The theory of motivation in modern psychology. Motive and motivation

1.1 Psychological theories of motivation

Numerous theories of motivation began to appear in the works of ancient philosophers. Currently, there are more than a dozen such theories. To understand them, it is important to know the background and history of their occurrence.

The origins of modern theories of motivation should be sought where psychological knowledge itself first arose. Views on the essence and origin of human motivation have changed repeatedly throughout the study of this problem, but have invariably been located between two philosophical movements: rationalism and irrationalism. According to the rationalist position, and it was especially clear in the works of ancient philosophers and theologians until the middle of the 19th century, man is a unique being of a special kind that has nothing in common with animals. It was believed that he, and only he, is endowed with reason, thinking and consciousness, has will and freedom to choose actions. The motivational source of human behavior is seen exclusively in the mind, consciousness and will of a person.

Irrationalism as a doctrine applies mainly to animals. It argued that the behavior of animals, unlike humans, is not free, unreasonable, controlled by dark, unconscious forces of the biological plane, which have their origins in organic needs.

The first actual motivational psychological theories, which incorporated rationalistic and irrationalistic ideas, should be considered to have arisen in the 17th-18th centuries. the theory of decision making, which explains human behavior on a rationalistic basis, and the theory of the automaton, which explains the behavior of animals on an irrationalistic basis. The first appeared in economics and was associated with the introduction of mathematical knowledge into the explanation of human behavior associated with economic choice. Then it was transferred to the understanding of human actions in other areas of its activity other than economics.

The development of automaton theory, stimulated by the successes of mechanics in the 17th-18th centuries, was further combined with the idea of a reflex as a mechanical, automatic, innate response of a living organism to external influences. The separate, independent existence of two motivational theories, one for humans and the other for animals, supported by theology and the division of philosophies into two opposing camps - materialism and idealism - continued until the end of the 19th century.

Second half of the 19th century. was marked by a number of outstanding discoveries in various sciences, including biology - the emergence of the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin. She had a significant influence not only on natural history, but also on medicine, psychology and other humanities. With his teaching, Charles Darwin, as it were, built a bridge over the abyss that for many centuries divided man and animal into two camps that were incompatible in anatomical, physiological and psychological terms. He also took the first decisive step forward in the behavioral and motivational rapprochement of these living beings, showing that humans and animals have many common forms of behavior, in particular emotionally expressive expressions, needs and instincts.

Under the influence of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, psychology began an intensive study of intelligent forms of behavior in animals (W. Koehler, E. Thorndike) and instincts in humans (S. Freud, W. McDougall, I.P. Pavlov, etc.).

If earlier the concept of need, associated with the needs of the organism, was used only to explain the behavior of animals, now it has begun to be used to explain human behavior, accordingly changing and expanding the composition of the needs themselves in relation to it. At this stage of the development of psychological knowledge and motivational theory, they tried to reduce the fundamental differences between humans and animals to a minimum.

For humans, the same organic needs that were previously given only to animals, including instincts, began to be rewritten as motivational factors. One of the first manifestations of such an extreme, irrationalistic, essentially biologizing point of view on human behavior were the theories of instincts of S. Freud and W. McDougall, proposed at the end of the 19th century. and developed at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Trying to understand human social graying by analogy with the behavior of animals, to reconcile this understanding with the discoveries that attracted many scientists at that time in the field of comparative studies of the intelligence of humans and apes, S. Freud and W. McDougall attempted to reduce all forms of human behavior to innate instincts.

The debate that began around the theory of instincts at the beginning of the twentieth century. did not lead to anything positive for the future fate of this concept. Its supporters were unable to give a scientifically satisfactory answer to any of the questions posed. In the end, discussions around the theory of instincts ended with the fact that the very concept of “instinct” in relation to a person began to be used less and less, replacing it with such concepts as need, reflex, attraction (drive) and others, which were included in the analysis of mental phenomena.

In the 20s of the current century, the theory of instincts was replaced by a concept that relies on biological needs to explain human behavior. This concept argued that humans and animals have common organic needs that have the same effect on their behavior. Periodically arising organic needs cause a state of excitement and tension in the body, and satisfaction of the need leads to a decrease (reduction) of tension.

There were no fundamental differences between the concepts of instinct and need, except that instincts are innate, unchangeable, and needs can be acquired and change throughout life, especially in humans.

In addition to the theories of human biological needs, instincts and drives, in the same years (the beginning of the twentieth century) two more new directions arose, stimulated not only by the evolutionary scientist Charles Darwin, but also by the discoveries of I.P. Pavlova. This is a behavioral (behaviorist) theory of motivation and a theory of higher nervous activity. The behavioral concept of motivation developed as a logical continuation of the ideas of D. Watson and E. Tolman; among the most famous representatives of this direction are K. Hull and B. Skinner. All of them tried to deterministically explain behavior within the framework of the original stimulus-response scheme. In its more modern version (this theory continues to be developed to this day almost in the same form in which it was proposed at the beginning and middle of the century by E. Tolman and K. Hull), the concept under consideration includes the latest achievements in the field of physiology of the body, cybernetics and psychology of behavior. Research started by I.P. Pavlov, were continued, deepened and expanded not only by his immediate students and followers, but also by other physiologists and psychologists. Among them we can name N.A. Bernstein, author of the original theory of psychophysiological regulation of movements, P.K. Anokhin, who proposed a model of a functional system that describes and explains the dynamics of a behavioral act at the modern level, and E.I. Sokolov, who discovered and studied the orienting reflex, which is of great importance for understanding the psychophysiological mechanisms of perception, attention and motivation, proposed a model of the conceptual reflex soul.

Finally, the last of the theories that already existed at the beginning of our century and continues to be developed now is the theory of organic needs of animals. It developed under the strong influence of previous irrationalistic traditions in understanding animal behavior. Its modern representatives see their task as purely physiologically explaining the mechanism of work and functioning of biological needs.

Since the 30s of the twentieth century. Special concepts of motivation appear and stand out, relating only to humans. One of the first such concepts was the theory of motivation proposed by K. Lewin. Following her, the works of representatives of humanistic psychology such as A. Maslow, G. Allport, K. Rogers and others were published.

In Russian psychology, after the revolution of 1917, attempts were also made to pose and solve problems of human motivation. But for many years until the mid-60s, according to the unjustified tradition that had formed over decades, psychological research was mainly focused on the study of cognitive processes. Of the completed concepts of motivation created over the years, more or less thought out and brought to a certain level, one can perhaps name only the theory of the activity origin of the human motivational sphere, created by A.N. Leontiev and continued in the works of his students and researchers.

According to the concept of A.N. Leontiev, the motivational sphere of a person, like his other psychological characteristics, has its sources in practical activities. In the activity itself one can detect those components that are associated with them. Behavior in general, for example, corresponds to human needs; the system of activities from which it is composed - a variety of motives; set of actions that form an activity - an ordered set of goals. Thus, between the structure of activity and the structure of a person’s motivational sphere there are relations of isomorphism, i.e. mutual correspondence.

The dynamic changes that occur in a person’s motivational sphere are based on the development of a system of activities, which, in turn, is subject to objective social laws.

Thus, this concept is an explanation of the origin and dynamics of the human motivational sphere. It shows how a system of activities can change, how its hierarchization is transformed, how individual types of activities and operations appear and disappear, what modifications occur with actions. From this picture of the development of activities, laws are further derived according to which changes occur in the motivational sphere of a person, the acquisition of new needs, motives and goals.

So, by the middle of this century, at least nine theories have emerged in the psychology of motivation and are still being developed as relatively independent ones. Each of them has its own achievements and at the same time its disadvantages. The main one is that all these theories, if considered separately, are able to explain only some of the phenomena of motivation and answer only a small part of the questions that arise in this area of psychological research. Only the integration of all theories with deep analysis and calculation of all the positive things they contain can give us a more or less complete picture of the determination of human behavior. However, such a rapprochement is seriously hampered by inconsistency in starting positions, differences in research methods, terminology, and the lack of firmly established facts about human motivation.

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The origins of modern theories of motivation should be sought where psychological knowledge itself first arose. The scheme proposed by the famous American specialist in the field of studying motivation, DATKINSON, will help with this. In the present version, it is modified and supplemented by the author of the textbook (Fig. 65).

Views on the essence and origin of human motivation have changed several times throughout the study of this problem, but have invariably been located between two philosophical movements: rationalism and irrationalism. According to the rationalist position, and it was especially clear in the works of ancient philosophers and theologians 1 until the middle of the 19th century, man is a unique being of a special kind, which has nothing in common with animals. It was believed that he, and only he, was endowed with reason, thinking and consciousness, possessing will and freedom to choose actions.

1 Theology- a set of religious doctrines about the essence of God and divine acts.

Rice. 65. Diagram illustrating the history and continuity in the development of motivation theory

The motivational source of human behavior is seen exclusively in the mind, consciousness and will of a person.

Irrationalism as a doctrine extended mainly to animals. It argued that the behavior of animals, unlike humans, is not free, unreasonable, controlled by dark, unconscious forces of the biological plane, which have their origins in organic needs.

The first actually motivational, psychological theories that incorporated rationalistic and irrationalistic ideas should be considered to have arisen in the 17th-18th centuries. decision theory explaining human behavior on a rationalistic basis, and automaton theory, explaining the behavior of an animal on an irrational basis. The first appeared in economics and was associated with the introduction of mathematical knowledge into the explanation of human behavior associated with economic choice. Then it was transferred to the understanding of human actions in other areas of its activity other than economics.

The development of automaton theory, stimulated by the successes of mechanics in XVII-XVIII centuries, further connected with the idea of a reflex as a mechanical, automatic, innate response of a living organism to external influences. The separate, independent existence of two motivational theories: one for humans, the other for animals, supported by theology and the division of philosophies into two opposing camps - materialism and idealism - continued until the end XIX V.

Second half XIX V. was marked by a number of outstanding discoveries in various sciences, including biology - the emergence evolutionary theory CH Darwin. She had a significant influence not only on natural history, but also on medicine, psychology and other humanities. With his teaching, C. Darwin, as it were, built a bridge over the abyss that for many centuries divided man and animals into two camps that were incompatible in anatomical, physiological and psychological terms. He also took the first decisive step forward in the behavioral and motivational rapprochement of these living beings, showing that humans and animals have many common forms of behavior, in particular emotionally expressive expressions, needs and instincts.

If earlier the concept of need, associated with the needs of the organism, was used only to explain the behavior of an animal, now it has begun to be used to explain human behavior, accordingly changing and expanding the composition of the needs themselves in relation to it. At this stage of the development of psychological knowledge and motivational theory, they tried to minimize the fundamental differences between humans and animals.

The same organic needs that were previously assigned only to animals, including instincts, began to be attributed to humans as motivational factors. One of the first manifestations of such an extreme, irrationalistic, essentially biologizing, point of view on human behavior was theories of instincts by Z. Freud and W. McDougall, proposed at the end of the 19th century and developed at the beginning of the 20th century.

Trying to understand human social behavior by analogy with the behavior of animals, to reconcile this understanding with the discoveries that attracted many scientists at that time in the field of comparative studies of the intelligence of humans and apes, S. Freud and W. McDougall attempted to reduce all forms of human behavior to innate instincts. In S. Freud's theory there were three such instincts: the life instinct, the death instinct and the aggressive instinct. W. McDougall proposed a set of ten instincts: the instinct of invention, the instinct of construction, the instinct of curiosity, the instinct of flight, the herd instinct, the instinct of pugnacity, the reproductive (parental) instinct, the instinct of disgust, the instinct of self-humiliation, the instinct of self-affirmation. In later works, W. McDougall added eight more instincts to those listed, mainly related to organic needs.

There were many problems associated with the theory of instincts. The main ones are the following:

1. How to prove the existence of these instincts in a person?

2. To what extent can those forms of behavior that are acquired by a person during his lifetime under the influence of experience and social conditions be reduced to them or derived from them?

3. How to divide between the behavior that is actually instinctive in these forms and that acquired as a result of learning during life?

4. How, using only instincts, can we explain the actions of a cultured, civilized person?

The debates that began around the theory of instincts at the beginning of the 20th century did not lead to anything positive for the future fate of this concept. Its supporters were unable to give a scientifically satisfactory answer to any of the questions posed. In the end, discussions around the theory of instincts ended with the fact that the very concept of “instinct” in relation to a person began to be used less and less, replacing it with such concepts as need, reflex, attraction (drive) and others, which were included in the analysis of mental phenomena.

Both concepts - “instinct” and “need” - had one significant drawback: their use did not imply the presence of psychological cognitive factors associated with consciousness, with the subjective states of the body, which are called mental. Due to this circumstance, these two concepts were replaced by the concept of attraction - drive. Attraction- the body’s desire for some final result, subjectively presented in the form of some goal, expectation, intention, accompanied by corresponding emotional experiences.

In addition to the theories of human biological needs, instincts and drives, in the same years (the beginning of the 20th century) two more new directions arose, stimulated not only by the evolutionary teachings of Charles Darwin, but also by the discoveries of I.P. Pavlov. This behavioral (behaviourist) theory of motivation and theory of higher nervous activity. The behavioral concept of motivation developed as a logical continuation of the ideas of D. Watson in the theory that explains behavior. In addition to D. Watson and E. Tolman, among the representatives of this direction, having received

Those who are most famous are K. Hull and B. Skinner. All of them tried to deterministically explain behavior within the framework of the original stimulus-response scheme. In its more modern version (and this theory continues to be developed to this day almost in the same form in which it was proposed at the beginning and middle of the century by E. Tolman and K. Hull), the concept under consideration includes the latest achievements in the field of physiology of the body, cybernetics and behavioral psychology.

The research begun by I.P. Pavlov was continued, deepened and expanded not only by his direct students and followers, but also by other physiologists and psychologists. Among them we can name N.Bernstein, the author of the original theory of psychophysiological regulation of movements, P.Kanokhin, who proposed a model of a functional system that describes and explains the dynamics of a behavioral act at the modern level, and E.N. Sokolov, who discovered and studied the orientation reflex, which has a large importance for understanding the psychophysiological mechanisms of perception, attention and motivation, proposed a model of the conceptual reflex arc.

Finally, the last of the theories that already existed at the beginning of our century and continues to be developed now was theory of organic needs of animals. It developed under the strong influence of previous irrationalistic traditions in understanding animal behavior. Its modern representatives see their task as purely physiologically explaining the mechanisms of work and functioning of biological needs.

Since the 30s of the XX century. Special concepts of motivation appear and stand out, relating only to humans. One of the first such concepts was the theory of motivation proposed by Klevin. Following her, the works of representatives of humanistic psychology were published, such as A. Maslow, G. Allport, K. Rogers and others.

The American motivation researcher G. Murray, along with a list of organic, or primary, needs, identical to the basic instincts identified by W. McDougall, proposed a list of secondary (psychogenic) needs that arise on the basis of instinct-like drives as a result of upbringing and training. These are the needs to achieve success, affiliation, aggression, the needs of independence, counteraction.

Viva, respect, humiliation, protection, dominance, - attracting attention, avoiding harmful influences, avoiding failures, patronage, order, play, rejection, comprehension, sexual relations, help, mutual understanding. In addition to these two dozen needs, the author attributed to man the following six: acquisition, deflection of accusations, knowledge, creation, explanation, recognition and frugality.

A different classification of human needs into hierarchically constructed groups, the sequence of which indicates the order in which needs arise in the process of individual development, as well as the development of the motivational sphere in general, was proposed by A. Maslow. In a person, according to his concept, the following seven classes of needs sequentially appear from birth and accompany personal maturation (Fig. 66):

1. Physiological (organic) needs.

2. Security needs.

3. Needs for belonging and love.

4. Respect (honor) needs.

5. Cognitive needs.

6. Aesthetic needs.

7. Self-actualization needs.

In the second half of the 20th century. theories of human needs were supplemented by a number of special motivational concepts presented in the works of D. McClelland, DATkinson, G. Heckhausen, G. Kelly, Y. Rotter. The following provisions are common to all of them:

1. Denial of the fundamental possibility of creating a single universal theory of motivation that would equally satisfactorily explain both the behavior of animals and humans.

2. The conviction that stress reduction as the main motivational source of purposeful behavioral activity at the human level does not work, in any case, is not the main motivational principle for him.

3. The affirmation, instead of reducing tension, of the principle of activity, according to which a person is not reactive in his behavior, but is initially active, that the sources of his immanent activity - motivation - are located in himself, in his psychology.

4. Recognition, along with the unconscious, of the essential role of a person’s consciousness in determining his behavior. Bringing conscious regulation of human actions to the fore.

5. The desire to introduce into scientific circulation specific concepts that reflect the characteristics of human motivation. Such concepts were, for example, social needs, motives (D. McClelland, D. Atkinson, G. Heckhausen), life goals (K. Rogers, R. May), cognitive factors (Y. Rotter, G. Kelly, etc.) .

6. Denial of the adequacy for humans of such methods of studying (generating) motivational states that are used at the animal level, in particular, food, biological deprivation, physical stimuli such as electric shocks and other purely physical punishments.

7. Search for special methods for studying motivation, suitable only for humans and not repeating the shortcomings of those techniques with which the motivation of animals is studied. The desire to directly connect these methods with human speech and consciousness - its main distinctive features.

All the listed concepts to which these provisions relate are shown in Fig. 65 are combined into two blocks with the names “theory of social needs” and “humanistic theory”.

In Russian psychology, after the revolution of 1917, attempts were also made to pose and solve problems of human motivation. But for many years, until the mid-60s, according to the unjustified tradition that had developed over decades, psychological research was mainly focused on the study of cognitive processes. Of the concepts of motivation created over the years, more or less thought out and brought to a certain level of completeness, we can perhaps only name theory of the activity origin of the human motivational sphere, created by A.N. Leontiev and continued in the works of his students and followers.

According to the concept of A.N. Leontyev, the motivational sphere of a person, like his other psychological characteristics, has its sources in practical activities. In the activity itself one can find those components that correspond to the elements of the motivational sphere and are functionally and genetically related to them. Behavior in general, for example, corresponds to human needs; the system of activities from which it is composed - a variety of motives; set of actions that form an activity - an ordered set of goals. Thus, between the structure of activity and the structure of a person’s motivational sphere there are relations of isomorphism, i.e. mutual correspondence.

l SELF-ACTUALIZATION NEEDS:

/REALIZATION\ / OWN \ / GOALS, \ / ABILITIES, \ / DEVELOPMENT \ / OWN \ / PERSONALITY \

AESTHETIC NEEDS: / harmony, symmetry, order, beauty\

COGNITIVE NEEDS: / KNOW, BE ABLE, UNDERSTAND, \ / RESEARCH \

RESPECT (RECOGNITION) NEEDS: / COMPETENCE, ACHIEVEMENT \ / SUCCESS, APPROVAL, RECOGNITION, \ / AUTHORITY \

/ \ NEEDS FOR BELONGING AND LOVE: / TO BELONG TO A COMMUNITY, TO BE \ / NEAR PEOPLE, TO BE RECOGNIZED AND \ / ACCEPTED BY THEM \

/ SECURITY NEEDS: \ / FEEL SECURED. GET RID OF \ / FROM FEAR AND FAILURES, FROM AGGRESSIVENESS \

/ PHYSIOLOGICAL (ORGANIC) \ / NEEDS: \ / HUNGER, THIRST, SEXUAL DESIRE AND OTHERS \

Rice. 66. Pyramid (hierarchy) of human needs (according to Maslow)

The dynamic changes that occur in a person’s motivational sphere are based on the development of a system of activities, which, in turn, is subject to objective social laws.

Thus, this concept is an explanation of the origin and dynamics of the human motivational sphere. It shows how a system of activities can change, how its hierarchization is transformed, how individual types of activities and operations arise and disappear, what modifications occur with actions. From this picture of the development of activities, laws are further derived according to which changes occur in the motivational sphere of a person, the acquisition of new needs, motives and goals.

So, by the middle of this century, at least nine theories have emerged in the psychology of motivation and are still being developed as relatively independent ones. Each of them, conventionally shown in the diagram by an arrow going outward from the right, has its own achievements and at the same time its own shortcomings. The main one is that all these theories, if considered separately, are able to explain only some of the phenomena of motivation and answer only a small part of the questions that arise in this area of psychological research. Only the integration of all theories with a deep analysis and isolation of all the positive things they contain can give us a more or less complete picture of the determination of human behavior. However, such a rapprochement is seriously hampered by inconsistency in starting positions, differences in research methods, terminology, and the lack of firmly established facts about human motivation.

Let us now turn to a more detailed consideration of a number of the most modern theories of motivation.

In the latest psychological concepts of motivation that claim to explain human behavior, the prevailing one at present is cognitive an approach to motivation in which special importance is attached to phenomena associated with human consciousness and knowledge. The most frequently used concepts in the relevant theories are the concepts of cognitive dissonance, expectations of success, value (attractiveness) of success, fear of possible failure, and level of aspirations.

Most often, these cognitive variables are used not individually, but in combination. Between them are installed op-

distinct relationships, dependencies, expressed using a variety of symbolic notations using elementary arithmetic operations. Often, such symbolism and the form of recordings are used in theories of motivation, where the central psychological process that explains behavior is decision making.

The urge to action can arise in a person not only under the influence of emotions, but also under the influence of knowledge (cognitions), in particular, their consistency or inconsistency. One of the first to pay attention to this factor and study it, developing the corresponding theory, was L. Festinger. Its main postulate cognitive dissonance theories is the statement that a person’s system of knowledge about the world and about himself strives for coordination. When a mismatch or imbalance occurs, the individual strives to remove or reduce it, and such a desire in itself can become a strong motive for his behavior. Along with attempts to reduce dissonance that has already arisen, the subject actively avoids situations that could give rise to it.

You can reduce the resulting dissonance in one of three ways:

1. Change one of the elements of the knowledge system so that it does not contradict another.

2. Add new elements to the contradictory knowledge structure, making it less contradictory and more consistent.

3. Reduce the importance for a person of knowledge that is inconsistent with each other.

Cognitive dissonance has the most pronounced motivational impact on a person in the following life situations: when making vital decisions and overcoming the conflicts that accompany them; when forced to commit unpleasant, morally unacceptable actions; when selecting information; when coordinating the individual’s opinion with the opinion of members of a social group that is significant to him; when unexpected results are obtained and their consequences are inconsistent.

It was found that after a decision is made, the dissonance that accompanied the process of making it is usually reduced. This occurs by placing more value on the decision that is made rather than on the one that is rejected. This reveals the effect of a unique psychological mechanism for a person to justify the choice he has already made.

barely how perfect it is. It has also been established that after making a decision, a person involuntarily begins to look for additional arguments that justify it and thereby artificially increases the value of the chosen alternative for himself. At the same time, he discovers a tendency to ignore information that is unpleasant for him, indicating that he has not made the best decisions.

Sometimes the opposite happens: after making a choice and making a decision, the value of not the alternative that was chosen increases, but the one that was rejected. As a result, dissonance does not decrease, but increases even more.

It turned out that in those cases when, by force of circumstances, a person is forced to perform an action that entails an undesirable result, he seeks to retroactively increase the value of this result in order to reduce the resulting dissonance.

In all the described cases, psychological defense mechanisms that were described by S. Freud come into play.

It has been noted that the state of cognitive dissonance in the presence of inconsistency in knowledge does not always arise, but only when the subject perceives himself as the most likely cause of the inconsistency, i.e. experiences the actions that led to it as his own, for which he bears personal responsibility.

These are the main provisions of the theory of cognitive dissonance by L. Festinger.

American scientist D. Atkinson was one of the first to propose general theory of motivation, explaining human behavior aimed at achieving a specific goal. His theory reflected the moments of initiation, orientation and support of human behavioral activity at a certain level. This same theory provided one of the first examples of a symbolic representation of motivation. The strength of a person’s desire to achieve a goal (M) according to Atkinson can be established using the following formula:

M=P -B 3,

du dc dp"

Where M - strength of motivation (desire); P- the strength of the motive for achieving success as a personal disposition; 5 ds - subjectively assessed probability of achieving the goal; 3 - personal significance of achieving this goal for a person.

If you somehow measure the listed variables and substitute their values into the right side of the formula, you can calculate the strength of a person’s internal desire to achieve the corresponding goal.

As another example of a symbolic representation of a system of interacting factors influencing human behavior, we present the formula proposed by Yu. Rotter:

VR. . =f,

x, S t, R^J L x, Ld, S! a, S^"

Where VR- behavioral potential, understood as a hypothetical value or force that determines a person’s desire to realize a certain goal R a ; X- form of behavior corresponding to this goal; E x- the expectation that a given behavior will lead to a desired goal R a ; s, - the situation in which a person is currently located; VR x s - behavioral potential associated with the form of behavior X in a situation s v designed to achieve the goal R a ; RV- the value or significance for a person of achieving a goal R a in the situation s, & is a sign of obligatory association, joint action of the corresponding variables.

Below is a simplified and abbreviated version of the same formula:

BP = f(E&RV).

Yu. Rotter’s concept of expectation is associated with the concept of locus of control - a stable, characterizing a person as an individual idea about the extent to which the results of his activities depend on himself (internal locus of control) or on the prevailing circumstances (external locus of control). A person with an internal locus of control shows more persistence in achieving a goal, especially when he has already succeeded several times before, than a person with a predominance of an external locus of control.

The concept plays an important role in modern theories of motivation. instrumental action. The more an action serves as a means to achieve a goal, the higher its instrumentality for this goal. Taking this concept into account, V. Vroom proposed determining a person’s desire for success in a particular type of activity. According to the author, this desire depends on a combination of the likelihood of achieving attractive goals in a given situation and the expectation that

16. R. S. Nemov, book 1 481

that the action taken will actually achieve the goal.

Since in each situation there are several attractive goals for a person, the achievement of which can be achieved with varying degrees of probability by various actions, the overall result will look like the sum of the products of the attractiveness of the goals and the instrumentality of the actions leading to them. The higher this outcome or result, the stronger the motivation aimed at achieving the goal. In general, in accordance with Vroom’s concept, the process of motivating activity can be represented as shown in Fig. 67. Let us explain it. To do this, we additionally need to introduce the concept valence of action. Using this concept, we will denote the fact that one action can perform an instrumental role in relation to the goal of another action, i.e. serve as a means to achieve it. In contrast, by the valence of the result of an action we will understand its attractiveness as a possible means to achieve other goals. A person usually prefers to perform such actions, the valence of the result in the specified sense of the word is the highest. For example, a student wants to enter a prestigious university and become a good specialist. He has two more years ahead of him before graduating from school, and he decides how best to use them: whether to spend these years on in-depth study of core subjects, the knowledge of which he may need in the future in order to become a good specialist in his chosen profession, or to direct Every effort is made to prepare for the university entrance exams. The first system of actions, if he really decided to become a good specialist, will appear to him as having greater valence than the second, since it brings him much closer to his intended goal.

In accordance with the considered model of motivation, in order to predict how a person will behave in a given situation, it is important to know:

What is the significance for him personally of achieving his goal? (V));

How does he assess his chances of success (DO) from the point of view of: (a) the instrumentality of certain actions possible for him in a given situation (ijk); (b) his abilities associated with performing these actions (Q). Maximum power of motivation (Fj) will be if all the listed variables turn out to be positive and high.

Rice. 67. Scheme of motivational organization of activities according to V. Vroom

MOTIVATION AND ACTIVITY

One of the most important issues of motivation for human activity is the causal explanation of his actions. This explanation in psychology is called causal attribution.

Causal attribution is a motivated cognitive process aimed at understanding the information received about a person’s behavior, finding out the reasons for certain of his actions, and most importantly, developing a person’s ability to predict them. If one person knows the reason for another person’s action, then he can not only explain it, but also predict it, and this is very important in communication and interaction between people.

Causal attribution simultaneously acts as a person’s need to understand the causes of the phenomena he observes, as his ability to such understanding. Causal attribution is directly related to the regulation of human relations and includes explanation, justification or condemnation of people's actions.

The study of causal attribution began with the work of F. Heider, “The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations,” published in 1958. At the same time, important studies on the perception of a person by a person appeared in the press, where the effects of the influence of the sequence of presentation of information about a person on his perception as a person were established. A significant contribution to the development of this area of knowledge was made by G. Kelly’s work on the theory of personal constructs - stable cognitive-evaluative formations, which are a system of concepts through the prism of which a person perceives the world. A personal construct is a pair of opposing evaluative concepts (for example, “good - evil”; “good - bad”, “honest - dishonest”), often found in the characteristics that a given person gives to other people and the events taking place around him. One prefers to use some definitions (constructs), the other prefers others; one tends to more often turn to positive characteristics (positive poles of constructs), the other - to negative ones. Through the prism of personal constructs characteristic of a given person, his special view of the world can be described. They can also serve to predict human behavior and its motivational-cognitive explanation (causal attribution).

It turned out that people are more willing to attribute the causes of observed actions to the personality of the person who commits them than to external circumstances independent of the person. This pattern is called the “fundamental attribution error” (I. Jones, 1979).

A special type of causal attribution is the attribution of responsibility for certain actions. When determining the measure of responsibility of an individual, three factors can influence the result of causal attribution: (a) the proximity or distance of the subject to whom responsibility is attributed to the place where the action for which he is attributed responsibility was committed; (b) the ability of the subject to foresee the outcome of the action performed and foresee in advance its possible consequences; (c) premeditation (intentionality) of the committed action.

In studies of attribution of responsibility, among others, the following interesting psychological facts have been established:

1. Individuals who have already once been the perpetrators of an act tend to see the root cause of actions similar to those they committed earlier and in similar situations in the personal qualities of people, and not in circumstances that develop independently of them.

2. If it is impossible to find a rational explanation for what happened, based on the prevailing circumstances, a person tends to see this reason in another person.

3. Most people show a marked reluctance to acknowledge chance as the cause of their own behavior.

4. In the case of severe blows of fate, failures and misfortunes that affect someone personally and concern people significant to him, a person is not inclined to look for the reasons for this solely in the current circumstances; he necessarily blames himself or others for what happened or blames the victim herself for what happened. So, for example, parents usually reproach themselves for the misfortunes of their children, reprimand the children themselves for the harm that was caused to them by chance (a child who fell, hit himself or was cut by something).

5. Sometimes victims of violence, being very conscientious and responsible people, reproach themselves for being victims of the attack and provoking it. They convince themselves that by behaving differently in the future, they will be able to protect themselves from attacks.

6. There is a tendency to attribute responsibility for misfortune to the person whom it befell (“it is his own fault”).

This applies not only to the subject of the action, but also to other people and is manifested to a greater extent, the stronger the misfortune that has occurred.

One of the fruitful concepts successfully used to explain achievements in activity is the theory of V. Weiner. According to it, all possible reasons for success and failure can be assessed according to two parameters: localization and stability. The first of these parameters characterizes what a person sees as the reasons for his successes and failures: in himself or in circumstances that have developed independently of him. Stability is considered as the constancy or stability of the action of the corresponding cause.

Various combinations of these two parameters determine the following classification of possible causes of success and failure:

1. The complexity of the task being performed (an external, sustainable success factor).

2. Effort (internal, variable factor of success).

3. Random coincidence (external, unstable factor of success).

4. Abilities (internal, sustainable factor of success). People tend to explain their successes and failures in favorable terms.

to preserve and maintain high self-esteem. R. DeCharms made two interesting conclusions regarding the influence of rewards for success on motivation. The first is as follows: if a person is rewarded for something that he does or has already done of his own free will, then such reward leads to a decrease in internal incentives for the corresponding activity. If a person does not receive rewards for uninteresting work done only for rewards, then, on the contrary, internal motivation for it may increase.

A purely cognitive idea of causal attribution is based on the not always justified assumption that a person, in all cases of life without exception, acts only rationally and, when making a decision, necessarily bases it on all the information at his disposal. Is it really?

It turned out that this was not the case. People do not always feel the need and feel the need to understand the reasons for their actions, to find out them. More often they commit actions without thinking them through in advance, at least until the end, and without subsequently evaluating them. Attribution in conscious-cognitive

In its normal understanding, it arises mainly only when a person, at any cost, needs to understand and explain something in his behavior or in the actions performed by other people. Situations like this don't happen very often in life. In most other real life situations, the motivation of an individual’s actions, apparently, has little or almost no connection with attributional processes, especially since motivation is largely carried out at the subconscious level.

In explaining the behavior of an individual, he is often completely satisfied with the first reasonable thought that comes to his mind; he is content with it and does not look for another reason until he himself or someone else doubts the correctness of the explanation found. Then a person finds another, more justified, from his point of view, and is content with it if no one challenges it. This process, repeating itself cyclically, can continue for quite a long time. But where is the truth? A satisfactory answer to this question has not yet been received.

Let's consider another direction in motivation research. It is associated with an attempt to understand how a person is motivated in activities aimed at achieving success, and how he reacts to failures that befall him. Evidence from psychology suggests that motivations to achieve success and avoid failure are important and relatively independent types of human motivation. The fate and position of a person in society largely depends on them. It has been observed that people with a strong desire to achieve success achieve much more in life than those who have little or no such motivation.

Created and developed in detail in psychology theory of motivation to achieve success in various activities. The founders of this theory are considered to be the American scientists D. McClelland, DATkinson and the German scientist H. Heckhausen. Let's consider the main provisions of this theory.

A person has two different motives, functionally related to activities aimed at achieving success. This - the motive for achieving success and the motive for avoiding failure. The behavior of people motivated to achieve success and to avoid failure differs as follows. People motivated to succeed usually set themselves some positive goal in their activity, the achievement of which can be clearly regarded as success. They clearly demonstrate the desire to achieve success at all costs.

their activities, look for such activities, actively participate in them, choose means and prefer actions aimed at achieving the goal. Such people usually have an expectation of success in their cognitive sphere, i.e., when taking on any work, they definitely expect to succeed and are confident of this. They expect to receive approval for actions aimed at achieving their goals, and the work associated with this causes them positive emotions. In addition, they are characterized by the complete mobilization of all their resources and focus on achieving their goals.

Individuals motivated to avoid failure behave completely differently. Their explicit goal in activity is not to achieve success, but to avoid failure; all their thoughts and actions are primarily subordinated to this goal. A person who is initially motivated to fail exhibits self-doubt, does not believe in the possibility of success, and is afraid of criticism. With work, especially one that is fraught with the possibility of failure, he is usually associated with negative emotional experiences, he does not experience pleasure from the activity, and is burdened by it. As a result, he often turns out not to be a winner, but a loser, and, in general, a loser in life.

Individuals who are focused on achieving success are able to more correctly assess their capabilities, successes and failures and usually choose professions that correspond to their existing knowledge, skills and abilities. People who are focused on failure, on the contrary, are often characterized by inadequate professional self-determination, preferring either too easy or too difficult types of professions. At the same time, they often ignore objective information about their abilities, have high or low self-esteem, and an unrealistic level of aspirations.

People who are motivated to succeed are more persistent in achieving their goals. When faced with very easy and very difficult tasks, they behave differently than those who are motivated to fail. When the motivation to achieve success is dominant, a person prefers tasks of average or slightly increased difficulty, and when the motivation to avoid failure is dominant, a person prefers tasks that are the easiest and most difficult.

Another interesting psychological difference in the behavior of people motivated for success and failure is interesting.

For a person striving for success in an activity, the attractiveness of a certain task and interest in it increases after failure in solving it, but for a person focused on failure, it decreases. In other words, individuals motivated to succeed tend to return to solving a task in which they failed, while those initially motivated to fail tend to avoid it and want to never return to it. It also turned out that people who were initially set up for success usually achieve better results after failure, while those who were set up for it from the very beginning, on the contrary, achieve better results after success. From this we can conclude that success in educational and other activities of those children who have pronounced motives for achieving success and avoiding failure can be ensured in different ways in practice.

A significant, distant goal is more capable of stimulating the activity of a person with a developed motive for achieving success than with a pronounced motive for avoiding failure.

The considered facts show that a direct correlation between the strength of the motive for achieving success and the magnitude of the motive for avoiding failure cannot be expected, since, in addition to the magnitude and nature of the motive for striving for success, success in educational activities depends on the complexity of the tasks being solved, on the achievements or failures that have place in the past, for many other reasons. In addition, the direct relationship between motivation and achievement of success in activity, even if it exists (with the neutralization of the actions of many other significant factors), is not linear. This is especially true for the connection between motivation to achieve success and the quality of work. It is best when the level of motivation is average and usually worsens when it is too weak and too strong.

There are certain differences in the explanations of their successes and failures between people with strong motives for achieving success and avoiding failure. While success seekers are more likely to attribute their success to their existing abilities, failure avoiders turn to ability analysis in just the opposite case - in the event of failure. On the contrary, those who fear failure are more likely to explain their success as a coincidence, while those who strive for success explain their failure in a similar way.

dacha Thus, depending on the dominant motive associated with activities aimed at achieving success, people with motives for achieving success and avoiding failure tend to explain the results of this activity differently. Those striving for success attribute their achievements to intrapersonal factors (abilities, diligence, etc.), and those striving for failure attribute their achievements to external factors (ease or difficulty of the task, luck, etc.). At the same time, people who have a strong motive to avoid failure tend to underestimate their capabilities, quickly become upset when they fail, and lower their self-esteem, while those who are focused on success behave in the opposite way: they correctly assess their abilities, mobilize when they fail, and do not get upset.

Individuals who are definitely success-oriented usually try to obtain correct, reliable information about the results of their activities and therefore prefer tasks of moderate difficulty, since in solving them their efforts and abilities can be demonstrated in the best possible way. Failure avoiders, on the contrary, tend to avoid such information and therefore more often choose either too easy or too difficult tasks that are practically impossible to complete.

In addition to the motive for achievement, the choice of task and the results of activity are influenced by a person’s idea of himself, which in psychology is called differently: “I”, “I-image”, “self-awareness”, “self-esteem”, etc. People who attribute to themselves such a personality quality as responsibility often prefer to deal with solving problems of medium rather than low or high degrees of difficulty. They, as a rule, also have a level of aspirations that is more consistent with actual success.

Another important psychological feature that influences a person’s achievement of success and self-esteem is the demands he places on himself. The one who places high demands on himself tries harder to succeed than the one whose demands on himself are low.

Of no small importance for achieving success and evaluating performance results is a person’s understanding of his inherent abilities necessary for the task at hand. It has been established, for example, that those individuals who have a high opinion that they have such abilities are less worried if they fail in their activities than those who believe that their corresponding abilities are poorly developed.

An important role in understanding how a person will perform this or that activity, especially in the case when someone else next to him is doing the same thing, in addition to the achievement motive plays anxiety. The manifestations of anxiety in different situations are not the same. In some cases, people tend to behave anxiously always and everywhere, in others they reveal their anxiety only from time to time, depending on the circumstances. Situationally stable manifestations of anxiety are usually called personal and associated with the presence of a corresponding personality trait in a person (the so-called “personal anxiety”). Situationally variable manifestations of anxiety are called situational, and the peculiarity of a person exhibiting this kind of anxiety is designated as "situational anxiety" Further, for the sake of abbreviation, we will denote personal anxiety by the combination of letters LT, and situational anxiety by ST.

The behavior of highly anxious people in activities aimed at achieving success has the following features:

1. Highly anxious individuals react more emotionally to messages about failure than low-anxious individuals.

2. Highly anxious people work worse than low-anxious people in stressful situations or when there is a shortage of time allotted to solve a problem.

3. Fear of failure is a characteristic feature of highly anxious people. This fear dominates their desire to achieve success.

4. Motivation to achieve success prevails in people with low anxiety. It usually outweighs the fear of possible failure.

5. For highly anxious people, messages about success are more stimulating than messages about failure.

6. Low-anxious people are more stimulated by messages about failure.

7. LT predisposes the individual to perceive and evaluate many objectively safe situations as those that pose a threat.

One of the most famous researchers of the phenomenon of anxiety, K. Spielberger, together with G. O. Neil and D. Hansen, proposed the following model (Fig. 68), showing the main socio-psychological factors influencing the state of anxiety in a person and the results of his activities.

Rice. 68. Schematic model of the influence of anxiety on human activity in tense situations that carry a threat

This model takes into account the above-mentioned behavioral features of high-anxiety and low-anxiety people.

A person’s activity in a specific situation, according to this model, depends not only on the situation itself, on the presence or absence of PT in the individual, but also on the ST that arises in a given person in a given situation under the influence of developing circumstances. The impact of the current situation, a person’s own needs, thoughts and feelings, and the characteristics of his anxiety as PT determine his cognitive assessment of the situation that has arisen. This assessment, in turn, causes certain emotions (activation of the autonomic nervous system and strengthening of the TS state along with expectations of possible failure). Information about all this is transmitted through neural feedback mechanisms to the human cerebral cortex, influencing his thoughts, needs and feelings.

The same cognitive assessment of the situation simultaneously and automatically causes the body to react to threatening stimuli, which leads to the emergence of countermeasures and corresponding responses aimed at reducing the resulting ST. The result of all this directly affects the activities performed. This activity is directly dependent on the state of anxiety, which could not be overcome with the help of the responses and countermeasures taken, as well as an adequate cognitive assessment of the situation.

Thus, a person’s activity in an anxiety-generating situation directly depends on the strength of ST, the effectiveness of countermeasures taken to reduce it, and the accuracy of the cognitive assessment of the situation.

Of particular interest to anxiety researchers was the psychological study of people's behavior during examination tests and the influence of the resulting stress on exam results. It turned out that many highly anxious people fail during exam sessions not because they lack abilities, knowledge or skills, but because of the stressful conditions that arise at this time. They develop a feeling of incompetence, helplessness, and anxiety, and all of these conditions blocking successful activity more often occur in people with high LT scores. The message that they are about to undergo a test often causes such people to have severe anxiety, which prevents them from thinking normally, and causes many unrelated, affectively charged thoughts that interfere with their concentration.

sharpen attention and block the extraction of necessary information from long-term memory. For highly anxious people, exam test situations are usually perceived and experienced as a threat to their “I”, giving rise to serious self-doubts and excessive emotional tension, which, according to the Yerkes-Dodson law we already know, negatively affects the results.

Often a person, finding himself in situations in life where he is able to cope with an unexpected problem, nevertheless finds himself practically helpless. Why? Let's see what psychological research data says about this.

The first results related to the psychological study of the state of helplessness and the causes of its occurrence were obtained on animals. It turned out that if a dog is forcibly kept on a leash in a pen for some time and given moderate electric shocks after the light signal is turned on, then, being free from the restraints that restrain it, it behaves quite strangely at first. Having the opportunity to jump out of the machine and run away after the light signal comes on again, she nevertheless obediently stands still and waits for the electric shock. The animal turns out to be helpless, although in fact it is quite capable of avoiding trouble.

In contrast, dogs that have not been subjected to this type of procedure in physically constrained circumstances behave differently: as soon as the light signal comes on, they immediately jump out of the pen and run away.

Why didn't the dogs behave differently in the first experiment? Further research provided an answer to this question. It turned out that what makes the dog helpless is the previous sad experience of behavior in such situations.

Similar reactions are often observed in people, and the greatest helplessness is demonstrated by those who are characterized by highly pronounced PT, i.e. people who are unsure of themselves and believe that little depends on them in life.

Even more interesting results were obtained from experiments directly conducted on humans to induce and clarify the causes of so-called cognitive helplessness, when, having taken on the solution of a certain task and having the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities for it, a person is unable to apply them in practice. So that experienced

In order to study cognitive helplessness, it was necessary to put a person in a situation where he, while successfully solving some problems, would not cope with others and would be unable to explain why in some cases he succeeds and in others he fails. This kind of situation should have rendered his efforts to manage success virtually pointless. This is exactly how the relevant studies were conducted.

It was found that a person most often experiences a feeling of helplessness when numerous failures in his mind are associated with his lack of abilities necessary for successful activities. In this case, a person loses the desire to make attempts and make further efforts, because due to numerous and uncontrollable failures, they lose their meaning.

Along with a decrease in motivation, in these cases there is usually a lack of knowledge, as well as emotional and positive stimulation of activity. Such psychological phenomena are most often observed when performing tasks of moderate complexity, rather than particularly difficult ones (with the latter, failure can be explained by the difficulty of the task itself, and not by the lack of necessary abilities in the subject).

The characteristics of people that contribute to and hinder the emergence of a feeling of cognitive helplessness in them have been identified. It turned out that with a strongly expressed motivation to achieve success and the belief that much depends on the actor himself, the feeling of helplessness and its negative consequences arise less often than when there is a motivation to avoid failures and uncertainty. Most of all, people who succumb to this feeling are those who too hastily and unjustifiably often explain their failures by their lack of necessary abilities and have low self-esteem.

There is evidence that school-age girls are more likely to succumb to this feeling than boys, but this happens to them when the assessment of their activities and abilities comes from significant adults, and not from peers. A similar tendency is shown by people prone to depression, i.e. having character accentuations favorable to it.

It turned out that the state of helplessness, generated by the randomness artificially created in the experiment and the inexplicability of successes and failures for the individual, disappears as

only he is made to understand that the results of his activities actually do not depend on him. Therefore, the main thing for a person to avoid falling into a situation of cognitive helplessness is to not lose the feeling of being under control of the developing situation.

MOTIVATION AND PERSONALITY

Many of the motivational factors we have discussed over time become so characteristic of a person that they turn into personality traits. These may well include those that we considered in the previous paragraph of the chapter. This is the motive for achieving success, the motive for avoiding failure, anxiety (JIT), a certain locus of control, self-esteem, and level of aspirations. In addition to them, a person is personally characterized by the need for communication (affiliation), the motive of power, the motive of helping other people (altruism) and aggressiveness. These are the most significant social motives of a person that determine his attitude towards people. Let's look at these motives, starting with self-esteem.

It has been established that among people oriented toward success, realistic values often predominate, while among individuals oriented toward failure, unrealistic, overestimated or underestimated attitudes prevail. self-esteem. The level of self-esteem is associated with a person’s satisfaction or dissatisfaction resulting from achieving success or failure. In his practical activities, a person usually strives to achieve results that are consistent with his self-esteem and contribute to its strengthening and normalization. Self-esteem, in turn, depends on the results of activities.

Correlates with self-esteem level of aspirations - the practical result that the subject expects to achieve in his work. As a factor determining satisfaction or dissatisfaction with an activity, the level of aspirations is more important for individuals focused on avoiding failure rather than achieving success. Significant changes in self-esteem appear when the successes or failures themselves are associated by the subject of the activity with the presence or absence of the necessary abilities.

Motives of affiliation and power are actualized and satisfied only in the communication of people. The affiliation motive is usually

manifests itself as a person’s desire to establish kind, emotionally positive relationships with people. Internally, or psychologically, it appears in the form of a feeling of affection, loyalty, and externally - in sociability, in the desire to cooperate with other people, to constantly be with them. Love for a person is the highest spiritual manifestation of this motive.

Relationships between people built on the basis of affiliation, in their described qualities, are usually reciprocal. Communication partners with such motives do not view each other as a means of satisfying personal needs, do not strive to dominate each other, but count on equal cooperation. As a result of satisfying the motive of affiliation, trusting, open relationships based on sympathy and mutual assistance develop between people.

The opposite of the affiliation motive is motive for rejection manifested in the fear of not being accepted or rejected by significant people.

The dominance of the affiliation motive in a person gives rise to a style of communication with people, characterized by confidence, ease, openness and courage. On the contrary, the predominance of the motive of rejection leads to uncertainty, constraint, awkwardness, and tension.

The expressed motive of affiliation is externally manifested in a person’s special concern for establishing, maintaining or restoring broken friendly relationships with people, such as; which are described by the words “friendship” and “love”. The affiliation motive correlates with a person’s desire for approval from others, with confidence and the desire for self-affirmation.

People with a developed affiliation motive show greater activity and initiative in communicating with others, especially in such activities as correspondence, talking on the phone, visiting various kinds of clubs, meetings, conferences, meetings, evenings, etc. A strong affiliation motive leads to a person’s preference for a communication partner who has developed friendly qualities (note, by the way, that a strong achievement motive predetermines the choice of a partner with developed business qualities). In women, according to some data, the motive of affiliation, when confronted with the motive of achieving success, dominates more often than in men. However

this is more a result of differences in training and upbringing than a consequence of gender as such.

People with a predominant motive of affiliation achieve better results in their work in cases where they work not alone, but as part of a group with whose members they have established friendly relationships. The maximum improvement in performance results under these conditions is observed among those who simultaneously have strongly expressed motives for affiliation and achievement of success. The worst results are found when working alongside other people is a person with a highly developed achievement motive and with a pronounced fear of being rejected by people in case of failure.

Individuals whose affiliation motive dominates over the fear of rejection relate better to people. They like those around them more; they themselves enjoy the sympathy and respect of the people around them. The relationships of such people with others are built on the basis of mutual trust.

The predominance of the fear of rejection motive, on the contrary, creates obstacles to interpersonal communication. Such people cause distrust in themselves, they are lonely, and their communication skills are poorly developed. And yet, despite the fear of being rejected, they, just like those with a strong affiliation motive, strive for communication, so there is no reason to talk about them as not having a pronounced need for communication.

The power motive can be briefly defined as a person’s persistent and clearly expressed desire to have power over other people. G. Murray gave the following definition to this motive: the motive of power is the tendency to control the social environment, including people, to influence the behavior of other people in a variety of ways, including persuasion, coercion, suggestion, deterrence, prohibition, etc.; encouraging others to act in accordance with their interests and needs; seek their favor and cooperation; prove that you are right, defend your own point of view; influence, direct, organize, lead, supervise, rule, subordinate, dominate, dictate terms; judge, establish laws, determine norms and rules of behavior; make decisions for others that oblige them to act in a certain way; persuade, dissuade, punish; to charm, to attract attention, to have followers.

Another researcher of power motivation, D. Veroff, psychologically clarified the definition of this phenomenon as follows: power motivation is understood as the desire and ability to receive satisfaction from control over other people.

Empirical signs that a person has a motive, or motivation, for power are the following: constant and fairly clearly expressed emotional experiences associated with maintaining or losing psychological or behavioral control over other people; satisfaction from winning over another person in some activity or grief about failure; reluctance to obey other people, active desire for independence; the tendency to manage and dominate people in various situations of communication and interaction with them. “The motive of power is aimed at acquiring and maintaining its sources, either for the sake of the prestige and sense of power associated with them, or for the sake of influence... on the behavior and experiences of other people who, if left to themselves, would not act in the manner desired by the subject” 1 .

The phenomena studied in psychology in connection with the motivation of power include leadership, the influence of people on each other, leadership and subordination, as well as many phenomena associated with the influence of the individual on the group and the group on the individual (we will consider them in the next section). Unlike other sciences that study the phenomenon of power, psychology focuses on personal motives for power, as well as on the psychological aspects of a person’s use of the power given to him over people. The psychological aspects of power are spoken of when one person forces another to do something against his will. It is believed that people who strive for power over other people have a particularly pronounced power motive. In its origin, it is probably associated with a person’s desire for superiority over other people.

For the first time this motive attracted attention in research neo-Freudians. It has been declared one of the main motives of human social behavior. A. Adler, a student of Z. Freud, believed that the desire for superiority, perfection and social power compensates for the natural shortcomings of people experiencing the so-called inferiority complex. A similar point of view, but theoretically developed

x Hegghausen X. Motivation and activity. - M., 1986. - P. 322.

expressed in a different context, was adhered to by another representative of neo-Freudianism - E. Fromm.

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Essay

by discipline:Ppsychology

on the topic of:Ppsychological theories of motivation

Introduction

In terms of impact, the creation of motives can be described as motivation. Motivation is the process of inducing activity and communication to achieve personal or organizational goals. In other words, to motivate means to create an attraction or need that motivates us to act with a specific goal. The need in this case acts as an internal, and the goal - as an external aspect of motivation. Motivating people means touching on their important interests, creating conditions for them to realize themselves in the process of life.

The problem of studying motivation has always attracted the attention of researchers. Therefore, there are many different concepts and theories devoted to motives, motivation and personality orientation. Let's look at some of them in general terms.

Brief information about some psychological theories of motivation

The developed models of motivation can be classified into two types: substantive and procedural. Content theories of motivation are based on the identification of internal motivations (needs) that force people to act in a certain way. Such models of motivation may include those described in the works of A. Maslow, D. McKelland and G. Heckhausen and other authors. Processual, later theories of motivation are based on a description of people's behavior, taking into account their upbringing and knowledge. Examples of such models are expectation model And justice model. It should be kept in mind that although these descriptions differ on a number of issues, they are not mutually exclusive. Let's look at some of them.

One of the most versatile is the classification of needs proposed by Abraham Maslow . According to his classification, the following are distinguished: types of needs.

· Physiological needs (organic), ensuring human survival. These include needs for oxygen, water, food, shelter, rest and sexual needs;

· Need for security (and confidence in the future) - this is the desire to feel protected, the desire to get rid of fear, from failure;

· Social needs (needs for belonging and love) include a feeling of belonging to something or someone, a feeling of acceptance by others, social interaction, affection and support;

· Esteem needs include the need for self-esteem, personal achievement, competence, respect from others, approval, authority, recognition.

· Self-actualization needs (in self-expression) is the desire to realize the ability to develop one’s own personality, to realize one’s life goals.

These needs are fundamental, i.e. inherent in all people. Individual development of a person involves an ascent from the lower levels of the hierarchy (physiological needs) to the highest (self-actualization). Moreover, for the specified hierarchical system of motives there is a rule: “The next stage of the motivational structure matters only when the previous stages are realized.” In addition, Maslow divided the entire motivational sphere of a person into two subsystems: a) primary needs related to compensation of any deficit (inadequacy) of internal resources for existence; b) secondary needs associated with expanding life experience and improving a person’s existing abilities. The second subsystem of needs is considered in unity with the highest values of the individual. It determines the direction of human behavior towards the search for meaning, truth, beauty, self-knowledge and self-improvement. According to Maslow, this kind of motivation is inherent only self-actualizing individuals who strive for comprehensive self-realization.

In the second half of the twentieth century. in psychology created and developed in detail theory of motivation to achieve success in various activities, which significantly supplemented the theory of human needs . American scientists are considered the founders of this concept. D. McClelland, D. Atkinson and German scientist X. Heckhausen . According to their theory, a person has two different motives, functionally related to activities aimed at achieving success. This - motive for success And failure avoidance motive. People motivated to succeed usually set themselves some positive goal in their activity, the achievement of which can be clearly regarded as success. They clearly demonstrate the desire, at all costs, to achieve only success in their activities, they look for such activities, actively participate in them, choose means and prefer actions aimed at achieving their goals. Individuals motivated to avoid failure behave differently. Their explicit goal in activity is not to achieve success, but to avoid failure; all their thoughts and actions are primarily subordinated to this goal.

Along with the achievement motive, McClelland identified and measured other motives, such as “social connection” (affiliation) and power. The motives of affiliation and power are actualized and satisfied only in the communication of people.

Affiliation motive usually manifests itself as a person’s desire to establish kind, emotionally positive relationships with people. Internally, this motive appears in the form of a feeling of affection, loyalty, externally - in sociability, the desire to cooperate with other people.

Power motive can be briefly described as a person’s persistent and clearly expressed desire to have power over other people. G. Murray gave this definition of this motive: The power motive is the tendency to control the social environment, to influence the behavior of other people in a variety of ways, including persuasion, coercion, suggestion, deterrence, prohibition, etc. Another power motivation researcher D. Veroff psychologically clarified the definition of this phenomenon as follows: Power motivation refers to the desire and ability to gain satisfaction from control over other people.

YU. Rotter another formalized model of human behavior was proposed, which depends, according to his ideas, on the significance for a person of achieving a goal in a certain situation and the expectation that this behavior will lead to the desired goal. Rotter’s concept of expectation is associated with the concept locus of control- a stable idea that characterizes a person as a person about the extent to which the results of his activities depend on himself (internal locus of control) or on the prevailing circumstances (external locus of control). People with an internal locus of control (internals) They look for the reasons for a person’s successes and failures within himself. They see a person as an active source of managing their own behavior and planning their own life. People with an external locus of control (externals) They believe that the localization of these causes is outside a person, in his environment, in fate, in circumstances, and a person is not responsible for his own failures. Internals tend to be more persistent in achieving their goals and achieve more than externals.

On track cognitive approach Particular importance is attached to phenomena associated with human consciousness and knowledge. An impulse to action can arise in a person not only under the influence of emotions, but also under the influence of knowledge (cognitions), in particular, their consistency or inconsistency. The main postulate theories of cognitive dissonance L.Festinger is the statement that a person’s system of knowledge about the world and about himself strives for coordination. When a mismatch or imbalance occurs, the individual strives to remove or reduce it, and such a desire in itself can become a strong motive for his behavior.

In Russian psychology, attempts have also been made to pose and solve problems of human motivation. More or less thought out and complete is theory of activity origin of human motivational sphere, created A.N. Leontyev . According to the concept of A.N. Leontiev, the motivational sphere of a person, like his other psychological characteristics, has its source in practical activity. In the activity itself one can find those components that correspond to the elements of the motivational sphere and are associated with them. Behavior in general, for example, corresponds to human needs; the system of activities from which it is composed - a variety of motives; set of actions that form an activity - an ordered set of goals. Thus, there are relations of mutual correspondence between the structure of activity and the structure of a person’s motivational sphere. This concept shows how, in accordance with the patterns of development of activities, it is possible to derive laws that describe changes in the motivational sphere of a person, his acquisition of new needs, motives and goals.

Leontiev described only one mechanism for the formation of motifs, which was called mechanism for shifting motive to goal. The essence of this mechanism is that in the process of activity, the goal to which, for certain reasons, a person strives, over time itself becomes an independent, motivating force, i.e. motive. For example, often parents, in order to stimulate the child’s interest in reading books, promise to buy him some kind of toy if he reads the book. However, in the process of reading, the child develops an interest in the book itself, and gradually reading books can become one of his basic needs. This example explains the mechanism for the development of a person’s motivational sphere by expanding the number of needs, i.e. a list of what a person needs. Moreover, this happens in the process of its activity and contact with the environment.

Another procedural approach to describing motivation suggests theory of justice (M. Meskon, M. Albert, M. Khedoori , 1992). According to it, people subjectively determine the ratio of the reward received to the effort expended and then correlate this ratio with that of other people doing similar work. If the comparison reveals an imbalance and injustice (that is, a person believes that his colleague receives more compensation for the same work), then he experiences mental stress. At the same time, in order to motivate an employee, it is necessary to restore justice by eliminating the imbalance. According to equity theory, until people believe that they are being fairly compensated, they will tend to reduce their work intensity. At the same time, the perception and assessment of justice are relative.

The theories discussed do not provide comprehensive, detailed analysis. The works of many researchers deny the fundamental possibility of creating a unified theory of motivation that satisfactorily explains the source of purposeful human activity.

Motivated behavior as a personality characteristic

Many of the motivational factors discussed above become so characteristic of a person over time that they turn into personality traits. These include achievement motivation, or motivation to avoid failure, the power motive, the motive of helping other people (altruism), aggressive motives of behavior, and more. Dominant motives become one of the main characteristics of a person, affecting the characteristics of other personality traits. For example, it has been found that among people oriented toward success, adequate self-esteem often prevails, while among individuals focused on avoiding failures, unrealistic high or low self-esteem prevails. .

Motives affiliations(the motive for the desire to communicate with people) and authorities should also be classified as motives that can become characteristic personality traits. People with a strong affiliation motive are most often attracted to work that will provide extensive opportunities for social communication. Such people strive for rapprochement, establishing trusting relationships based on sympathy and mutual assistance. The dominance of the affiliation motive in a person gives rise to a style of communication with people, characterized by confidence, ease, openness and courage. The opposite of the motive of affiliation is the motive of rejection, which manifests itself in the fear of being unaccepted and rejected by people significant to the individual. The predominance of the motive of rejection leads to uncertainty, constraint, awkwardness, and tension, which creates an obstacle to interpersonal communication. Such people cause distrust in themselves, they are lonely, and their communication skills are poorly developed.

Another very significant motive in the formation of personality is the motiveauthorities. The motive of power is manifested in encouraging others to act in accordance with their interests and needs, to prove that they are right, to direct, influence, organize, subordinate, dictate conditions, judge, establish laws and rules of behavior, make decisions for other people, punish, attract to attract attention, to have followers. Signs that a person has a power motive are pronounced emotional experiences associated with maintaining or losing psychological or behavioral control over other people. Other signs that a person has this motive are his reluctance to obey anyone, as well as satisfaction from defeating another person in any activity.

A special place in psychology is occupied by research on the so-called prosocial motives and corresponding to them prosocial behavior. This behavior refers to any altruistic actions of a person aimed at the well-being of other people and helping them. Some psychologists believe that this behavior is based on a special motive, and call it motive of altruism. Prosocial behavior is most often characterized as being performed for the benefit of another person and without hope of reward. People with a pronounced motive of altruism, out of their own conviction, carry out acts of caring for other people, without any calculation or pressure from the outside. In meaning, this behavior is diametrically opposed to aggression.

Aggression is considered as a phenomenon in its essence antisocial. In the course of studying aggressive behavior, it was suggested that behind this form of behavior lies a special kind of motive, called motive of aggressiveness. Aggressiveness is always associated with intentionally causing harm to another person, causing him any damage: moral, physical, material. Psychologists have identified two distinct tendencies associated with aggressive behavior: tendency towards aggression And tendency to slow down. Tendency towards aggression- this is the tendency of an individual to evaluate many situations and actions of other people as threatening him, and the desire to respond to them with his own aggressive actions. Tendency to suppress aggression is defined as an individual predisposition to evaluate one’s own aggressive actions as unwanted and unacceptable, causing regret and remorse. This tendency at the behavioral level leads to suppression, avoidance or condemnation of aggressive actions.

Thus, the motives formed in the process of life and activity, which have become habitual or basic, are reflected in the general impression that a person makes on others.

For management activities, it is very important to understand the system of motivation, life values and the way of life to which people belong. In accordance with K. Lewin's field theory, the observed behavior is a function of the field in which it manifests itself. The two main components of this field are personality and environment. Changing a personality is much more difficult than the external environment, the role of which is played by the work environment, the psychological climate in the organization and other factors that motivate human behavior.

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The problem of motivation and motives for behavior and activity is one of the core problems in psychology. B.F. Lomov, for example, notes that in psychological studies of activity, the issues of motivation and goal setting play a leading role. “The difficulty here is that,” he writes, “the systemic nature of the mental is most clearly manifested in motives and goals; they act as integral forms of mental reflection. Where do the motives and goals of individual activity come from and how do they arise? What are they? The development of these questions is of great importance not only for the development of the theory of psychology, but also for solving many practical problems." (6, P.205)

It is not surprising that a large number of monographs are devoted to motivation and motives, both domestic (V.G. Aseev, V.K. Vilyunas, A.N. Leontiev, V.S. Merlin, D.N. Uznadze, P.M. Yakobson), and foreign authors (J. Atkinson, G. Hall, K. Madsen, A. Maslow, H. Heckhausen, etc.).

Numerous theories of motivation began to appear in the works of ancient philosophers. Currently, there are more than a dozen such theories.

The first actual motivational, psychological theories that incorporated rationalistic and irrationalistic ideas should be considered to have arisen in the 17th and 18th centuries. the theory of decision making, which explains human behavior on a rationalistic basis, and the theory of the automaton, which explains the behavior of animals on an irrationalistic basis.

The second half of the 19th century was marked by a number of outstanding discoveries in various sciences, including biology - the emergence of the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin. She influenced not only natural history, but also medicine, psychology and other humanities. With his teaching, Darwin, as it were, built a bridge over the abyss that for many centuries divided man and animals into two groups that were incompatible in anatomical, physiological and psychological terms. He also took the first decisive step forward in the behavioral and motivational rapprochement of these living beings, showing that humans and animals have many common forms of behavior, in particular emotionally expressive expressions, needs and instincts.

Under the influence of Darwin's theory of evolution, psychology began an intensive study of intelligent forms of behavior in animals (W. Köhler, E. Thorndike, etc.) and instincts in humans (S. Freud, W. McDougall, I.P. Pavlov, etc.).

The same organic needs that were previously assigned only to animals, including instincts, began to be attributed to humans as motivational factors. One of the first manifestations of such an extreme, irrationalistic, essentially biologizing point of view on human behavior were the theories of instincts of S. Freud and W. McDougall, proposed at the end of the 19th century. and developed at the beginning of the 20th century.

According to Freud's theory, human motivation is based entirely on the energy of excitement produced by bodily needs. In his opinion, the main amount of mental energy generated by the body is directed to mental activity, which allows one to reduce the level of excitation caused by need. According to Freud, mental images of bodily needs, expressed in the form of desires, are called instincts. Instincts manifest innate states of excitation at the level of the body, requiring release and discharge. Although the number of instincts may be unlimited, Freud recognized the existence of two main groups: the life and death instincts.

W. McDougall expanded the framework established by Freud regarding the number of basic instincts and proposed a set of ten instincts: the instinct of invention, the instinct of construction, the instinct of curiosity, the instinct of flight, the herd instinct, the instinct of pugnacity, the reproductive (parental) instinct, the instinct of disgust, the instinct of self-humiliation, instinct of self-affirmation. In later works, W. McDougall added eight more instincts to those listed, mainly related to organic needs.

In the 20s of the current century, the theory of instincts was replaced by a concept that relies on biological needs to explain human behavior. This concept argued that humans and animals have common organic needs that have the same influence on their behavior. Periodically arising organic needs cause a state of excitement and tension in the body, and satisfaction of the need leads to a decrease (reduction) of tension.

Both concepts - “instinct” and “need” - had one significant drawback: their use did not imply the presence of psychological cognitive factors associated with consciousness, with the subjective states of the body, which are called mental. Due to this circumstance, these two concepts were replaced by the concept of attraction - drive. Drive is the body’s desire for some final result, subjectively presented in the form of some goal, expectation, intention, accompanied by corresponding emotional experiences.

The American motivation researcher G. Murray proposed a list of secondary (psychogenic) needs that arise on the basis of instinct-like drives as a result of upbringing and training. These are the needs to achieve success, affiliation, aggression, the needs of independence, opposition, respect, humiliation, protection, dominance, attracting attention, avoiding harmful influences, avoiding failures, patronage, order, play, rejection, comprehension, sexual relations, help, mutual understanding. In addition to these two dozen needs, the author attributed to man the following six: acquisition, deflection of accusations, knowledge, creation, explanation of recognition and frugality.

In addition to the theories of human biological needs, instincts and drives, two more new directions arose in these same years, stimulated not only by the evolutionary teachings of Darwin, but also by the discoveries of Pavlov. This is a behavioral (behaviorist) theory of motivation and a theory of higher nervous activity. The behavioral concept of motivation developed as a logical continuation of the ideas of D. Watson in the theory that explains behavior. In addition to D. Watson and E. Tolman, among the most famous representatives of this trend are K. Hull and B. Skinner. When considering the behaviorist approach to personality, two types of behavior should be distinguished: respondent and operant. Responder behavior involves a characteristic reaction caused by a known stimulus, the latter always preceding the former in time. Also, responsive behavior entails reflexes that involve the autonomic nervous system. However, respondent behavior can be taught.

Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, was the first to discover, while studying the physiology of digestion, that respondent behavior can be classically conditioned. The research begun by I.P. Pavlov was proposed, deepened, and expanded not only by his immediate students and followers, but also by other physiologists and psychologists. Among them we can name N.A. Bernstein, author of the original theory of psychophysiological regulation of movements, P.K. Anokhin, who proposed a model of a functional system that describes and explains the dynamics of a behavioral act at the modern level, and E.N. Sokolov, who discovered and studied the orienting reflex, which is of great importance for understanding the psychophysiological mechanisms of perception, attention and motivation, proposed a model of the conceptual reflex arc.

Response behavior is Skinner's version of Pavlovian or classical conditioning. However, Skinner believed that, in general, animal and human behavior cannot be explained in terms of classical conditioning. Instead, he emphasized behavior that was not associated with any known stimuli. The type of behavior that assumes that the organism actively influences the environment in order to change events in some way is defined by Skinner as operant behavior. Operant behavior (caused by operant conditioning) is determined by the events that follow the response. That is, behavior is followed by a consequence, and the nature of this consequence changes the tendency of the organism to repeat this behavior in the future. These are voluntary acquired reactions for which there is no recognizable stimulus.

If the consequences are favorable to the organism, then the likelihood of repetition of the operant in the future increases. When this occurs, the consequences are said to be reinforced, and the operant responses resulting from the reinforcement (in the sense of a high probability of its occurrence) are conditioned. Conversely, if the consequences of a response are not favorable or reinforced, then the probability of obtaining the operant decreases. Skinner believed that operant behavior was therefore controlled by negative consequences. By definition, negative or aversive consequences weaken the behavior that produces them and strengthen the behavior that eliminates them. The essence of operant conditioning is that behavior that is reinforced tends to be repeated, and behavior that is not reinforced or punished tends not to be repeated or is suppressed. Therefore, the concept of reinforcement plays a key role in Skinner's theory. Skinner argued that virtually any neutral stimulus can become reinforcing if it is associated with other stimuli that previously had reinforcing properties.

Another direction of personality research is known as the “third force”, along with psychoanalytic theory and behaviorism, and is called “Growth Theory” or (in Russian psychology) this direction is called “humanistic psychology”. This direction is represented by psychologists such as Maslow, Rogers and Goldstein. Growth theory emphasizes a person’s desire to improve, realize their potential, and self-expression.

The creator of self-actualization theory, Kurt Goldstein, viewed self-actualization as a fundamental process in every organism that can have both positive and negative consequences for the individual. For Goldstein (as for Maslow), self-actualization does not mean the end of problems and difficulties; on the contrary, growth can often bring a certain amount of pain and suffering. Goldstein wrote that the body's abilities determine its needs.

Maslow began to explore self-actualization in a more formal way, studying the lives, values and attitudes of people who seemed to him the most mentally healthy and creative, those who seemed to him to be highly self-actualized, that is, who had achieved a more optimal, effective and healthy level of functioning than average people. Maslow argues that it is more reasonable to make generalizations about human nature by studying the best representatives of it that can be found, rather than by cataloging the difficulties and mistakes of average and neurotic individuals.

Maslow defines neurosis and psychological maladjustment as “diseases of deprivation,” that is, he believes that they are caused by the deprivation of satisfaction of certain fundamental needs. Fundamental needs are inherent in all individuals. The extent and manner of their satisfaction varies in different societies, but fundamental needs can never be completely ignored. Maslow lists the following fundamental needs: the need for safety, security and stability; need for love and a sense of belonging; the need for self-esteem and respect from others. In addition, each individual has growth needs, that is, the need to develop his inclinations and abilities and the need for self-actualization.

Classifying human needs into hierarchically constructed groups, the sequence of which indicates the order in which needs arise in the process of individual development, and also pointing to the development of the motivational sphere as a whole, A. Maslow gives the following concept, according to which, from birth, a person’s personal maturation sequentially appears and accompanies the following 7 classes of needs:

1. Physiological (organic) needs
2. Security needs.
3. Needs for belonging and love.
4. Respect (honor) needs.
5. Cognitive needs.
6. Aesthetic needs.
7. Self-actualization needs.

According to Maslow, earlier-named needs dominate, that is, they must be satisfied before later-named needs. When lower needs are satisfied, other broader needs immediately appear and begin to dominate the body. When they are satisfied, new, even higher needs come onto the scene, and so on.

In the second half of the 20th century, theories of human needs were supplemented by a number of special motivational concepts presented in the works of D. McClelland, D. Atkinson, G. Heckhausen, G. Kelly, Y. Rotter and others.

In Russian psychology, we can highlight the theory of activity of the origin of the human motivational sphere, created by A.N. Leontiev and continued in the works of his students and followers.

According to the concept of A.N. Leontiev, the motivational sphere of a person, like his other psychological characteristics, has its sources in practical activities. In the activity itself one can find those components that correspond to the elements of the motivational sphere and are functionally and genetically related to them. Behavior in general, for example, corresponds to a person's needs; in the system of activities from which it is composed, there is a variety of motives; a set of actions that form an activity - an ordered set of goals. Thus, between the structure of activity and the structure of a person’s motivational sphere there is a relationship of isomorphism, i.e. mutual correspondence.

In the latest psychological concepts of motivation that claim to explain human behavior, the prevailing approach at present is the cognitive approach to motivation, in line with which special importance is attached to phenomena associated with human consciousness and knowledge. The most frequently used concepts in the relevant theories are the concepts of cognitive dissonance, expectations of success, value (attractiveness) of success, fear of possible failure, and level of aspirations.

The impulse to action can arise in a person not only under the influence of emotions, but also under the influence of knowledge (cognitions), in particular, consistency or inconsistency. One of the first to pay attention to this factor and study it, developing the corresponding theory, was L. Festinger. The main postulate of his theory of cognitive dissonance is the assertion that a person’s system of knowledge about the world and about himself strives for coordination. When a mismatch or imbalance occurs, the individual strives to remove or reduce it, and such a desire in itself can become a strong motive for his behavior.

The American scientist D. Atkinson was one of the first to propose a general theory of motivation that explains human behavior aimed at achieving a specific goal. His theory reflected the moments of initiation, orientation and support of human behavioral activity at a certain level. This same theory provided one of the first examples of a symbolic representation of motivation.

So, by the middle of this century, at least 10 theories have emerged in the psychology of motivation and are still being developed as relatively independent ones. Only the integration of all theories with a deep analysis and isolation of all the positive things they contain can give us a more or less complete picture of the determination of human behavior. However, such a rapprochement is seriously hampered by inconsistency in starting positions, differences in research methods, terminology, and due to the lack of firmly established facts about human motivation.

Motives- an internal stable psychological reason for a person’s behavior or action. This is something that belongs to the subject of behavior himself, is his stable personal property, which prompts him from the inside to perform an action. Motivation is a dynamic process of internal, psychological control of behavior, including its initiation, direction, organization, support, i.e. a set of psychological reasons that explain human behavior, its beginning, direction and activity. It explains the purposefulness of action and organization. Needs are the state of a person’s need for certain conditions that they lack for normal existence; its difference is the selectivity of the living person’s response to what constitutes the subject of needs. Characteristics of human needs - strength, frequency of occurrence and method of satisfaction. The second thing after needs is the goal - a directly perceived result, towards which an action associated with an activity that satisfies an actualized need is currently directed.

Motivation - a dynamic process of internal, psychological and physiological control of behavior, including its initiation, direction and support. A process of continuous choice and decision-making based on weighing behavioral alternatives. One of the most important issues of motivation for human activity is the causal explanation of his actions (causal attribution). Causal attribution is a process aimed at understanding the information received about a person’s behavior, identifying certain of his actions, and most importantly, developing a person’s ability to predict them, which is very important in communication and interaction between people. The theory of motivation to achieve success and avoid failure. The founders are McClelland, Atkinson, and Heckhausen. A person has two different motives, functionally related to activities aimed at achieving success. People motivated for success usually set themselves some positive goal in their activity, the achievement of which is regarded as success (they expect success, receiving approval for their actions, and are characterized by full mobilization of their resources). People motivated to avoid failures show self-doubt, do not believe in the possibility of achieving success, are afraid of criticism, and are characterized by inadequate professional self-determination. In addition to the achievement motive, the choice of task and performance results are influenced by a person’s self-image. People who attribute “responsibility” to themselves often prefer to deal with problems of medium rather than low or high difficulty. They, as a rule, also have a level of aspirations that is more consistent with actual success. Another feature is the demands a person places on himself. Those who place higher demands on themselves try harder to achieve success. Of no small importance is a person’s understanding of his inherent abilities necessary to solve a problem (in case of failure in an activity, those who believe that they have developed the corresponding abilities are less worried). In addition to the motive for achievement, anxiety plays an important role in understanding how a person will perform a particular activity (there is personal and situational anxiety). Anxiety arises most often when numerous failures in his mind are associated with his lack of abilities necessary for successful activities. In this case, the person exhibits a clear decrease in motivation, and also experiences a lack of knowledge, as well as emotional and positive stimulation of activity. In addition to all of the above motives, a person is characterized by the need for communication - the motive of affiliation/the motive of rejection, the motive of power, the motive of helping other people (altruism) and aggressiveness. A leader needs motivation to be a leader. It manifests itself in different ways in different types of people: careerists - people with a pronounced motivation to be a leader, with low motivation for a leadership position (such people are not recommended to be placed in a leadership position), self-realization motivation for occupying a position (in young people), hypermotivation (also unacceptable). The ratio of motivation to opportunities: the optimal ratio of high opportunities and high motivation and low opportunities and low motivation, not the optimal ratio of low motivation and high opportunities and high motivation and low opportunities.

Parameters of the motivational sphere: breadth - qualitative diversity of motivational factors - needs and goals. Flexibility - a motivational sphere is considered more flexible in which, in order to satisfy a motivational impulse of a more general nature, a greater variety of motivational incentives of a lower level can be used. Breadth is the diversity of the potential range of objects that can serve for a given person as an object to satisfy an actual need, and flexibility is the mobility of connections existing between different levels of hierarchical organization of the motivational sphere. Hierarchization is a characteristic of the structure of each level of organization of the motivational sphere, taken separately. Interests are a special motivational state of a cognitive nature. A task is a situational-motivational factor that arises when, in the course of a certain goal, the body encounters certain obstacles. Desires and intentions are momentarily arising and often replacing each other motivational subjective states that meet the changing conditions for performing an action. The motivation for human behavior can be conscious or unconscious, i.e. Some needs and goals are controlled by human behavior and are realized by him.

Theories - "decision theory" in the 17th-18th centuries. explaining human behavior on a rationalistic basis, and the “automatic theory” - explaining animal behavior on an irrationalistic basis.

Darwin's evolutionary theory - under its influence, psychology began an intensive study of rational forms of behavior in animals (Köhler, Thorndike) and instincts in humans (Freud, McDougall, Pavlov). The same organic needs that were previously endowed only with animals, including instincts, began to be attributed to humans as motivational factors. One of the first manifestations of this point of view was the theories of instincts of Freud and McDougall, proposed at the end of the 19th century. They made attempts to reduce all forms of human behavior to innate instincts, there were three of them - the instinct of life, death and aggressiveness.

The behavioristic theory of motivation and the theory of higher nervous activity - behavioral, developed as a logical continuation of Watson's ideas in the theory of explaining behavior. In addition to this, Hull and Skinner tried to deterministically explain behavior within the framework of the original stimulus-reactive scheme. The research begun by Pavlov was continued by Bernstein, the author of the original theory of psychophysiological regulation of movements by Anokhin, who proposed a model of a functional system at the modern level that describes the dynamics of a behavioral act.

Maslow - the following needs consistently appear in a person from birth and accompany personal maturation:

1. Physiological needs (hunger, thirst, etc.)

2. Security needs (to feel protected).

3. The need for belonging and love (being close to your loved one).

4. The need for respect (competence).

5. Cognitive needs (to know, to be able to).

6. Needs for self-actualization (realization of one’s goals).

Leontiev - the motivational sphere of a person, like other psychological abilities, has its sources in practical activities. This concept is an explanation of the origin and dynamics of the human motivational sphere.

Cognitive approach - importance is attached to phenomena associated with human consciousness and knowledge.

Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance argued that a person's system of knowledge about the world and about himself tends to harmonize.

Atkinson is a general theory of motivation that explains human behavior aimed at achieving a specific goal.