The 3 Foundations of Motivational Psychology

In this blog, I will briefly explain what is original and important in the 16 basic theories of desire:

• The scientific derivation of 16 psychological needs or basic desires;
• Conceptual platform linking motivation and personality;
• The conceptual platform linking motivation and relationships.

Another Harvard professor, Henry Murray, renamed instinct as 'unconscious needs' and published the ThematicApperception Test( TAT), a storytelling technique for assessing needs. By the 1950s, motivational psychology was at the center of academic clinical psychology and TAT was widely used.

What happened? The scientific merit of CAM was not very bright. Leonard Eron and his colleagues wrote a highly influential review that had negative consequences for the scientific status of CAM. As CAM became controversial, need theory slowly began to lose its influence. Needs theory was also vulnerable to a sharp decline in popularity due to its limited practical implications. The first application of Murray's "needs" was as a clinical diagnosis within the psychodynamic DSM II model. When the DSM II diagnostic model became obsolete, Murray's needs theory also lost its influence.

Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory appealed to Human Resource managers and ultimately found an application in organizational leadership training. However, psychologists were unaware of how to apply psychological need theories to professional activities.

How oblivious? Another professor once asked me about the classification of the 16 basic desires. When I explained the theory, he got very excited and finally said, "This is really interesting. It's too bad you can't use it for anything."

By 1990, needs theory was obsolete, a thing of the past, something that no one was interested in except to study history. This seemed a pity to me because the insight about basic desires was valid, i.e. that there are certain goals ("needs") that motivate everyone. Although some in the world of Behavioral Scientists say they don't like concepts like "needs", there are stimuli that support everyone. Whether we call them instincts, needs, universal goals, intrinsic motivation or universal empowerment, they are crucial for understanding humans, how we behave in natural environments and how we relate to each other.

1. BASIC: EMPIRICAL DERIVATION OF NEEDS

I have been trying to reconstruct the theory of needs based on the three pillars for some time now. For the first time we have reported an empirically derived classification of needs and in the process redefined what is included in each need and what is not. Our classification of 16 needs includes basic desires such as acceptance, curiosity, eating, honor, status, peace of mind, etc. It overlaps 50% with the list of needs provided by McDougall, Murray et al. Since the 16 basic desires have been empirically derived and scientifically validated, this theory avoids the numerous errors of psychologists in how they have historically connected motives to needs. The desire for socialization, for example, is not compatible with the desire for revenge. Play is about fun, not competence. The desire for wealth is covered by a larger desire, the need for social status.

2. FUNDAMENTALS: MOTIVATION AND PERSONALITY

Everyone has 16 basic desires, but individuals prioritize them differently. How you prioritize the 16 basic desires, called the Reiss Profile, reveals your inner values and personality traits and is a powerful indicator of your behavior. In my book,The Normal Personality, I laid out the specific motives for each personality trait that might be present. Ken Olson and colleagues have linked the Reiss Profiles to various personality assessments, including the "Big 5".

3. FUNDAMENTALS MOTIVATION AND RELATIONSHIPS

We articulated the principles of self-embrace and everyday despotisms piece by piece and then used them to link motivational needs to a variety of enduring relationships, including parent-child, spouses, managers-employees and colleagues.

KEY INNOVATION

My work on motivation dates back to 1980, with the beginnings of research on what I call "anxiety sensitivity," which I published in 1985 with Richard McNally (a graduate student who later became a Harvard University Professor). Critics have consistently told us that anxiety sensitivity is super fluid because everyone avoids anxiety. We responded by saying that anxiety motivates some people more than others. As of today, anxiety sensitivity has been assessed in over 1600 peer-reviewed scientific articles, including two "Psychological Bulletin" summary review articles. Recently, the United States Army reported that anxiety sensitivity is a leading indicator of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In many of these studies, anxiety sensitivity has turned out to be a predictive indicator of outcome that cannot be predicted by other measures of anxiety. The Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI) questionnaire, which I wrote in less than an hour, outperformed almost all existing anxiety scales. One of our 16 core desires, the construction of peace of mind, is very closely linked to anxiety sensitivity, and the RMP Peace of Mind scale includes some of the items from the ASI.

The conclusion I have drawn from my work on anxiety sensitivity is the importance of the concept of "individual difference in the value of a universal motive". I realized that many scientists consider this psychological factor to be unimportant; in fact, such individual differences can be powerful predictors of actual behavior. I then moved from examining individual differences in a single universal motivator (anxiety) to examining individual differences in 16 universal motivators.

BLESSED WITH NARROW-MINDED CRITICS

The 16 most common criticisms of the basic theory of desire are easy to answer. Some say that there are "too many" needs in this theory. Since astronomers say there are billions and billions of stars and biologists have classified hundreds of species, why should only 16 needs be too many for a psychologist to handle? Another criticism is that our classification of needs is not scientific, because we changed it from 15 to 16 basic desires. Does this mean that astronomy is not scientific because of the many additions to the periodic table of elements over the years? We have published peer-reviewed evidence that our 16 core theories of desire meet scientific criteria for measurement reliability, construct validity, concurrent validity and criterion validity.

Based on presentations given on October 5, 2011 at the World Association of Motivation Scientists and Professionals in Vienna, Austria.