We hear such phrases a lot so that we personally use them a number of times. If we think a little about these phrases, we will discover that they all lead to one idea, which is that behind every behaviour that a person performs is a hidden motive that drives them and makes them act in a certain way that distinguishes them from others.
Motives are the underlying and hidden drivers of every behaviour we do. A person cannot take any action without a motive that directs and leads them. It is essential to identify our own motives and the motives of others because, this way, we will understand the roots of the different behaviours that we do and those around us, and this helps us accept and change them if necessary.
What does motivation mean? What is its importance?
| Motivation is the main driver of every behaviour that a person performs. |
Motives are preparations present in the living organism in general, but they are latent and are not moved except by an external stimulus or an internal need, rather, they continue until the person reaches the stimulus that satisfies the need.
Here it is necessary to differentiate between the need, that is, the stimulus and the motive as many people confuse the two. The stimulus provokes the behaviour but does not satisfy it, while the motive stimulates the behaviour and satisfies it at the same time. For example, the lack of food is a need or a stimulus, while the food itself is the motive.
In other words, it can be said that motivation is a state of internal tension that occurs as a result of a stimulus, and this state stimulates activity to search in the external environment for the motive that removes tension and satisfies the need. In this sense, motivation is the engine of behaviour, not the behaviour itself.
- Not every behaviour we do has a specific motive. Sometimes, there is a large number of motives behind one behavior. For example, murder behavior is sometimes motivated by rape, theft, revenge, anger, or otherwise.
- One motive may lead to multiple manifestations of behaviour. For example, the motive of self-affirmation may lead to work, study, travel, or otherwise.
What is the importance of motivation?
The importance of motivation lies in:
- Motivation is the main driver of every behaviour that a person performs; therefore, knowing the motives is one of the basic conditions for studying personality, interpreting different behaviours, and knowing the causes and goals of these behaviours.
- Our knowledge of the motives of others increases our ability to deal with them in a manner commensurate with their needs and personalities, and this increases our ability to agree with them. For example, when you know that your family's scrutiny of your actions out of love will make it easier for you to accept this behaviour, even if it is exaggerated at times.
- Our knowledge and understanding of our own motives makes us more able to control and direct them, and this would achieve a lot of psychological balance for us. For example, when we realise that we make important decisions in our lives out of anger and this is what always brings us a lot of trouble. We will train a lot to control these emotions so that we can tune them.
- Knowing the motives behind the crimes is useful in setting appropriate deterrent laws and penalties. The judge’s knowledge of the criminal’s motives and emotions helps them a lot in the investigation and in issuing the appropriate judgement.
- Understanding motivation helps counsellors and psychotherapists greatly in the treatment and rehabilitation of criminals and psychopaths.
Types of motives and their classifications
Scientists classify motives in different ways. Some of them classify them on the basis of the source, some of them classify them on the basis of the individual’s awareness of them or not, and some of them classify them according to the source and the goal together. This classification is what we will mention in the following:
1. Organic motives
These motives relate to the basic organic needs for the continuation of the life of the organism, and these motives are the basis for all other motives. They differ from the rest of the motives in that their excitement has an organic basis, which may be hormonal, nervous, or muscular.
They are emotional and instinctive;that is, common to all living beings, such as the motive of hunger, sex, and motherhood.
2. Social motives
These motives arise from organic motives, but are independent of them. These needs are satisfied through the group or others; that is, they are acquired from the social environment, and social motives are formed during the individual’s fulfilment of their organic needs as a result of their inability to do so or because of their need for someone to share their satisfaction with them.
Some social motives arise in the individual in any society, such as the motive for meeting and the motive for self-affirmation, while some social motives arise in a society without others, such as the motive of aggression, for example. Scholars may differ regarding the innate nature of these motives or not, and we will mention in the following an example of social motives in some detail to be clearer.
The fighter motive is one of the social motives, as the individual feels anger when they are unable to achieve what they want, then they resort to force to achieve this desire, stimulating the motive of the fighter. Freud claimed that this motive is innate. He says that man is by nature aggressive; thus, there is no escape from wars.
This is because a person is born with the motive of fighting, while Maslow and other proponents of the humanistic trend believe that fighting is not an innate motive, and they cited their words as the existence of tribes that never knew war, and they are the Eskimos; thus, human aggression arises from external factors.
3. Self or individual motives
Individual or personal motives are specific to each individual, and the individuals' belonging to a specific group with one culture does not mean that they are similar to individual motives, as happens in the case of social motives.
As self-motivations give each person his characteristics that distinguish him from others, some of them are conscious, including the individual’s attitudes, inclinations, and level of ambition, and some are subconscious, and given the great importance of subconscious motives, we will discuss them in some detail.
What are the unconscious motives?
| The unconscious motives try at every opportunity to become conscious and to be realised. |
Unconscious motives are those motives that we do not feel they exist in us, and they do not appear in our feelings or even in our consciousness, so our denial of their existence is natural. These unconscious motives greatly affect our behaviour, and each of us has our own subconscious motives.
How are unconscious motives formed?
They are formed during interaction with our social environment in which we exist and we seek to satisfy our organic, psychological and social needs, but often we face obstacles that prevent us from achieving our needs, whether they are social obstacles, customs, traditions, laws, systems, or self-obstacles resulting from our difference in values and standards, in addition to physical and social conditions.
People may differ in facing these obstacles and the problems resulting from them. Some people, for example, adjust their motives to become more compatible with the nature and standards of their societies, as it happens with the sexual motive, for example.
Others try to search for other realistic ways that solve their problems, satisfy their motives, and agree at the same time with the values and standards of their society, as does the student who failed when they try again with a lot of effort to achieve satisfactory results that satisfy their motivation for success.
However, some people resort to achieving their goal and satisfying their need in devious ways, such as the student who cheats to succeed. In the case that people are unable to find realistic ways and means to solve their crises, also when they are afraid of the consequences of satisfying their various needs, they automatically transfer these motives, needs, and desires to the unconscious.
This process is called repression, and from it many unconscious motives and nodes are formed that control many of our behaviours and direct our actions without us knowing, so that many psychologists, led by Freud, believe that most human behaviour results from repressed and suppressed motives and feelings.
For example, we need to get into a love relationship, but instead of continuing it, we decide to end it or withdraw from it by inventing flimsy, illogical arguments to hide our true feelings and fear buried in our subconscious.
The unconscious motives try at every opportunity to become conscious and to be realised, but they are confronted again by the conscience, so they are repressed again and appear in the form of psychological complexes, tricks and defence mechanisms that we resort to in order to achieve the greatest degree of compatibility with the surroundings.
We will talk about each one separately as follows:
1. Psychological complexes
Psychological complexes are a group of motives and desires that have been repressed because they are painful and inconsistent with the social life of a society, and they are charged with many emotions and feelings such as fear, anger, jealousy and hatred.
Psychological complexes are formed as a result of repeated exposure to painful situations and experiences by the individual.
As the latter removes the painful feelings resulting from them to the subconscious by means of repression, and there are many examples of these complexes, such as the father complex, the inferiority complex, and the guilt complex.
2. Unconscious matching methods
It is also called defence mechanisms or consensus tricks, and it is a group of subconscious methods and modalities that all people resort to in order to solve their crisis and the problems they face. These mechanisms contribute to reducing stress, anxiety and self-defence.
We will mention the most famous five tricks in the following:
2.1. Projection:
“He acted with me like this out of hate.” Have you ever thought that this hate motive belongs to you and that it is really you who hates and not the person you are talking about? Projection is an unconscious means that a person resorts to in order to resolve the conflict between them and a motive by projecting this motive onto another person, as in the previous example.
So, when we use a person to project everything that is in our soul onto them, when we judge them or reject them, we are in fact rejecting ourselves.
2.2. Justification:
It is also an unconscious process that a person uses to justify their motives that they or the society are not satisfied with, so they resort to providing evidence and logical arguments to convince themselves and others that there is no blame on them in a matter, as it happens, for example, when a student says that the reason for their failure is due to the difficulty of the questions or the injustice of the teacher.
2.3. Recidivism:
A person's return to patterns of behaviour that are not appropriate for their age to satisfy their motives, such as the crying of an adult to fulfil one of their requests, and the person often resorts to regression when it is impossible to satisfy their need in a proper way.
2.4. Reincarnation:
It is the unconscious adoption and absorption of someone's behaviour, movements, and method to satisfy the deficiency that we have. This happens without our feelings or awareness.
2.5. Dreams:
One of the basic methods that a person resorts to satisfy their urgent impulses, especially when achieving such motives, is very difficult in reality.
In conclusion
It must be emphasised that the basis for achieving the correct psychological, social, and personal adaptation of the individual to their environment is the extent to which they satisfy their needs and motives and the method they used to achieve this satisfaction.
Each of us has many different needs and we seek to satisfy all of them in accordance with the reality in which we live.
In the case that we fail to face the obstacles facing us while seeking this satisfaction, our adaptation will worsen, and this is what causes us to suffer many psychological problems and crises and makes us resort to subconscious methods and means to restore this adaptation.
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