4. COGNITIVE APPROACHES TO MOTIVATION. The contemporary approach in studying human beings is to view the organism as always active, making behavioral-direction choices designed to achieve maximal outcomes. Behavior is viewed as a continuing series of choices designed to obtain the best possible outcomes. The empirical operations for the psychological variables to which causal inferences are attributed have been psychological scale measurements, rather than from mental operations. While Hull was developing his theoretical system at Yale University, Tolman (1955), at the University of California at Berkeley was creating an alternative approach to motivational phenomena. Tolman viewed motivational behavior as being initiated by various internal and external environmental cues and by disequilibrium situations of various kinds. These cues combined with other characteristics of the organism, such as age, previous training, heredity, and specific physical characteristics of the moment, that result in three major intervening variables. These variables were the major components of Tolman's theory. They were: (1) Demands for a specific goal, (2) The degree to which the goal is available or exists in the specific environment in which the organism finds itself, and (3) His expectancies of achieving the goal in the specific environment in which the organism finds himself. These three variables determine an organisms direction and persistence of behavior until the goal is reached. He explained his theory in this manner. The demand for a goal could be inferred by the speed with which an organism attacked that specific goal. Goal behaviors are used as operational measures of demand for the goal. The hypothesized causal-agent variable (goal demand) are manipulated by various antecedent conditions that determine goal demand. These manipulations were then studied for their effect on dependent (behavior) variables, which for Tolman were selectivity and persistence of performance of behavior. The H (heredity), A, (age), and other variables like environmental and physiological stimuli, and previous learning and training effect the expectancy of attaining the goal. Goal availability was factored in to determine if it was currently achievable. The direction of behavior was affected by these preceding factors. If everything proceeded as expected, behavior persistence toward the goal continued and eventually the goal was achieved. See Table 1. below. BASIC FRAMEWORK OF TOLMAN MODEL OBSERVABLE ANTECEDENTS INTERVENING VARIABLES OBSERVABLE SEQUENCES 1.Environmen stimulation Goal Demand Direction of Behavior 2.Physiological stimuli Expectancy of attaining goal Behavior persistence toward specific goal 3.Influence of heredity Goal availability >>>>> 4.Previous learning and training Goal availability >>>>> 5.Maturity Goal achievem (Tolman, 1955, p. 93) Despite attacks on his theory, Tolman was accurate in his insistence that the persistence and selectivity of performance was both a function of the organism itself and its immediate environment. To understand a specific behavior, it was necessary to study both antecedents of environment and the individual, and not just the latter. It was precisely this mistake that Hull made in 1943 and that he was forced to rectify in 1952 by the introduction of K, the incentive variable that reflected the environment the organism was in at that particular time in terms of its particular rewards. For Hull and Spence, environmental expectancy aroused behavior by adding to drive, (D), and directed behavior by providing specific stimuli that activated appropriate directional habits. For Tolman, environmental stimuli may steer and direct behavior by their presence as goals to be achieved in order to satisfy existing demands. Environmental stimuli may also determine expectancies by the degree of their similarity to other environmental conditions whereby specific goals had been sought and achieved in the past (Korman, 1971b, p. 94). Tolman successfully predicted that behavior would not be expected to occur when the goals and/or incentives to be achieved in the situation by behaving. Rewards affected performance, not learning, a position that Hull and Spence eventually adopted. Given these characteristics of Tolman's theory, he could explain the latent-learning experiment in the following manner, as summarized by Atkinson (1964): During the unrewarded trials, the animals develop cognitive expectations of the consequences of turning left or right at each of the various choice points. After several trials in the maze, these forward-pointing expectations constitute a kind of "cognitive map" of the maze that is "refined" during each run...In Tolman's view, a hungry organism is always actively trying to find food. After developing a more refined set of expectations concerning what does lead to what in the maze, the organism comes upon food, a demanded goal-object, in the end-box maze. The next day, as a result of this recent experience added to the cognitive expectations of what leads to what which had been built up without reward in earlier trials, the organism has both a demand for food and an expectation of a food object in the end box when placed in the starting box. The combination of these two determinants accounts for the sudden change in selectivity of performance at each choice point. The organism now selects the "correct" response, which is the one that it expects will lead most quickly to the demanded goal object (p. 144). Tolman (1955) viewed the persisting individual-difference characteristics between organisms as important. The individual differences between organisms as determinants of response, holding environmental variation constant, is one of the pervading characteristics of all forms of life. Tolman felt that what an organism did in an experiment was not just a function of how the experimenter varied the environmental conditions. It was a function of who and what the organism was genetically, what his previous learning experiences were, and other individual characteristics. This type of individual, Tolman believed, interacted with the various conditions of the environment and as a result, determined the outcomes, not one or the other alone. Tolman achieved creating the first systematic integration of one theory of logic of contemporary environmental determinants of behavior, and the logic of persisting individual differences in the kinds of goals sought independent of specific environmental variation of the time as joint determinants of behavior. Even though Tolman's work was significant, he left an incomplete and imperfect system. He recognized this himself and stated so in his writings. First, he never developed any clear statement of how his crucial antecedent variables were interrelated. Second, he never really worked very much on the individual differences in demands and needs that he utilized as constructs in his system. Finally, Tolman never provided an explicit rationale for the arousal of behavior. He never made clear as to when and under what conditions these directional determinants become operative as arousers of behavior. The historical antecedents to Tolman's work can be traced to Harvard psychologist, Henry Murray (1937). His arguments involved a number of both content and methodological considerations. He believed that the key to the understanding of human personality and motivation would not come from the biological, physiologically based theories of Hull or from insistence on experimental verification of hypotheses in laboratory settings. He felt that much of what was important in human personality would manifest itself in everyday life. Motivational processes could be best observed in naturalistic settings. He argued that individual needs and motives were useful constructs to utilize when studying the psychology of motivational processes. According to Murray (1937), a need or drive contained both a directional aspect that differentiates it from other needs, and an arousal component that actually precipitates the behavior. The conditions under which the arousal component actually becomes activated in Murray's system were not clear. However, the concept of the end state of behavior being more important than specific behaviors themselves was useful in developing an adequate conceptualization of motivation on the human level for the following reasons: 1. Physical survival depends on achieving certain outcomes, not on what behaviors are used. 2. Certain effects are universally attained by living organisms, but the behaviors that attain them vary greatly. 3. During the life of a single individual, certain effects are regularly attained but the behaviors involved change. 4. When confronted by a novel situation, an organism persists in its efforts to bring about a certain result, but with frustration it is apt to change its mode of attack; hence, the trend is the constant feature and the behavioral mechanisms utilized are the inconstant. 5. There are some effects that can only be attained by entirely novel behaviors. 6. That specific behaviors are secondary is shown by the fact that many biologically necessary effects may be brought about by another person. 7. Complex action is characterized by muscular contractions in widely separate parts of the organism, contractions which manifest synchronous and consecutive coordination. Such organization of movement must be partially determined by a directional process, which is what a need, by definition, is. 8. Presenting a desired end state during a behavior sequence should not stop behavior if external stimuli were the only determinants of behavior. Behavior does end when these sudden presentations of desired end states are made, suggesting that need and the desired end state are the crucial determinants of behavior. 9. When a need is not in a state of readiness, responses to specific stimuli do not occur. 10. When a particular need is active, common objects in the environment may evoke unusual responses, that is, responses that promote the progress of the active need. 11. When a need becomes active, characteristic behavior will usually ensue even in the absence of customary stimuli. 12. It is difficult to interpret without a concept of directional tension experimentally demonstrable phenomena such as the resumption of unpleasant work after interruption; the repetition of once-active trends with different movements; the increase of striving after opposition. 13. There are conscious correlates of desires. 14. Among the commonest subjective experiences is the feeling of conflict between desires. 15. Because of its close connection with happiness and distress, a need is more "important" than a behavior pattern. 16. Experience seems to show that a certain desire may sometimes give rise to a dream or fantasy and at other times, promote direct activity. 17. Introspection and experiment demonstrate that a need may determine the direction of attention and markedly influence the perception and appreciation (interpretation) of external occurrences; to influence sensory and cognitive processes, a need must be some force in the brain region (pp. 112-113). Murray's arguments raised many questions that more recent research continues to explain. They are: 1. Why do people develop high motives for such goal outcomes as task achievement, or influencing harm on others, or having an orderly world? 2. What do we mean by pleasure and why can outcome be pleasurable for one person and another outcome pleasurable for another? 3. Is there one common basis for pleasure as a desired outcome of behavior that can be defined independent of the behaviors designed to achieve it in the same sense used in physiological-need reduction and its derivatives as a basis for motivational behavior? 4. What about achievement, affiliation, order as motivators? McClelland (1955) answered these questions with the following comprehensive theoretical positions. He summed them up in this manner: 1. A hedonistic explanation for the arousal of behavior is assumed; that is, it is assumed that individuals are motivated to seek pleasant affect and to avoid negative affect. 2. The degree to which a given environmental situation has pleasant or negative affect, and thus will stimulate either approach behavior or avoidance behavior, is defined in a non-circular fashion and stems from discrepancy. 3. Given this conceptual way of looking at what arouses behavior, it follows logically that humans are motivated to achieve end states that involve a moderate discrepancy from previous adaptation levels to avoid end states that involve extreme discrepancies from previous adaptation levels (p. 215). Considering its non-circular aspects and its considerations of the arousal problem, McClelland's theory was a major conceptual step in the development of an adequate expectancy- value theory of motivation. The actual end goal of behavior is defined differently and independently of the sources of the behavioral arousal. The end goals are the attainment of moderate discrepancies from the previous stimulus adaptation level and the avoidance of extreme discrepancies.