2 - Motivational and associative mechanisms of behavior

Summary

In Chapter 1, the methodological and metatheoretical positions on learning theory of this book were outlined. The present chapter is a more specific treatment of these positions, particularly with respect to the role of the interaction of motivational and associative mechanisms. This interaction is a critical feature of dispositional learning and the four characteristics of behavior it encompasses: invigoration, suppression, persistence, and regression.

A brief history of the motivation concept

Throughout history there have been a variety of conceptions of motivation (animistic, religious, rationalistic, teleological-adaptive, instinctive), all of which are, to some extent, still a part of our everyday explanatory language. However, scientific conceptions of motivation have moved increasingly toward the identification of specific mechanisms.

One of the most important movements in the direction of a more mechanistic definition of motivation emerged from Darwin's theory of natural selection – the theory of evolution. Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) emphasized the role of adaptation and survival as factors of significance in behavior. As a biologically based conception of an important determinant of behavior, it was, as we shall see, the forerunner of learning theories such as C. L. Hull's (1943), in which adaptation played a principal role.

After Darwin, it seemed reasonable to make a distinction among proximal, developmental or historical, and evolutionary mechanisms determining behavior. Proximal events, in this trilogy, are those that immediately precede behavior, the instigating stimulus. Developmental or historical mechanisms include those we normally call learning, the residue that is laid down in the organism as a function of its own previous experience.