Motivation and Action PDF
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Heinz Heckhausen Motivation and Action Translator Peter K. Leppmann With 141 Figures and 52 Tables Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York London Paris Tokyo Hong Kong Barcelona Budapest Professor Dr. Heinz Heckhausen t Max -Planck -Institut flir psychologische Forschung Leopoldstr. 24 8000 Munchen 40 Translator Professor Peter K. Leppmann Department of Psychology University of Guelph Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1 Title of the Gennan Edition Motivation und Handeln, 2. Auflage ISBN 3-540-50746-9 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York London Paris Tokyo HongKong Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heckhausen, Heinz. [Motivation und Handeln. English] Motivation and action / Heinz Heckhausen. p. cm. Translation of: Motivation und Handeln. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-3-642-75963-5 e-ISBN-13: 978-3-642-75961-1 DOl: 10.1007/978-3-642-75961-1 1. Motivation (Psychology) I. Title. BF503.H413 1991 153.8 -dc20 90-25931 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcast ing, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in data banks. Duplication of this publi cation or parts thereof is only pennitted under the provisions of the Gennan Copyright Law of Septem ber9, 1965, in its current version, and a copyright fee must always be paid. Violations fall under the prosecution act of the Gennan Copyright Law. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1991 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1991 The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protec tive laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Product Liability: The publisher can give no guarantee for infonnation about drug dosage and applica tion thereof contained in this book. In every individual case the respective user must check its accuracy by consulting other phannaceuticalliterature. 26/3145-543210 - Printed on acid-free paper Preface to the First German Edition Motivation has become a popular topic. In common parlance it implies that an individ uallikes to do something or does something voluntarily. For example, there is the "mo tivated" student, a phenomenon that cannot or can no longer be taken for granted. In psychology the concept of motivation has a long and intricate history. The history of the relevant research over the last hundred years is even more complex. Motivation processes are invoked by almost all research areas in psychology, if only to serve as post-hoc explanations of unexpected results. Over the past few decades an inde pendent research literature has emerged, but it is far from coherent. This lack of co herence is due less to the continuously expanding scope than to the variety of ap proaches that have generated the reported research. Impulses for such research have come from such diverse areas as learning theory, social psychology, personality, psy choanalysis, and clinical psychology. There are few areas of psychological research that can be approached from as many directions as the psychology of motivation, and yet is so difficult to scrutinize once it has been entered. Even those who, like the author of this volume, are fascinated by the issues of motivation continue to seek to gain a greater overview and to bring more order to the diversity of issues and attempts at answers. This pursuit became the impetus for writing this book. The writing itself was directed toward three goals. First, the book seeks to disentangle the convoluted perspectives within the psychology of motivation. Second, it seeks to integrate the distinct research directions by pointing to common is sues. Third, it seeks to introduce those new research findings that have proven to be particularly fruitful. To accomplish these goals, it seemed useful to delimit some areas, to expand others, and to adopt a few conceptual viewpoints. The motivational categories examined are limited to action classes that are characteristic for humans, but not biologically based needs. Included are discussions of the motivating forces of action, their contingencies and outcomes, but not the organization and control of the course of action. Expansions appeared justified if they served to elucidate the evolution of an issue, or if various do mains of phenomena could be analyzed in terms of similar conceptualizations, or if they were able to reveal aspects of developmental and applied psychology. Achieve ment-motivated action has received the most attention from researchers, hence it is fre quently employed paradigmatically. However other action classes such as anxiety, social bonding, power, helping behavior, and aggression - or contemporary research initiatives such as "learned helplessness" or intrinsic motivation - are treated exten sively. The conceptual viewpoints correspond roughly to the evolution of the motivation issue. One recurrent perspective is explanation of behavior from "at first to at fourth glance", i. e., from localizing causes within the person to explain interindividual dif ferences ("at first glance"), and within situational factors to explain intraindividual dif ferences ("at second glance"), to the interaction of both causal sources. A further con ceptual viewpoint is the basic theoretical model of "expectancy times value" and its elaborations. The last chapters are organized around the introduction of intervening cognitive variables, particularly causal attribution of action outcomes, as well as an analysis of the components that constitute the summary concept, motive. Hence, the VI Preface to the First German Edition same subject matter discussed earlier is reintroduced at a higher level of analysis, e.g., achievement-oriented action in Chapters 9, 11, and 12. This book is not an introductory text that provides a quick overview of the field and defers a more in-depth analysis to the diverse and specialized literature. Instead, along with an introduction to the area, it attempts to elucidate the interrelationships inherent in the diverse enterprise represented by motivation research and to expound its find ings. The author perceives his readers to include not only students of psychology and allied disciplines who wish to familiarize themselves with the subject area of motiva tion, but also more senior scholars, teachers, and researchers wishing to make use of relevant research findings, to re-interpret them or to extend them through their own re search. Writing for both the novice and the more senior reader represents only an ap parent contradiction. The first six to eight chapters are mainly addressed to the novice readers, the latter chapters to those who are more advanced. Beyond that, the author hopes that by reading the earlier chapters the novice will become more advanced, and he believes that the more advanced reader will also find the earlier chapters helpful. Individual chapters or parts thereof can be used to structure seminars for both begin ning and advanced students. Parts of chapters could be assigned as background read ings, to be supplemented by selected original papers. In Chapter 1 the conceptual perspectives that will be used throughout the book are introduced. The four types of behavioral explanations called "at first, at second, at third glance, and at fourth glance" are introduced, along with eight core issues, and five ex perimental paradigms employed in motivation research. Chapter 2 presents the history of motivation research over the past one-hundred years, unravelling the various theore tical developments by charting the contributions made by outstanding scholars in the field. The next two chapters are devoted to research approaches that are one-sided in the context of a psychology of motivation, because they either focus exclusively on per son factors (Chapter 3), or on situation factors, including changeable physiological states and cognitive dissonance (Chapter 4). Chapter 5 traces the evolution of the ex pectancy-times-value model from the early research on learning to its later elaborations with respect to the incentive and instrumentality characteristics of behavioral conse quences. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 examine various types of motives such as anxiety, achievement, affiliation, power, altruism, and aggression. Chapter 9 is devoted entirely to a discussion of the risk-taking model and its application to the research on achieve ment motivation. Chapter 10 introduces the social-psychological concepts of attribu tion theory that have had a decisive influence on motivation research since the early 1970s. Chapter 11 elucidates the usefulness of explanatory approaches based on at tribution theory applied to various motive types and phenomena by reviewing the pres ent state of research. Chapter 12 combines a series of expanded perspectives that ap peared to be useful particularly because they parcel out the summary construct, motive, and restructure it into component systems. Finally, Chapter 13 brings together many findings to mold a developmental psychology of motivation. Using achievement oriented behavior, the current state of knowledge concerning the general development of motives, the development of individual differences in motive, and the modification of motive through intervention techniques are discussed. The author owes thanks to many for their contributions to this volume. First and foremost is the stipend for the writing of "synoptic textbooks" awarded by the Bundes minister fUr Bildung und Wissenschaft (Federal Minister of Education and Science), a very helpful source of support that resulted from an initiative by the former president of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Heinz Mayer-Leibnitz. Thanks to this sti pend, the author was able to devote an entire year to the production of this book. The stipend allowed for extensive critical reviews by others. The final version of individual chapters benefitted considerably from the critique and commentary provided by the following colleagues: Carl Friedrich Graumann, Rudolf Fisch, Theo Herrmann, Ger hard Kaminski, Hans-Joachim Kornadt, Julius Kuhl, Ernst Liehart, Heinz-Dieter Schmalt, Klaus Schneider, Clemens Trudewind, Manfred Waller, Franz Weinert, and Preface to the First German Edition VII Horst Zumkley. Gunther Keirn produced the figures. The manifold technical produc tion processes were in the hands of Ingrid Beisenbruch, Beatrice Borgens, Claudia Steuer, and Rosemary Tweer. Special mention must go to Edith Lutz who prepared the unfolding manuscript, with its multiple revisions, without ever losing the overview. In dividual phases of this task were also carried out by Irmfriede Hustadt, Ulrike Kurte, and Ilsegret Robke. Finally, the research activities of our team at Bochum, including its diploma students, represented an inexhaustible source of stimulation that directly benefitted many parts of this book. I want thank all of those who have contributed to bringing this book to its final frui tion. Last but not least, I want to express thanks to my wife and my children. This book would never have taken shape without their compassion for a family member who was frequently lost in thought. Bochum, February 1980 HEINZ HECKHAUSEN Preface to the Second German Edition This is the second edition of the text Motivation und Handeln, the first was published in 1980. It examines action categories that are characteristically human, but does not deal with biologically based needs. The new edition has been completely revised and ex panded. New material was added, and the old content was consolidated. The last chap ter dealing with the development of achievement motivation was completely elimi nated, because a revised version of it appears elsewhere (Heckhausen, 1982). Some issues that originally received detailed treatment have not generated further research and could therefore be abbreviated or completely omitted. Finally, it was possible to shorten the often detailed treatment of achievement motivation. Along with the new re search findings that were published in the interim, the presentations of individual mo tives were expanded to include psycho-evolutionary and psycho-physiological per spectives. Most of all, there is a new chapter, Chapter 6. It deals with the return to old approaches of the psychology of the will, reflected in recent research on issues related to action control and the role of intentions. The processes taking place after a decision to act has been made, the so-called volitional processes, have just been rediscovered and become the subject of research. The goals of this book remained the same. First, it seeks to disentangle the convo luted perspectives within the psychology of motivation. Second, it seeks to integrate the distinct research directions by pointing to common issues. Third, it seeks to introduce those new research findings that have proven to be particularly fruitful. The individual chapters build one upon the other, but it is quite possible to begin one's reading with any of the chapters. Roughly speaking, the book is divided into three parts. The first six chapters address issues in motivation from the various perspectives: personality, social psychology, research history, learning theory, value-expectancy theories, and the psy chology of the will. Chapters 7 to 12 embrace the motivation systems, anxiety, achieve ment, helping behavior, aggression, social bonding, power. Finally, Chapters 13 to 15 examine attribution theory along with special phenomena and paradigms. This revised edition would not have come into being without participation of others. Thanks are due to Petra Felber, Martina Gast, Birgit Middendorf, Max Schreder, and most especially to Angelika Gilbers, who not only produced the manuscript but also or ganized and supervised the various work processes. Munich, September 1988 HEINZ HECKHAUSEN Translator's Preface The translation of this volume has been a long and sometime arduous journey giving nearly literal meaning to the Latin term translatus, meaning to carry across. In fact, it required many journeys both geographically, between Canada and Germany, and fig uratively, between German and English language, thought, and culture; between the mind of a German professor and that of his American colleague. Whether or not it was all worthwhile must be left to the reader's judgment, but let me outline the rationale for embarking on this venture. When the first German edition of this book appeared in 1980 it was acclaimed not only by German scholars but by those outside the German-speaking community as well. In fact, it received extremely favorable reviews, even in English-language journals, which is unusual for a foreign text. It was recognized that this was far more than just another text book on motivation. For one thing, it exposed and examined the multi faceted roots that have contributed to contemporary theory and research in motivation. The author skillfully examined the motivational concepts, theories, and research that have emanated from many areas of psychology such as learning theory, social psychol ogy, personality, psychoanalysis, and clinical psychology. For another, it reviewed and integrated the voluminous literature, both theory and research, from both sides of the Atlantic. Last but not least, it summarized and inte grated the theoretical models and research directions pursued by Heinz Heckhausen and his coworkers. The second edition, on which this translation is based, retains those features described above, but it also leads the reader into new and often uncharted ap proaches in motivation, such as the latest speculations about evolutionary and psycho physiological aspects of motivation. Beyond that, it introduces Heckhausen's most re cent research venture, an examination of the role of intentions in the control of an action. The translation of a scholarly work of this caliber is faced with nearly insurmount able problems. Translation is the carrying across not so much of words, as of ideas. To translate words is relatively easy, it is already being done by computers; to translate ideas is difficult and in some cases impossible. Ideas are the properties oflinguistic and cultural communities. They are truly tailor-made, and to adapt them to others will never result in a perfect fit; there will always be a crease here and too much slack there. The first major decision facing the translator of a book like Heckhausen's is whether or not to simplify the ideas to facilitate their translation, or to translate them in all of their complexity at the expense of readability. The reader will quickly discover that I have chosen a somewhat intermediate path, one that leans more towards maintaining the complexity of thought. In those parts of the book that review the research literature the language has generally been simplified and "Americanized", usually with Heck hausen's consent. However, in the case of Heckhausen's interpretations of that re search and his theoretical deliberations, some of the linguistic complexity had to be maintained to do justice to his often very precise formulations. Even in the case of these complex formulations I have striven (probably not always successfully) to preserve readability. In any case the reader and translator can both take comfort, if comfort they need, in the fact that German academics, who are native speakers, report that they find it academically and linguistically challenging to read the original version. XII Translator's Preface Along the way there were many who have helped me carry this volume across lin guistic barriers. I particularly want to thank the Max Planck Gesellschaft in Munich for providing the resources for my journeys to Germany to consult with Heinz Heck hausen. Individual chapters were read by Heckhausen's coworkers and students, Jiir gen Beckmann, Ulrich Geppert, Peter Gollwitzer, Frank Halisch, Julius Kuhl, Paul Liitkenhaus. Their comments and suggestions were extremely useful and appreciated. Peggy Frankie and my colleague Gary Frankie undertook the Herculean task of read ing the entire English manuscript and making valuable suggestions for improving its readability. Thanks also to Max Schreder who prepared the figures and tables. Last, but by no means least, lowe special thanks to Angelika Gilbers who organized and carried out the myriad of tasks involved in the preparation of the manuscript. Guelph, Ontario, Canada, February 1991 PETER K. LEPPMANN Contents CHAPTER 1 The Study of Motivation: Issues and Approaches 1 Everyday Experiences and Three Issues ... . 2 Naive Explanations of Behavior ...... . 4 An Explanation for Nonoccurring Behavior 5 The Consistency Paradox . . . . . . 6 Person-Specific Behavior ....... . . 7 Motive as an Explanatory Concept .. . 8 Motivation ............ . 9 Intention Formation and Volition 10 Action ............. . 12 Postaction Phase . . . . . . . . 13 The Chapter in Retrospect .. 14 CHAPTER 2 Historical Trends in Motivation Research 17 The Generation of Pioneers 18 The Psychology of the Will .. 20 The Instinct Theory Approach 25 Personality Theories . . . . . . 27 The Motivation Psychology Approach 30 The Cognitive Psychology Approach . 33 The Personality Psychology Approach 34 Associationist Theories ......... . 36 The Learning Psychology Approach 37 The Activation Psychology Approach 41 Preview .................. . 47 CHAPTER 3 Trait Theories of Motivation 49 Trait Theories of Motivation: Motives 49 Allport's Idiographic Approach ..... 49 Trait as a "Neuropsychic Entity" 51 Factoranalytic Trait Theory: R. B. Cattell 51 Instinct-based Classification of Motives: W. McDougall .. 54 Motive Classification based on Person-Environment Relationship: H.A.Murray .................................... . 57 A Hierarchical Model of Motive Classification: A. Maslow ...... . 59 Basic Emotions as a Rudimentary Motivation System .. . 61 Taxonomic Problems of Motive Classification Systems ......... .... . 66 Three Distinct Approaches ....... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Achievement-Oriented Behavior as a Distinct Motive Class ......... . 69
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