Varied Theories of

Motivation
• Edward Tolman – effects of incentives and on internal cognitions
about them
• John Atkinson – there is a need to seek success and need to avoid
failure
• Matina Horner – many women have a “fear of success” motive
• McDougall – believed in instincts which are called native properties
that dominate man and animals
• Sigmund Freud – self-preservation instinct of an individual is
motivated by sexual instincts.
• Alfred Adler – self-preservation is due to a desire for power and
superiority as a reaction to one’s feeling of enferiority
• Combs and Snygg – the fundamental need of a man is the
preservation and enhancement of his phenomenal self
• Gaudencio Aquino – defines phenomenal self to include those aspects
of the total situation in which the individual perceives himself, as a
distinct being, separate but a part of other aspects instruments
• Henry Murry – when a man’s need is aroused, he is under a state of
tension but when it is satisfies, his tensions and anxieties are relieved
ad satisfaction ensues.
• Gordon Allport – functional autonomy of motives in the sense that
when motives are attained, they snowball into more and more other
motives
• Yerkes-Godson’s – law of motivation: “The level of task performance
depends on the level of arousal or performance”
• Berent – “Our actions result from a conscious or unconscious
estimation of the probability of certain outcome, multiplied by the
strength of the value which is placed on the outcome”