Elucidation of Motivation Structure by Dynamic Calculus

Abstract

Intro. Early attempts to understand motivation were limited to literary and philosophical theories. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, subjective speculation about human motive structures resulted in nothing less than confusion. The major theorists, including Freud (1958), Jung (1923), Adler (1930), Bleuler (1950), McDougall (1932), Murray (1962), and Maslow (1954), left the question of motivation structure largely unresolved. Freud (1933) -obviously postulated too few motives. According to his two-motive theory, homosapiens is impelled by life and death instincts (Eros and Thanatos). The notion of instincts came under heavy criticism during the 20th century due to its 'inherent circularity and lack of relevance to human behavior. Murray's (1962) speculations took the opposite extreme with his postulation of 20 needs. While Murray at least recognized the multiplicity of human motives, his ad hoc methodology was inadequate. Murray's 20 proposed needs were nevertheless incorporated into measurement instruments instruments by Jackson (1967) and Edwards (1959). Unfortunately, these measures were based naively on face validity, which resulted in their being transparent and superficial. The construct validity of the several needs offered by Murray was never established. To achieve this, it would have been necessary to employ appropriate multivariate statistical procedures such as factor analysis. However, it was not until 1947 that Thurstone published his revolutionary book titled Multiple Factor Analysis, and accordingly early motivation theorists such as Murray had little but clinical hunches to go on. Regrettably, despite the publication of Thurstone's book, motivational theorists have been reticent to invoke mathematical, quantitatively testable theories, and in accord with the practice of established sciences, to utilize sophisticated multivariate statistical procedures. Of all the above primitive theorists, however, McDougall• (1932), who postulated 15 inherent propensities, came closest to modern factor-analytic findings findings on human motive structure. Several of McDougall's propensities have stood the test of subsequent multivariate analysis (Cattell and Kline, 1977). It matters not whether critics claim that these factor-analytic findings were prejudiced by McDougall's postulations, as long as the factors have demonstrated validity. Apart from McDougall, most armchair theorists of the literary, philosophical, and pre-measurement phases of psychology could have saved themselves much effort. More recently, theorists such as the ethologists Lorenz (1966) and Tinbergen (1953) have proposed a number of innate drives based on their naturalistic observation of instinctive behavior in infrahuman species. Unfortunately, ethologists have failed to devise valid measurement instruments. Plainly, reliable and valid measures of empirically validated taxonomic constructs are the sine qua non of scientific enterprise.