Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-05T22:20:48.970Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Motives and Motivation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

R. S. Peters
R. S. Peters
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

To probe people's motives is almost an occupational malaise amongst psychologists. And it is not one that can be nursed in private. It intrudes constantly into discussion of acquaintances, into moral assessments of people's actions and their responsibility for them, and into pronouncements on the proper operation of law. On this account psychologists are treated with suspicion, often with derision and resentment, by their academic colleagues. Of course, like Jehovah's witnesses, they come to expect, even to relish, the reception they receive. For has it not been written that we all have a strong resistance to such revelations, our real motives being often those which we are ashamed to admit? But there may be good grounds for this resistance as well as psychological explanations of it. My hope in this paper is to set out the sorts of grounds that there may be for our resistance to this scrutiny of our motives and to the theories of motivation which lend some kind of scientific respectability to it.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 31 , Issue 117 , April 1956 , pp. 117 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1956

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 I made this point in a previous paper but did not develop it. See Peters, R., Motivts and Causes, Proc. Arist. Soc. Supp. Vol. XXVI, 1952, p. 145.Google Scholar

page 120 note 1 Bentham, J., Principles of Morals and Legislation (Blackwell, 1948), p. 216Google Scholar

page 121 note 1 See Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism (Longman, Green and Co., London, 1888), p. 27.Google Scholar

page 121 note 2 McDougall, W., Outline of Psychology (Methuen, 1928), p. 122.Google Scholar

page 122 note 1 Young, P. T., Emotion in Man and Animals, (New York, 1943), p. 151.Google Scholar

page 122 note 2 Newcomb, T. H., Social Psychology (Dryden Press, New York, 1950), pp. 80, 81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 122 note 3 Op. cit., p. 82.

page 122 note 4 Brown, J. S., Problems presented by the Concept of Acquired Drive, Current Theory and Research in Motivation, A Symposium (University of Nebraska Press, 1953), P. 2.Google Scholar

page 123 note 1 See Symposium, p. II.

page 123 note 2 Symposium, p. 12.

page 123 note 3 T. H. Newcomb, op. cit., p. 83.

page 124 note 1 Tolman, E., Purposive Behaviour in Animals and Men (New York, 1932), pp. 276–81.Google Scholar

page 124 note 2 See Hebb, D. O., The Organization of Behaviour (New York, 1949), p. 172.Google Scholar

page 124 note 3 See Morgan, C. T. and Stellar, E., Physiological Psychology, New York, 1950. P. 387.Google Scholar

page 125 note 1 H. W. Nissen, The Nature of the Drive as Innate Determinant of Behavioral Organization, Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 1954, PP. 308.9.

page 125 note 2 See 1954 Symposium, p. 309 seq.

page 125 note 3 Op. cit., p. 317.

page 125 note 4 Op. cit., p. 286.

page 125 note 5 D. O. Hebb, op. cit., p. 144.

page 125 note 6 Op. cit., p. 181.

page 126 note 1 Nadel, S., The Foundations of Social Anthropology (London, 1951), pp. 266–7.Google Scholar

page 127 note 1 See, e.g. Hayek, F., Individualism and Economic Order, (London, 1949), Ch. I.Google Scholar

page 127 note 2 Popper, K. R., The Poverty of Historicism, Economica, Vol. II, p. 121.Google Scholar

page 127 note 3 Popper, K. R., The Open Society and Its Enemies (London, 1947), Vol. II, p. 90.Google Scholar

page 128 note 1 Weber, M., Theory of Social and Economic Organization (Ed. Parsons, London, 1947), P.99.Google Scholar

page 128 note 2 Ryle, G., The Concept of Mind (London, 1949), pp. 325–6.Google Scholar

page 130 note 1 Bowlby, J., Maternal Care and Mental Health (Geneva, 1951), p. 47.Google ScholarPubMed