protection from the consciousness.
Attractions may contradict a specific real situation, the image of “I”, values and attitudes of the individual.
Very strong inclinations are irresistible; they are realized without any attempt at internal resistance. Excitations of lesser strength either fade away or, becoming conscious, are realized in the form of a specific desire, dream, etc.
The most important drives . The attraction to life is not only sexual attraction in the proper sense of the word, but also the attraction to self-preservation.
The death drive is aimed at destruction, at the complete elimination of stress. It is directed towards a state of extremely complete, absolute peace. The drive for self-preservation is a set of needs related to the maintenance and safety of life; their prototype is hunger. It easily passes from the pleasure principle to the reality principle, in contrast to sexual instincts, which with difficulty learn to take reality into account. The functions of self-preservation are located next to the reality principle, and sexual desires are located next to the pleasure principle.
The drive for self-preservation is a fundamental need.
The drive to life is aimed not only at preserving individual existence, but also at creating larger social unities on their basis.
This tendency is revealed by a multidirectional movement towards the establishment and maintenance of the most differentiated and organized forms. The attraction to life is based on the principle of binding.
Drives to life are unconscious needs for self-preservation and love. They are associated with bodily functions necessary to maintain the life of the individual; their prototype is hunger.
The life of drives (the structure and dynamics of the sphere of drives, the features of their manifestation and influence on other mental functions) often determines the entire structure of a person’s mental life, his character. Studying the life of drives is especially important in re-education: with accentuations of character, psychopathy, personality changes, drug addiction.
The drive to destruction, to aggression, is the desire to destroy a hated object; it is a manifestation of the outward-directed drive to death. They can be directed towards the cultural and living world. Freud also included self-destructive impulses in destructive drives.
The desire for power is an irrational desire to survive in competition with other individuals.
Defense against drives (self-defense of the “I” from drives) is a tendency associated with the most general conditions of the psychic mechanism, with the law of constancy. It arises as one of the moments of defense in every internal conflict and represents - in the precise sense of the word - the repression of memories, images, thoughts into the unconscious.
Repression is an action through which a person tries to eliminate thoughts, images, and memories associated with drives from consciousness. This is a universal process that underlies the formation of the unconscious as a separate area of the psyche. Repression plays an important role in both normal and pathological conditions.
Repression occurs in cases where the satisfaction of an instinct is pleasant in itself, but can become unpleasant when other demands are taken into account.
It is important to emphasize that repression always remains helpless before the force of unconscious desire striving to return to consciousness (return of the repressed, formation of a compromise).
Repression is present, at least temporarily, in many defensive processes. People often have no control over the memories of events that shocked them, which, emerging in memory, retain all their vividness for them. But the repressed content eludes the individual. This is what distinguishes repression from such ordinary defenses as, for example, avoidance, withdrawal.
Drives become and develop in a person according to mechanisms that are fixed in two fundamental principles - the principle of pleasure and the principle of reality. Thus, the drive for self-preservation is directly related to the reality principle, and the sexual drive is directly related to the pleasure principle. The conflict between the pleasure drives and the reality drives provides the key to understanding many neuroses.
The pleasure principle and its transition to the reality principle are discussed in more detail below.
Needs . Complex motives—human needs—to a great extent determine his behavior. Behavior is based on needs, over which executive actions are built to satisfy them.
Needs always develop under the influence of cognitive processes in which the individual participates.
The motivation of a person to take a particular action is influenced by his interpretation of external, and not just internal events.
Purposeful human behavior can only be explained as a result of the interaction of personal, need-based, and external, situational factors. Signs of a situation that a person can hope for or that he should fear actualize the corresponding need, and the need seeks a situation for its satisfaction that corresponds to it.
The same action can have a variety of motivating reasons and their combination. For example, a person may eat food not because he is currently hungry, but because he wants to calm down or experience a particularly strong taste sensation. Or because it is inconvenient for him to refuse the offered treat, etc. The emergence and manifestation of a need is the result of the interaction of many factors.
The development of needs determines the dynamics of behavior, but, in turn, depends on the nature and type of human life. Therefore, needs are distinguished by type of activity: cognitive, communicative, gaming, etc.
For a person, needs act as desires, drives, aspirations, interests, intentions. To feel a need - to want, strive, achieve fulfillment or possession. A weak need is a small desire, and vice versa.
The character of a need takes on a habit for an individual—an established way of behaving in a certain situation. Habits can develop spontaneously, be the product of directed upbringing, develop into stable character traits, acquire features of automatism, etc.
In the dynamics of an individual’s motivational systems, habits, attitudes, and so on are determined by the prospect of realizing the individual’s future capabilities (G.W. Allport, 1897-1967).
It is possible to stimulate and bring to life a new need only by relying on an existing need. The existing needs depend on the general orientation of the individual. The general orientation of a personality can only change as new and new needs arise in it. It would seem that a paradoxical situation arises, a logically vicious circle.
However, numerous experiments show that this circle can be broken, since the installation can be created, organized, and provided. This is the task of education. But this can only be done by taking into account the nature of the entire previous experience of a given person.
For education, achievement motives are especially important - a person’s needs and desire for success in various activities. These include the desire to learn, know, understand, the need to be no worse than others, to become better, the desire for recognition, etc.
Needs for success . Anticipation of success is one of the most important motives for the activity of a developing person. Need forces a person to engage in purposeful activity, the results of which appear in the form of evaluative emotions. Anticipation, along with such cognitive processes as comparison, juxtaposition, evaluation, categorization, imagination, memory, is involved in the emergence of emotions.
Anticipation (anticipation, presentiment) of achievements is closely connected with the imagination and with the system of values and attitudes of the individual.
The ability to anticipate evaluative emotions is undoubtedly teachable. It largely depends on training. And it will depend on upbringing whether success in what activity a given person actually wants, whether he expects easy or difficult success.
In relation to achievement behavior, it is also very important to what exactly a person attributes the probability of his success. Luck (chance) or your abilities, hard work or cunning, etc.
At the same time, a person evaluates the difficulty and complexity of the desired achievements, comparing himself with other people and similar tasks and circumstances. Therefore, a lot in achievement behavior depends on the self-esteem of the individual.
A. Adler (1870-1937) associated the motives for achievement with compensatory and overcompensatory mechanisms for overcoming the inferiority complex.
The needs for creativity and self-actualization, according to A. Maslow (1908-1970, USA), represent the highest level of the hierarchy of motives. They are preceded by physiological needs, needs for safety, love, affection and belonging to a certain social group, respect and recognition.
Cognitive needs. To develop, i.e. to become different, new (and a person cannot stand still, if he does not move forward, he rolls backward), a person cannot but have a cognitive need. She cannot dwell on what is already known and familiar. It is necessary to deal with the alien, the distant, the unknown.
To overcome the distance means to return to your old self and find a new yourself, ever closer to the truth and skillful.
Development of cognitive needs and. Developing cognitive needs means developing a system of values, among which a large place is occupied by faith in one’s strengths and an adequate assessment of one’s growth as a constant process.
Mental laziness is directly related to the thirst for impressions and an abundance of vivid emotions. The development of curiosity is hampered by the “undigestion” of external impressions. The transition of external impressions into more complex mental work requires additional efforts that connect this work, first of all, with important personal attitudes.
What is needed here is the development of theoretical thinking, which allows one to rise above immediate information and gradually overcome immediate impressionability. Over the years, it depends less and less on external interest, which is provided, for example, by abundant visuals, music and art. It depends more and more on thinking, on a conscious system of values.
Deficit of cognitive needs. Weakness or lack of cognitive interests, motives for achievement, love for life and people mean spiritual emptiness and moral apathy.
The lack of serious cognitive interests leads to fatal hopelessness, when a person, dull with boredom, kills time in an atmosphere of spiritual impasse.
Dejection, melancholy, and melancholy force us to look for ways to escape from oppressive boredom, which is understood as the colorless and sterile everyday life. Spleen, a depressed mood of languor from a lack of interest, overcome many criminals, especially teenagers who commit unmotivated murders.
The sin of despondency is inextricably linked with a feeling of tragic loneliness and unbelief. The inability to rise into the sky, the experience of painful boredom, the feeling of meaninglessness, the emptiness of life are opposed by the search and acquisition of spiritual principles in religion, as well as in scientific, cultural and artistic values.
Interests. The main manifestations of cognitive needs are interests. They concentrate the individual’s attitude towards an object or activity as something valuable and attractive to him. They provide awareness of the goals of the activity.
The content and nature of interest are associated with the hierarchy of a person’s needs and values, with the nature of the forms and means of his gaming, educational, labor, and social activities. They depend on the conditions of his life, training and upbringing. At the same time, they determine the very possibility of life, learning and education.
Satisfaction of interest does not lead to its extinction, but evokes new interests that correspond to a higher level of cognitive activity. Interest is formed and developed in the process. Superficial, random and unstable interests, caused by the external interest of objects, gradually give way to deeper, stable and effective interests.
Content types of pedagogically significant needs. “Thirst for knowledge and labor” (A.S. Pushkin) tops the list of the most desirable and expedient needs.
Knowledge and work are interdependent: work requires certain knowledge, skills, and abilities; their acquisition is impossible without difficulty.
Work is aimed at satisfying needs. Normally, it is at the same time a need itself. The goals of education include the need to learn and comprehend reality, as well as work as a need and pleasure.
Work presupposes the individual’s readiness to counteract obstacles that arise during the execution of an action. It is therefore important that the individual acquires the need for satisfaction from solving not only easy, but also difficult tasks.
The motive for achievement in work and thanks to work is also impossible without attributing personal meaning to the actions performed. It is essential that a person asserts himself through work.
Although any work contains elements of both mental and physical effort, there is predominantly mental and predominantly physical labor. It is highly desirable to cultivate the need for both types of work, the change of which is also a rest.
In terms of value, cognitive and labor needs in themselves are neutral. In order for their content to be constructive and creative, it is necessary to cultivate a love for good, the need to increase goodness and reduce the amount of evil.
Enjoying the process and results of work is perhaps the main reward for work. The very tension of human strength, a difficult goal and the feeling of victory over oneself and over the material that eternally resists work gives a very powerful, long-lasting, deep pleasure. Happy is the one who knew it early. He is well brought up.
Cultural needs are no less valuable for the individual and society. Among them is the need to enjoy high art and the beauty of nature, the need for decent leisure, meaningful communication, etc.
Unwanted needs and habits. Education is expected to prevent the need for aggression and the desire for power, which is caused by attempts to overcome feelings of inferiority.
The need to consume, receiving more from others than giving to them is also harmful - the thoughtless psychology of the consumer. Most often, consumerism is not associated with real needs, but with imitation of others, with rush demand for fashionable goods, etc. It can extend not only to goods in material form, but also to the satisfaction of artificial needs for communication, recreation, etc.
One of the goals of education is for material wealth to be a means or prerequisite for spiritual well-being.
Obsessive, sometimes irresistible needs, such as attraction to alcohol, nicotine, and drugs, are highly undesirable.
Education has the power to prevent or overcome extremes in the development of needs - their excessive limitation and their immeasurable abundance.
Complete unsatisfied desires. It results in negativism, unwillingness to reckon with other people, and a negative attitude towards them. The demands of adults who do not take into account the inescapable needs of children, primarily those related to self-esteem, lead to a refusal to fulfill the requirements or to the performance of actions that are opposite to those required.
A ban on the part of adults to perform an action that is very important for a child can lead to his aggressiveness or passivity. Oppressive tension, anxiety, a feeling of hopelessness when a need that is significant to a person is not fulfilled can lead him into the world of dreams and fantasies, and can cause secret or open hostility.
Excess of satisfaction. With an abundance of pleasures, entertainment and too frequent satisfaction of passions, phenomena of mental satiety can develop.
Saturation is dangerous; it sometimes reaches the level of disgust for life.
Conclusions for education. The entire educational process can and should be considered from the point of view of humanizing human needs. In other words, the school is obliged to teach beauty and decency, the dignity of actually human ways of satisfying the most important human needs. To do this, she must specifically study the structure and system of human needs, the correctness and incorrectness of ways and methods of satisfying them, and develop a desirable attitude towards these methods.
A school will achieve its highest goals if it becomes a school of needs for creativity, will bring these needs to life and provide the opportunity to satisfy them. The best school is the school of need and ability to bring the best into life. And this requires self-discipline, self-government, and self-improvement. The school provides funds, i.e. material and assistance for self-realization of students, and evokes a strong desire for proper self-realization.
Feelings . Activity is born from feeling; it is accompanied and served by the senses. As Honore de Balzac stated, feelings are the brightest part of our life.
The term feeling here refers to the structure and content of motives and motivating reasons for actions. We consider feeling, first of all, as subjective energy, will, motivation.
K.D. Ushinsky showed that in feelings “one can hear the character not of a separate thought, not of a separate decision, but of the entire content of our soul and its structure.”
Feelings color and express the conscious and sometimes unconscious needs, beliefs, experiences and values of an individual and human communities. From them events develop, various groups, social institutions, and everything, and everything.
Intellectual virtues manifest themselves only when they are guided by strong feelings. Taste (sense of proportion) prepares the conditions for activity and always accompanies it. Thus, the feeling of harmony or disharmony manifests itself in both moral and cognitive actions.
Faith . Among the various feelings that guide people, religious feelings play a predominant and fundamental role.
The strongest feelings and interests of a person are associated with the attitude towards the meaning of suffering, life and death. It is these ideas and experiences that lie in the realm of religions.
Religious feelings are diverse to the same extent that they are typical for the vast majority of people.
Religious experience is based on both positive and negative perceptions of existence.
Positive perceptions include delight in Creation, fascination with existence, gratitude to higher powers for the happiness of existence. Surprise at Creation, the infinity of space. Meeting with the divine, awareness of the holiness and justice of reality. Seeing your entire life in relation to its foundation, its origin and its continuation. View of reality as a manifestation of the divine or ultimate.
Peace and tranquility often accompany faith in the mercy of the Creator and one’s forgiveness. Also typical are feelings of “knowledge” of one’s purpose and destiny, and filling life with meaning.
The negative component of religious feelings includes the feeling of the mysterious presence of the Sacred, fear of it and dependence on the invisible will and existence of a higher order. Concern regarding the judgment of higher powers about one’s behavior and appearance, fear of condemnation from them.
The reflection of the concepts of God, faith, conversion, sin, salvation, service in the spiritual life of modern man has opened a wide field for research by psychologists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists and educators.
Their works contribute to the understanding of religion not only as membership in a particular denomination and not simply as logical-theological reasoning, but as a real force in human life. A powerful, sometimes all-determining force.
Hope . A person, on the one hand, is what he is, on the other hand, he is woven from hopes and expectations.
If we consisted only of the past and present, we would not take care of ourselves. We want to exist in the future, we protect ourselves for this. We defend our tomorrow, not our yesterday.
Nothing is important to people if it is not directed towards the future. Man lives, first of all, in the future and for the future.
People unite and form various alliances around one or another program for the future. What they will all be tomorrow is what unites people into society.
People face the future, consciously live in it and adapt their behavior to it.
Above the stream of phenomena that a person can cognize, above the cold and dead mechanism of the world, dreams and hopes shine and warm him.
The most cherished aspirations and hopes of people lie in the religious sphere - hopes for immortality and salvation.
Ambivalent feelings cover everyone who thinks about the future in which our grandchildren and great-grandchildren are destined to live. This is a feeling of fear of the difficulties of the immensely complex future of humanity. But at the same time - hope for the power of reason and humanity that can resist chaos.
Love . Love is a need, a central category of human motivation, an ability, an all-determining feeling and attitude, one of the highest values of both the religious and secular spheres of life. Love is the indestructible, eternal beginning of human existence.
All emotional phenomena are vectorial - directed towards some object or goal. But here the converse theorem is also true: in a person’s life there is not a single thing, phenomenon, process, event that would be free from his intention. In other words, there is nothing to which a person would not have an emotional attitude (indifference is the zero value of intention). It is clear that the opposition between love and non-love permeates the entire existence of the individual.
People are characterized by a tense oscillation between the poles of world denial and love of existence, between earthly and heavenly, curse and blessing.
Love simultaneously centers pedagogical issues around itself. In the broadest, equally carnal and spiritual sense of the word, love has been and remains the leitmotif of pedagogy. The issue of love is extremely important for the education and self-education of the individual.
Plutarch (“On the Love of Children”), Montaigne (separate chapters of “Experiments”), E. Kay (“The Age of the Child,” 1900), J. Korczak (“How to Love a Child,” 1922), A.S. Makarenko (“Book for Parents”, 1937) gave high examples of pedagogical applications of this issue.
Education needs to take into account the dangerous paradoxes of love: the possibility of love for death, danger, uncleanness, love for the terrible, unattractive, etc. An uncritical soul sometimes perceives painful forms of love as a pure, unselfish emotion.
In educational terms, the following types, forms, hypostases and manifestations of love are especially important: 1) love that does not require or expect a response, reciprocity, is not mutual. She receives or expects pleasure unilaterally; 2) mutual love, which, on the contrary, assumes, waits, and when possible, demands a response, reciprocity.
Love with one-sided intention . This is the variety of feelings and ideas of a person aimed at an object, an object of activity. Compassionate love that does not require reciprocity is directed towards specific people. This is participation in the lives of the needy, sick, wounded, elderly, humiliated and insulted.
Love as a value. It is highly desirable that as the child grows older, he views love more and more deeply and meaningfully as the highest value.
A child receives a respectful, serious, and even reverent attitude towards love unnoticed - in the course of learning and socialization. Under the influence of the appropriate spiritual climate and the atmosphere of his life stream.
In early childhood, a growing person receives or does not receive a charge of love for the whole world - fields, mountains, trees, animals, things. Only in the first childhood are such colossal tensions and vividness of sensations observed. Early childhood is the proximity of tears, the immensity of joy, the aggravation of pain, the richness of emotional life. From the time of youth, all this diminishes, fades, weakens, all this exposed nerves goes away, “the boiling water ligature of these days gets cold” (S. Yesenin).
But a cold mind is added. The place of causeless love for being is taken (or not taken) by intellectual love for the world.
A young person can understand love as a universal explanatory principle. For example, he is able to appreciate the idea of Empedocles (mid-5th century BC) about love as the driving force of the world - the force of attraction, and enmity as the force of repulsion. Or extend (following Goethe, the novel “Selective Affinity”, 1809) the phenomenon of valence, the attraction of chemical elements to the sphere of elemental laws of nature, the kingdom of reason and the world of love.
Young people will have to discover the value of love, simple being, and develop a conviction in the unity of love and freedom, in the creative mission of love.
In any case, for pedagogy it is not at all indifferent whether students will sincerely and deeply love Creation, nature, fauna and flora or not. Will they love things created by man for man. Treat a worthy cause with love or without love.
Love of knowledge and hard work. The pedagogical law of proper motivation obliges the teacher to arouse the love of students for knowledge and work, for the content of the acquired culture and the process of its assimilation.
It is harmful to force students to memorize information, the meaning and personal significance of which eludes their feelings and consciousness.
The law of proper motivation once again emphasizes the decisive role of feelings in education and upbringing.
Feelings accompany the formation of concepts and then accompany them in their application. A concept that is not colored by emotion, that has not turned into an attitude, a value, or a belief, is a superficial concept. It creates the illusion of education.
The love of the developing person for the search for truth and for truth itself is very desirable. Love for accuracy, clarity of the concepts he develops, for their practical application, love for honest mental efforts. He needs to see the beauty in this. It is necessary to show the beauty of clarity, accuracy, verification, truth of knowledge and the ugliness of the opposite.
Without love of truth and aversion to self-deception, there is no right thought. Without them, the knowledge of good is impossible. In order to develop the thinking power of our students, we must instill in them a love of truth and its knowledge. Aversion to self-deception is the material on which correct thought is mixed. We need a saving fear of self-deception, an attitude towards self-deception as a vice.
What does it mean to teach and teach such thinking, such a state of mind, such love? First of all, influence by your own example, your own behavior - infect with your love for mental work. And provide the child with space for experience, for experimentation, for practice, exercise and improvement of thinking.
This is why a creatively rich environment is so important for a growing person. An environment in which people are passionate about creativity, searching, and doing smart good.
But this environment must set before the child accessible and necessary tasks, as well as provide material for their independent solution. It should also give him the means to search for such material.
An environment that develops a love for culture encourages reading books as a source of one’s own thoughts (“reading as work and creativity” - V.F. Asmus). Communication with art in general should be moral and mental work. Only in this way does a person acquire freedom, the ability to dominate his own nature, to be the master of his destiny.
A loving attitude towards reading, science and the arts cultivates in our pets the inclination and ability for self-education.
Instilling in children a love of self-education, instilling in them a passion for self-improvement means encouraging their curiosity, i.e. let them teach you. Allow them to accept education and training, to desire it. And also - track your growth, your development, your achievements, competing not with others, but with yourself.
Success and encouragement are strong motives for learning. Success consists of achieving the goal that the student has set for himself.
Beneficial upbringing is impossible without the child’s acceptance of upbringing. Without children’s own desire for education, conscious or unconscious.
When a child has his own desire for his own development, he, as it were, enters into an unspoken agreement with the teacher about his upbringing.
The child thereby acknowledges the fact of his trust in the teacher and educator. What is very important here is the presence of a feeling, a sense in the person being educated, that what is important, useful and necessary for him is what the teacher gives him, what the knowledge, culture as a whole, brings to him, which is concentrated in the teacher. That is why this feeling must be so carefully guarded during education.
It is useful for those entering life to understand that the success of any activity depends on their love for business and work.
The drive that follows the satisfaction of successful learning can be much stronger than external encouragement. Success and failure educate rather than reward and punishment.
But you must also love to achieve success. The ideal educational situation is one in which students accept and share increasingly challenging goals and persist in successfully solving increasingly difficult problems.
Hence the scheme of upbringing and education: interest in an activity ® activity ® success in it ® love for it ® need for this activity. The educational process begins with infecting children with a love for the educational subject.
To know is to work. Work with love and perseverance. Reflection and passionate questioning are work.
Education has the power to instill in children a love of mental work, intellect and thinking. Thinking is not easy, it takes effort, and thinking takes time. There is nothing easier than having guardians who think for us and arrange our affairs. Love for the emptiness of peace is laziness and immaturity. Dislike of work stress is the path to death.
Love as a moral and aesthetic assessment and attitude. A person is not only capable of knowing, but also of having an emotional relationship with what he knows. He can not only assume that some event will happen, but also fear this event or welcome it.
Everything that he encounters in life and that he knows about, he can approve or disapprove of. Love it or hate it. To regret or wish. Rejoice or be sad.
Moreover, a person is inclined to consider his moral and aesthetic assessments and attitudes as his life credo and as an explanatory principle of his behavior. For example: “I don’t like it when people shoot in the back...” (V.S. Vysotsky); “I love the lush decay of nature...” (A.S. Pushkin).
With all these countless “I love or don’t love,” a person of any age tends to justify his choice, his preferences and actions, consent and refusal, addiction and abstinence. He tends to see the essence of his freedom in serving and pleasing his tastes and habits.
That is why the assistance of upbringing and education is so important in the formation and strengthening of assessments and attitudes that are useful to the individual and society.
The extent to which someone loves or dislikes ballet, sports, painting, whether he is passionate about alcohol, fashion, or comfort is indicative from a characterological point of view, but not all-determining in relation to the essence of a person. But a person’s love for justice or selflessness is very important for the formation of a creative type of personality. The Destroyer, on the other hand, despises generosity, tolerance and benevolence. But he admires cruelty.
The education of true morality is based on maintaining a sense of the sublime. To awaken a moral way of thinking, a moral state of mind, means to encourage love for moral strength - valor, feat, honor.
Feelings and relationships expressed by the formula “I love you, I don’t love you” are not only emotional, but also cognitive in nature. Although they appear unintentional, they are most often rationalized. This indicates that they are subject to reflection (analysis and comprehension), “justification.”
For pedagogy, this circumstance is of particular importance. The classification of mental phenomena must include not only cognitive, but also emotional and volitional components.
When a child acquires the habit of reflecting on his own preferences, he discovers either the randomness and secondary nature of his tastes, or, conversely, their fate. In any case, a growing person more or less consciously begins to build a hierarchy of subjective values, of course, correlating it with the values of his reference group.
Therefore, it is so important to encourage children to think about their desires, preferences, likes and tastes.
Love is mutual or awaiting an answer . Love and religious faith. In Buddhism, refraining from harming others and oneself is a fundamental precept. Without observing it, it is impossible to awaken in oneself compassion, kindness, love, mercy and friendliness.
In Christianity, the main commandment of love goes back to the Old Testament. In the Third Book of Moses, Leviticus, it is said: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself, I am the Lord” (19:18).
Jesus added new connotations to this commandment.
Firstly, Christ brought the commandment “love your neighbor” closer to the commandment of love for God. The Gospel of Matthew says: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind”; this is the first and greatest commandment; the second is similar to it: “Love your neighbor as yourself”; on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (22:37-40). With this, Jesus raised the requirement of love for one's neighbor to the level of the first and highest commandment.
Motivation for the formation of personal behavior
The motivation for the formation of personal behavior lies in the social environment of a person, his personal interests, needs, motives of behavior, attitudes, beliefs, actions, and actions taken. The social environment includes production, nature, the level of development of society, relationships with people, and public opinion. The environment has a tremendous influence on the emergence of human needs, which are formed from birth. Newborns have innate physiological and physical needs. Awareness of personal needs leads to the definition of one's own goals, interests and desires.
Developmental exercises to motivate children and adults
Developmental exercises for motivation
Own complexes serve as the main motivation for creating certain goals and completing assigned tasks:
Associations with animals. By associating himself with an imaginary character or a real object, a person will be able to achieve personal growth in a short time. The positive character traits of a favorite character evoke positive beliefs and attitudes in the individual, which lead to the emergence of new goals and objectives. Animals are powerful and wise creatures that are the main basis of nature and the surrounding world. By identifying his personality with an animal, a person motivates himself to show caution, perseverance, and determination.
To complete the exercise, you will need to choose an animal, characterize its positive and negative qualities, imagine yourself in the place of an imaginary character and strive to achieve your goal. It is recommended to choose the image of a strong lion or a cute rabbit. You should be in this image for at least 5 minutes and try to overcome in a short period of time the difficulties that the animal faces in reality. After completing the actions, you should analyze your own feelings and emotions, determine the tasks that you managed to implement.
Realizing your own mistake . Every person makes mistakes in life, but not everyone manages to admit them. In preschool institutions, teachers often make comments to children about performing various actions and actions. Teachers point out significant mistakes made by students when completing tests, and analyze complex tasks step by step. It is precisely these actions of adults that motivate children to complete difficult tasks.
Developmental exercises for motivation should be carried out several times a week. To do this, it is worth imagining a difficult situation, identifying the positive and negative aspects of the current situation, and correcting your own mistakes.
