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FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL When Mohamed Dirie started first grade, he did not know his ABCs or 123s. He had no idea what the words “teacher,” “cubby,” or “recess” meant. In fact, he spoke virtually no English. As for his classmates, they were beginning first grade with basic reading and writing skills from preschool and kindergarten. Mohamed’s early education had taken place in an Islamic school, where he spent most of his time learning to read and recite Arabic verses of the Qur’an (kə-ˈrän). But Arabic wasn’t going to be much help to a 6-year-old trying to get through first grade in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Months earlier, Mohamed and his mother, father, and older sister had arrived in St. Paul from the East African nation of Kenya, some 8,000 miles across the globe. Kenya was not their native country, just a stopping point between their homeland, Somalia, and a new life in America.

Perhaps you have heard about Somalia. Many of the news stories coming out of this nation in the past two decades have told of bloody clashes between rival factions, kidnappings by pirates, suicide bombings, and starving children. Somalia’s serious troubles began in 1991, when rebel forces overthrew the government of President Siad Barre. With gunshots ringing through the streets of their home city of Mogadishu, Mohamed’s family, like thousands of others, fled the country, narrowly escaping death.

Note: Quotations attributed to Mohamed Dirie are personal communications.

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The first day of school in St. Paul, little Mohamed strapped on his backpack and walked with his mother to the bus stop. When the yellow bus pulled up to the curb, Mohamed’s mother followed him inside and insisted on accompanying him to school. But Mohamed was ready to make the journey alone. “No, Mom, I got this,” he remembers saying in his native Somali.

When Mohamed arrived at his new school, he found his way to the first-grade classroom and discovered a swarm of children chattering and making friends. Mohamed wanted to mingle, too, so he endeared himself to the other kids the best way he could—by smiling. Flashing a grin was Mohamed’s way of communicating, Hey, I am a good person and you should get to know me. His strategy worked. “I really felt like other people approached me better,” he says. Mohamed’s warm and welcoming demeanor may have been one reason his teacher took a special interest in him, providing the individual attention he needed to catch up to his peers. And Mohamed caught up quickly.

By the end of third grade, he had graduated from an English as a Second Language (ESL) program and could converse fluently with classmates. He sailed through the rest of elementary school with As and Bs in all subjects. Middle school presented new challenges, as Mohamed attended one of the poorest schools in the district and occasionally got picked on, but he continued to excel academically, taking the most challenging classes offered. In high school, he took primarily international baccalaureate (IB) or pre-IB classes, which prepped him for his undergraduate work at the University of Minnesota. Now, with his bachelor’s degree in scientific and technical communication, Mohamed is contemplating his next step. Will it be law school? A master’s degree? Maybe a PhD?

If you think about where Mohamed began and where he is today, it’s hard not to be awed. He entered the United States’ school system 2 years behind his peers, unable to speak a word of English, an outsider in a culture radically different from his own. Without any tutoring from his parents (who couldn’t read the class assignments, let alone help him with schoolwork), he managed to propel himself to the upper levels of the nation’s educational system in just 12 years.

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How do you explain Mohamed’s success? This young man definitely is intelligent. You can tell he is bright after 5 minutes of conversation. But intelligence is not the only ingredient in the recipe for outstanding achievement. Other factors are important as well, including something psychologists consider essential for success in school: motivation (Conley, 2012; Hodis, Meyer, McClure, Weir, & Walkey, 2011; Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2002).

There are people who get kicks from bungee jumping out of helicopters, and those who feel completely invigorated by a rousing match of chess. Human behaviors can be logical: We eat when hungry, sleep when tired, and go to work to pay the rent. Our behaviors can also be senseless and destructive: A beautiful fashion model starves herself, or an aspiring politician throws away an entire career for a fleeting sexual adventure. Why do people spend their hard-earned money on lottery tickets when the chances of winning may be 1 in 175 million (Wasserstein, 2013, May 16)? And what in the world drives teenagers to wrap houses in toilet paper on Halloween night?

One way to explain human behavior is through learning. We know that people (not to mention dogs, chickens, and slugs) can learn to behave in certain ways through classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning (Chapter 5). But learning isn’t everything. Another way to explain behavior is to consider what might be motivating it. In the first half of this chapter, you will learn about different forms of motivation and the theories explaining them. Keep in mind that human behavior is complex and should be studied in the context of culture, biology, and the environment. Every behavior is likely to have a multitude of causes (Maslow, 1943).

LO 1 Define motivation.

Psychologists propose that motivation is a stimulus or force that can direct the way we behave, think, and feel. A motivated behavior tends to be guided (that is, it has a direction), energized, and persistent. Mohamed’s academic behavior has all three features: guided because he sets specific goals like getting into graduate school, energized because he goes after those goals with zeal, and persistent because he sticks with his goals even when challenges arise.

INCENTIVE Let’s take a look at how operant conditioning, particularly the use of reinforcers, can help us understand the relationship between learning and motivation. When a behavior is reinforced (with positive or negative reinforcers), an association is established between the behavior and its consequence. If we consider motivated behavior, this association becomes the incentive, or reason to repeat the behavior. Imagine there is a term paper you have been avoiding. You decide you will treat yourself to an hour of Web surfing for every three pages you write. Adding a reinforcer (surf time) increases your writing behavior; thus, we call it a positive reinforcer. The association between the behavior (writing) and the consequence (Web surfing) is the incentive. Before you know it, you begin to expect this break from work, which motivates you to write.

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LO 2 Explain how extrinsic and intrinsic motivation impact behavior.

EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION When a learned behavior is motivated by the incentive of external reinforcers in the environment, we would say there is an extrinsic motivation to continue that behavior (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999; Table 9.1). In other words, the motivation comes from consequences that are found in the environment or situation. Bagels and coffee might provide extrinsic motivation for people to attend a boring meeting. Sales commissions provide extrinsic motivation for sales people to sell more goods. For most of us, money serves as a powerful form of extrinsic motivation.

INTRINSIC MOTIVATION But learned behaviors can also be motivated by personal satisfaction, interest in a subject matter, and other variables that exist within a person. When the urge to continue a behavior comes from within, we call it intrinsic motivation (Deci et al., 1999). Reading a textbook because it is inherently interesting exemplifies intrinsic motivation. The reinforcers originate inside of you (learning feels good and brings you satisfaction), and not from the external environment.

What compels you to offer your seat to an older adult on a bus: Is it because you’ve been praised for helping others before (extrinsic motivation), or because it simply feels good to help someone (intrinsic motivation)? Perhaps your response is a combination of both.

EXTRINSIC VERSUS INTRINSIC Many behaviors are inspired by a blend of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, but there do appear to be potential disadvantages to extrinsic motivation (Deci et al., 1999). Researchers have found that using rewards, such as money and marshmallows, to reinforce already interesting activities (like doing puzzles, playing word games, and so on) can lead to a decrease in what was initially intrinsically motivating. Perhaps the use of external reinforcers causes people to feel less responsible for initiating their own behaviors.

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In general, behavior resulting from intrinsic motivation is likely to include “high-quality learning,” but only when the activities are novel, challenging, or have aesthetically pleasing characteristics. Extrinsic motivation may be less effective, resulting in resentment or disinterest (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Unfortunately, researchers have found that “tangible rewards—both material rewards, such as pizza parties for reading books, and symbolic rewards, such as good student awards—are widely advocated by many educators and are used in many classrooms, yet the evidence suggests that these rewards tend to undermine intrinsic motivation for the rewarded activity” (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 2001, p. 15).

For Mohamed, the most powerful source of extrinsic motivation was the approval of his mother. He recalls how proud she was after returning from a parent–teacher conference in which his first-grade teacher said, “Your child is as bright as the sun.” Mohamed doesn’t remember his mom rewarding him with material things like toys and candy; apparently, making her proud was gratifying enough. But there were also forces driving Mohamed from within (intrinsic motivation). He enjoyed the process of learning. It was rewarding to master a second language and nail down his multiplication tables. Outside of class, Mohamed read books for fun. He still enjoys reading science fiction, so much that he hopes to write his own novel one day. Says Mohamed, “I want to be the first Somali to write a science fiction [book] in Somali.”

LO 3 Summarize instinct theory.

What are instincts, do humans really have them, and how do they relate to motivation? First observed by scientists studying animals, instincts are complex behaviors that are fixed, unlearned, and consistent within a species. Instincts motivate South American ovenbirds to construct elaborate cavelike nests, and sea turtles to swim back hundreds of miles to feeding grounds they visited years earlier (Broderick, Coyne, Fuller, Glen, & Godley, 2007). No one teaches the birds to build their nests or the turtles to retrace migratory routes; through evolution, these behaviors appear to be etched into their genetic make-up.

Instincts form the basis of one of the earliest theories of motivation. Inspired in part by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, early scholars proposed that humans have a variety of instincts (McDougall, 1912). American psychologist William James (1890/1983) suggested we could explain some human behavior through instincts such as attachment and cleanliness. At the height of instinct theory’s popularity, several thousand human “instincts” had been named, among them curiosity, flight, and aggressiveness (Bernard, 1926; Kuo, 1921). Yet there was little evidence they were true instincts—that is, complex behaviors that are fixed, unlearned, and consistent within a species. Only a handful of human behaviors might be considered instincts, such as rooting behavior in newborn infants (Chapter 8). But even these are more related to reflexes than is a complex activity like nest building.

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Although instinct theory faded into the background, some of its themes are apparent in the evolutionary perspective. A substantial body of research suggests that evolutionary forces influence human behavior. For example, emotional responses, such as fear of snakes, heights, and spiders, may have evolved to protect us from danger (Plomin, DeFries, Knopik, & Neiderhiser, 2013). But these fears are not instincts, because they are not universal. Not everyone is afraid of snakes and spiders; some of us have learned to fear (or not fear) them through experience. When trying to pin down the motivation for behavior, it is difficult to determine the relative contributions of learning (nurture) and innate factors (nature) such as instinct (Deckers, 2005).

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Humans and nonhuman animals have basic physiological needs or requirements that must be maintained at some baseline or constant state to ensure continued existence. Homeostasis refers to the way in which our bodies maintain these constant states through internal controls. In order to survive, there is a continuous monitoring of oxygen, fluids, nutrients, and other physiological variables. If these fall below desired or necessary levels, an urge to restore equilibrium surfaces. And this urge motivates us to act.

LO 4 Describe drive-reduction theory and explain how it relates to motivation.

The drive-reduction theory of motivation proposes that this biological balancing act is the basis for motivation (Hull, 1952). According to this theory, behaviors are driven by the need to maintain homeostasis—that is, to fulfill basic biological needs for nutrients, fluids, oxygen, and so on (see Infographic 9.1, below). If a need is not fulfilled, this creates a drive, or state of tension, that pushes us or motivates behaviors to meet the need. The urges to eat, drink, sleep, seek comfort, or have sex are associated with physiological needs. Once a need is satisfied, the drive is reduced, at least temporarily, because this is an ongoing process, as the need inevitably returns. For example, when the behavior (let’s say eating) stops, the deprivation of something (such as food) causes the need to increase again.

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Let’s look at another concrete example of drive reduction. Imagine you visit a mountainous area 6,500 feet above sea level, which puts a strain on breathing. While jogging, you find yourself gasping for air because your oxygen levels have dropped. Motivated by the need to maintain homeostasis, you stop what you are doing until your oxygen levels return to normal. Having an unfulfilled need (not enough oxygen) creates a drive (state of tension) that pushes you to modify your behavior in order to restore homeostasis (you stop and breathe deeply, allowing your blood oxygen levels to return to a normal level). The drive-reduction theory helps us understand how physiological needs can be motivators, but it is less useful for explaining why we climb mountains, go to college, or drive cars too fast.

Mohamed arrived in America when he was 6 years old. Stepping off the plane in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) was quite a shock for a young boy who had lived most of his childhood in the crowded, pavement-covered city of Nairobi. “It was really strange to me,” Mohamed says. “At that time, I hadn’t really seen a place that had space.” How odd it was to see patches of green grass in front of every house. “Everything looked like it sparkled.”

New places, people, and experiences can be frightening. They can also be delightfully exhilarating. Humans are fascinated by novelty, and you see evidence of this innate curiosity in the earliest stages of life. Babies grab, suck, and climb on just about everything they can get their hands on, including (much to the horror of their parents) dangerous electrical devices. Ignoring the most forceful parental warnings (Do NOT touch that hot plate!), many toddlers still reach out and touch extremely hot cookware or recklessly leap between pieces of furniture. But mind you, children are not the only ones seeking new experiences. Grown men and women will pay hundreds of dollars to parachute out of airplanes or float over jagged mountains in hot-air balloons. They also spend hours tooling around Web sites like Wikipedia and YouTube—just to learn about new things. Why engage in activities that have little, if anything, to do with satisfying basic biological needs? Humans are driven by other types of urges, including the apparent need for stimulation.

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Our primate cousins are also inquisitive, which suggests that they too have an innate need for enrichment and sensory stimulation. Researchers have found that monkeys will attempt to open latches without extrinsic motivation; apparently, their curiosity motivates their behavior (Butler, 1960; Harlow, Harlow, & Meyer, 1950).

LO 5 Explain how arousal theory relates to motivation.

According to arousal theory, humans (and perhaps other primates) seek an optimal level of arousal, as not all motivation stems from physical needs. Arousal, or engagement in the world, can be a product of anxiety, surprise, excitement, interest, fear, and many other emotions. Have you ever had an unexplained urge to make simple changes to your daily routines, like taking a new route to work, preparing your morning eggs differently, or adding new clothes to your wardrobe? These behaviors may stem from your need to increase arousal, as optimal arousal is a personal or subjective matter that is not the same for everyone (Infographic 9.1). Evidence suggests that some people are sensation seekers; that is, they appear to seek activities that increase arousal (Zuckerman, 1979, 1994). Popularly known as “adrenaline junkies,” these individuals relish activities like cliff diving, racing motorcycles, and watching horror movies. High sensation seeking is not necessarily a bad thing, as it may be associated with a higher tolerance for stressful events (Roberti, 2004).

LO 6 Outline Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Have you ever been in a car accident, lived through a hurricane, or witnessed a violent crime? At the time, you probably were not thinking about what show you were going to watch on HBO that night. When physical safety is threatened, everything else tends to take a backseat. This is one of the themes underlying the hierarchy of needs theory of motivation proposed by Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), a leading figure in the humanistic movement. Maslow organized human needs into a hierarchy of biological and psychological needs, often depicted as a pyramid (Infographic 9.1). The needs in the hierarchy are considered universal and are ordered according to the strength of their associated drives, with the most critical needs at the bottom. Food and water, for example, are situated at the base of the hierarchy, and generally take precedence over higher-level needs.

PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS Physiological needs, as stated earlier, include the requirements for food, water, sleep, and an overall balance of bodily systems. If a life-sustaining need such as fluid intake goes unsatisfied, other needs are placed on hold and the person is motivated to find ways to satisfy it. For example, the Chilean miners introduced in Chapter 1 spent weeks trapped underground with no clean drinking water. To quench their thirst, they were willing to drink oil-contaminated water (and urine, in the case of one man).

SAFETY NEEDS For most North Americans, basic physiological needs are “relatively well gratified” (Maslow, 1943), and thus Maslow would suggest their behavior is motivated by the next higher level in the hierarchy: safety needs. But how you define safety depends on the circumstances of your life. If you were living in Mogadishu during the 1991 revolution (and many times subsequent to that period), staying safe might have involved dodging bullets and artillery fire. For those currently living in Somalia, safety includes having access to safe drinking water and disease-preventing vaccines. Most people living in America do not have to worry about access to clean water or routine vaccinations. Here, safety is more likely equated with the need for predictability and order: having a steady job, a home in a safe neighborhood, health insurance, and living in a country with a stable economy. What does safety mean for you?

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LOVE AND BELONGINGNESS NEEDS If safety needs are being met, then people will be motivated by love and belongingness needs. Maslow suggested this includes the need to avoid loneliness, to feel like part of a group, and to maintain affectionate relationships. Except for a rare run-in with neighborhood bullies, Mohamed enjoyed a fairly secure existence in Minnesota. His need for safety was met, so he was motivated at this next level of the hierarchy. In addition to cultivating deep family bonds, Mohamed befriended two boys he met in middle school, one who had emigrated from Bangladesh and the other a first-generation Mexican American. The three pals all ended up going to the University of Minnesota, and they remain very close.

We all want to belong, and failing to meet this need has significant consequences. People who feel disconnected or excluded may demonstrate less prosocial behavior (Twenge, Baumeister, DeWall, Ciarocco, & Bartels, 2007) and behave more aggressively and less cooperatively, which only tends to intensify their struggle for social acceptance (DeWall, Baumeister, & Vohs, 2008).

ESTEEM NEEDS If the first three levels of needs are being met, then the individual might be motivated by esteem needs, including the need to be respected by others, to achieve, and to have self-respect, self-confidence, and feelings of independence. Cultivating and fulfilling these needs foster a sense of confidence and self-worth, both qualities that Mohamed seems to possess. It was early in life that Mohamed began doing things for himself. His parents may have been there to encourage him, but they could not hold his hand when it came to tasks demanding proficiency in English—like filling out employment applications. But Mohamed did just fine on his own, landing his first job at a nonprofit student loan company just after ninth grade, and performing so well that the company employed him throughout college. Mohamed, it appears, began meeting esteem needs very early on.

SELF-ACTUALIZATION Even with the above-mentioned needs actively being met, Maslow suggested that the need for self-actualization would provide motivation “to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming” (Maslow, 1943, p. 382). Self-actualization is the need to reach one’s fullest potential. Some will meet this need by being the best possible parent, while others will strive to be the best artist or musician. Self-actualization is at the heart of the humanistic movement: It represents the human tendency toward growth and self-discovery (Chapter 10). For Mohamed, self-actualization means being an exceptional scholar, employee, and father.

SELF-TRANSCENDENCE Toward the end of his life, Maslow proposed an additional need: that for self-transcendence. This need motivates us to go beyond our own needs and feel outward connections through “peak experiences” of ecstasy and awe. Fulfilling this need might mean devoting oneself to a humanitarian cause, pursuing a lofty ideal, or achieving spiritual enlightenment. If you walked into Mohamed’s room, you would see a huge poster that says, “Live a simple life so others can simply live.” What this means, explains Mohamed, is that you should do the best you can in life, but also strive to allow others to do the same. “It’s balancing your life so that you’re always doing the most positive good,” he says. As president of the University of Minnesota’s Somali Student Association, Mohamed put this slogan to work, organizing activities to support Somali students, and arranging cultural awareness events at the university and in the greater Twin Cities communities.

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EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE Maslow’s hierarchy provides suggestions for the order of needs, but this sequence is not set in stone. In some cases, people abandon physiological needs in order to meet a self-actualization need—going on a hunger strike or giving up material possessions, for example. During the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Mohamed refrains from drinking or eating from dawn to dusk—not an easy task during August in Minnesota, where the sun rises at about 6:00 A.M. and sets well after 8:00 P.M. The practice of fasting, which also occurs in Christianity, Hinduism, and Judaism, illustrates how basic physiological needs (food and water) can temporarily be placed on hold for a greater purpose (religion).

Safety is another basic need often relegated in the pursuit of something more transcendent. Just think of all the soldiers who have given their lives fighting for causes like freedom and social justice. Somali parents living in a war zone and battling hunger may neglect their own basic needs to ensure their children’s well-being, thus fulfilling higher needs such as love and esteem.

SELF-DETERMINATION THEORY Building on the ideas of both Maslow and Erik Erikson, Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (2008) proposed the self-determination theory (SDT), which suggests that humans are born with three universal, fundamental needs that are always driving us in the direction of optimal functioning: competence, relatedness, and autonomy (Figure 9.1; Stone, Deci, & Ryan, 2009). Competence represents the need to reach our goals through successful mastery of day-to-day responsibilities. Relatedness is the need to create meaningful and lasting relationships. And autonomy means managing one’s behavior to reach personal goals. Self-determination theory does not focus on overcoming one’s shortcomings, but on moving in a positive direction.

NEED FOR ACHIEVEMENT In the early 1930s, Henry Murray proposed that humans are motivated by 20 fundamental human needs. One of these has been the subject of a great deal of research: the need for achievement (n-Ach), or a drive to reach attainable and challenging goals especially in the face of competition. McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, and Lowell (1976) suggested that people tend to seek out situations that provide opportunities for satisfying this need. A child who aspires to become a professional basketball player might start training at a very young age, read books about the sport, and apply for basketball camp scholarships. A high school student dead set on going to college may set up meetings with the college counselor, take practice SATs, and read books about how to write an exceptional application essay.

NEED FOR POWER According to McClelland and colleagues (1976), some people are motivated by a need for power (n-Pow), or a drive to control and influence others. People with this need may project their importance through outward appearances. They may drive around in luxury cars, wear flashy designer clothing, and buy expensive houses. Some even flex their influence muscles on the pages of Facebook, building massive numbers of contacts just to show how important and popular they are.

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In the next section, we return our focus to the base of Maslow’s pyramid, where basic drives such as hunger and thirst are represented. Sadly, many people in the world do not get those needs fulfilled.

Question 1

Question 2

Question 3

1. operant conditioning

2. arousal theory

3. instinct theory

4. homeostasis

Question 4

1. arousal

2. instinct

3. incentive

4. drive-reduction

Question 5

Question 6