Understanding Human Motivation

Understanding Human Motivation is a lively presentation of how factors such as biological nature, instinct, past experience, and society determine what we do.

• Draws on many different domains of human behavior and links together many motivational factors such as fear, sex, consciousness, and rage.

• Illustrates the theoretical bases of motivation through real-life examples and case studies.

• Written in accessible manner for use in courses.

Autorentext
Donald Laming was formerly Senior Lecturer in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge. He has written several previous books, Information Theory of Choice-Reaction Times (1968), Mathematical Psychology (1973), Sensory Analysis (1986), and The Measurement of Sensation (1997).

Zusammenfassung

Understanding Human Motivation is a lively presentation of how factors such as biological nature, instinct, past experience, and society determine what we do.

• Draws on many different domains of human behavior and links together many motivational factors such as fear, sex, consciousness, and rage.
• Illustrates the theoretical bases of motivation through real-life examples and case studies.
• Written in accessible manner for use in courses.

Inhalt

Preface and Acknowledgments xii

INTRODUCTION: THREE FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS 1

What is Motivation? 2

How Can We Study Human Motivation? 3

The use of anecdotal material 3

Three Fundamental Ideas 6

Quasi-mechanical behavior 6

Personal view and camera view 6

Social extrusion 7

Some omissions 8

The Plan of this Book 9

Questions for discussion 10

1 DETERMINISM AND FREE WILL 11

Determinism 12

Psychological theory treats behavior as determinate 13

Free Will 14

Questions for discussion 20

2 TERROR 21

The Origins of Fear 23

Components of Fear 25

Two stages in the genesis of fear 27

Fear as Instinct 30

Pathological fear 32

The Experience of Fear 33

Companionship 33

Military combat 34

Being in control 34

Training and skill 35

The Persistence of Fear 35

The persistence of memory 35

Recurrence of fear 36

Questions for discussion 37

3 SEX 38

Personal View and Camera View 40

Which view personal view or camera view? 42

Lay psychology 43

Sexual Behavior is Quasi-Mechanical 45

Mechanical 45

Substantially mechanical 46

Acquisition of patterns of sexual behavior 47

The pleasure principle 49

Some Questions about Sexual Behavior 51

1 What are the extraneous signals which trigger sexual behavior? 51

2 What other signals or social constraints act to modify sexual behavior? 52

3 What about the intense feelings that accompany sexual activity? 53

4 What has this to do with the survival of the species? 54

5 What about the variation in sexual behavior from one adult to another? 56

6 Does sexual behavior have to match between male and female? 56

7 How much of our sexual behavior is innate and how much acquired?

4 CONSCIOUSNESS 60

Two Views of What People Do 61

The Meaning of Consciousness 62

Philosophical inquiry into consciousness 64

The neural signature of consciousness 65

Personal view and camera view 67

The Relationship of Subjective Experience to Objective Observation 69

The split brain 75

Why is consciousness important to the study of motivation? 79

Questions for discussion 80

5 BOREDOM 81

The Political Background 82

Brainwashing 83

Sensory Deprivation 84

Hallucinations 85

Disturbances of perception 92

Cognitive deficits 94

What does it all signify? 96

Boredom 96

Boredom at work 97

Leisure activities 97

Questions for discussion 102

6 SOCIAL CONVENTIONS 103

Milgram's Experiments 104

Proximity of teacher and pupil 104

What is going on? 106

Relaxation of the conflict 108

The importance of social structure 109

Social Conventions 111

Social conventions are different in different societies 113

Social conventions also differ between subgroups within the one society 116

Understanding Milgram's Results 117

Military obedience 119

The Stanford County Prison Experiment 120

Questions for discussion 123

7 THE RATE FOR THE JOB 124

How Much Do Different People Earn? 124

1 People doing the same job get paid the same (irrespective of how well they do it), unless, sometimes, they happen to be women 125

2 Those people closest to the money are paid the most 125

3 If someone can earn more by negotiating a private deal, well, good luck to her or him 128

Boardroom pay 130

MPs' financial interests 134 &...