Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory in psychology comprising a five-tier model of human needs, often depicted as hierarchical levels within a pyramid. The five levels of the hierarchy are physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.
Maslow examined the lives of each of these people in order to assess the common qualities that led each to become self-actualized. Based on Maslow’s description of self-actualizers, one can find several striking similarities that these supposedly self-actualized individuals share in common.
The major mid-twentieth century researchers in motivation — Maslow (1954), Herzberg, Vroom (1964), Alderfer (1972), McCalland (1961), and Locke et al. (1981) — devised research which Basset-Jones and Lloyd argue can be divided into content and process theories of motivation.
According to Maslow, people also have needs which must be met for self-actualization to be possible. The basic needs e.g. food and water have to be satisfied before the higher psychological and emotional needs. This is shown in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Self-determination is a theory of human motivation and personality that suggests that people can become self-determined when their needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy are fulfilled.
While drive-reduction theory was once a dominant theory in psychology, it is largely ignored today with the development of newer theories. Although it is no longer a widely accepted theory, it is still useful to understand how earlier researchers sought to explain human motivation.
The instinct theory explains motivation as stemming from inborn, biological drives and impulses. Motivated behavior arises to satisfy fundamental survival needs like hunger, thirst, sex, and rest. Instincts propel humans and animals to act in certain innate ways.
Psychological needs can also initiate motivation, such as the need for achievement or the need for affiliation, or the need for self-actualization. Motivation is the driving force(s) responsible for the initiation, persistence, direction, and strength of goal-directed behavior.
The arousal theory of motivation suggests that people are driven to perform actions that maintain an optimal level of physiological arousal. Too low or high arousal can lead to discomfort, so individuals seek activities that help achieve this balance, influencing their behavior and motivation.
Psychologists have posited two types of motivation theories: dualistic and multifaceted. While dualistic theories divide motivation into two types, intrinsic and extrinsic, multifaceted theories recognize a number of genetically distinct motives, such as hunger, curiosity, positive self-regard, fear, sex, and power (Reiss, 2004).