Psychology of Communication: motivation

Motivation - primary needs 

Before continuing, please click here to display Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

In Communication theory, you'll keep coming back to the notion of needs. Researchers into the mass media for example, suppose that audience members use the media in order to gratify certain needs (so-called Uses and Gratifications Theory). Advertisers will be particularly concerned to identify needs in common amongst their target groups. You, in your practical work, will be concerned to identify your audience members' needs.

Needs motivate us to take action to satisfy them. Maybe, as, for example, Vance Packard suggests, advertisers and propagandists can motivate us to do things we wouldn't otherwise do; maybe, as Herbert Marcuse suggests, capitalist society functions by creating 'false needs' in consumers.

A commonly used graphical representation of the structure of our needs is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which is shown in the pop-up window. As you can see, that progresses from the satisfaction of very basic needs through to self-actualization, a need which some of us may never have the luxury of fulfilling because we're too busy scrabbling around trying to satisfy the needs on the lower steps of the hierarchy.

Primary needs

Psychologists and biologists identify primary needs, which we all have. They include the need for food, liquid, oxygen and a constant temperature. These primary needs are also known as drives and we are considered to be motivated to achieve drive reduction. When we feel hunger, we are motivated to reduce that drive by eating; when we feel pain, we are motivated to reduce that drive by moving away from the source of the pain. Whenever a drive is unsatisfied, arousal increases and we are motivated to reduce that arousal.

Homeostasis

This means the tendency to move towards a drive-free condition. The obvious mechanical model of homeostatic behaviour is your central heating system, which has the 'drive' to keep your house at a constant temperature. Whenever the desired temperature in the boiler is exceeded, the thermostat sends a signal to switch the gas off. Whenever the preset temperatures for certain radiators and the hot water cylinder are exceeded, motorised valves are activated to block off the flow of water. According to drive theory, that's exactly how our body works: if I'm too hot, I sweat to cool myself down; if I'm too cold, I shiver to warm myself up; if I'm hungry, I eat etc.

If, though, we really do seek that ideal state of homeostasis, then some people have a pretty odd way of achieving it - throwing myself off a bridge and bouncing around on the end of an elastic band wouldn't do much for my homeostasis.

Secondary needs

We don't just satisfy our hunger by eating. We can feel 'hungry for a slice of garlic bread', 'thirsty for a Coke' and so on. These are referred to as secondary needs, which we presumably learn by some process. It seems pretty obvious that we are not motivated by primary needs alone.

Cognitive motivation

Consistency

For example, there is fairly clear evidence that we need to maintain cognitive consistency amongst our beliefs and values (see the section on Consistency Theory). Festinger, for example, spent some time with a religious cult who believed the world was going to end. On the appointed day, they sold up everything and prayed. The world, as far as I know, did not end, but that made no significant difference to their beliefs - they simply modified them slightly. Irrational, perhaps, but, then, they were only human, not Vulcans.

Repression

We also, as is commonly accepted, employ defence mechanisms to protect ourselves from unpleasant truths. As a result, memories may be so thoroughly repressed that we are completely unaware of having had the unpleasant experiences which continue to motivate us today.

Personal constructs

Our personal constructs (see under Kelly's Personal Construct Theory) which we use in interpreting the world will also have some effect. Hayes and Orrell (1993) give the example of someone you meet who is very abrupt and sharply spoken. If your set of personal constructs leads you to construe their behaviour as aggressive and menacing, you will be motivated to keep out of their way, you won't be motivated to seek their advice. A different individual with a different set of personal constructs could see them as decisive and positive and be only too happy to seek them out when they want advice.

Personal action and locus of control

Why is it that I have some students who keep trying to pass GCSE Maths with apparently renewed determination every time and others who, once they receive a mildly critical comment on an essay, never submit another essay. How come some keep 'soldiering on' and others just give up?

The psychologist Julian Rotter noted that some people believe they are autonomous. They believe that they are in control of their lives and take responsibility for what happens to them. They believe, in other words, that the locus of control is internal to them and not external. There is evidence that it is stressful for people to believe that they have no control over their lives (that the locus of control is external to them). It doesn't matter much what is objectively the case, what they believe is what matters and what people believe can be pretty weird!

For instance, the sociologist Langer allowed people to choose their own numbers in a lottery; others were allocated numbers at random The winning number was of course chosen at random, but those who had been allowed to choose their own numbers believed they had a significantly better chance of winning. They felt a lot more positive about the lottery than the other group - totally irrational, but at least it made them feel good.

Schultz conducted a study of old people in a home. Some were permitted to choose their own visiting times; the others were told when visitors were allowed. Those who could choose enjoyed better morale and physical health. Another study of old people going to live in a home asked them how much choice they felt they had about going to live there. Those who felt they had freedom of choice actually lived longer than those who didn't. (See the unit on Self-image)

Tom Peters (1995 : xxiii) refers to an experiment in which groups of adults were required to work on some complex puzzles. The subjects were divided into two groups, each of whom was subject to a loud distracting noise, which burst upon them at random intervals, but one group of participants was each given an 'off' switch which they could use to kill the noise. You won't be surprised to learn that the group with the off switches performed significantly better than those who couldn't turn the sound off. You might be surprised, though, to learn that those who had the off switch never actually used it.

Affiliation and respect needs

Carl Rogers argued that we all have a fundamental need for positive regard from others and Rom Harré sees the need for social respect as a prime motivator of human behaviour.

Some psychologists also argue that the attention which has been paid to aggression as a basic drive is misplaced; in fact, they argue, human beings try hard to avoid aggression and engage in co-operative activities because we try hard not to be rejected by others (see the section on Conformity). This appears to tie in with Rom Harré's view that we need social respect. Self-image and self-esteem, clearly, are related to the respect we receive from others, so it is a moot point whether 'respect needs' should be separated out, as I have here, from those two areas. Tom Peters (1995: 58) quotes the example of subjects who were asked to solve ten puzzles. When they had handed in their answers, they were duly given their results. In fact the results they were given were quite fictitious, assigned to them on an entirely arbitrary basis. They were then given another ten puzzles to solve. Those who had been told they had done well on the first ones actually did perform better at the second ones; those who had been told that they had done badly actually performed worse on the second tests. Whether we ascribe this to their sense of being accorded or refused respect by the 'markers' or to their increased or decreased self-esteem really makes little difference, as respect and self-esteem are likely to be closely intertwined.

Much the same effects have been observed in a variety of studies. One of the best known is Rosenthal's experiment with schoolchildren moving into a new year at school. Some were identified to their new teachers as 'late developers', though in fact these 'late developers' were nothing of the sort as they had been selected at random. By the end of the school year, their IQ scores had increased faster than those of their peers. Of course, it is virtually impossible to identify all the variables which might have contributed to this progress over the course of a school year, but it seems reasonable to assume that the teachers had higher expectations of the 'late developers', that this came across to the kids as being shown greater respect, which increased their self-esteem. What is often referred to as 'the Hawthorne experiment' is another case. The research was carried out by Elton Mayo of Harvard University in the 1930s. Having started out as  one of the foremost experts in the 'scientific management' school of Henry Ford and Frederick Winslow Taylor, Mayo was investigating the effect of lighting conditions on workers' productivity at Western Electric's Hawthorne plant. He turned up the lights and, perhaps unsurprisingly, productivity increased. Curiously, though, when he turned the lights back down again, productivity increased.  Given a free choice, no doubt, employees would not choose to work in dingy ill-lit conditions, so how come productivity still remained high even when the lights went down again? Mayo investigated this further and eventually came to the conclusion that productivity remained high because the workers were aware that someone was paying them some attention. It didn't matter that the aim was simply to achieve the optimum lighting to productivity ratio so as to increase production without unnecessarily high electricity bills  - the mere fact of paying attention to employees turns out to be  motivating. Unsurprisingly, Mayo eventually came to challenge much of the scientific management canon.

To what extent these needs are innate and to what extent they are learned behaviours as a result of socialisation is a matter for debate, but the end effect is pretty much the same. (Many of these issues are dealt with at greater length under the sections on social roles and groups and teams.)

The need for achievement

The US psychologist Murray investigated people's need for achievement, now normally abbreviated to n-ach, which has been thoroughly investigated in the business world. This is similar in some ways to Maslow's need for self-actualization, but the emphasis is, rather, on success when compared with others, rather than the 'self-satisfaction' of releasing one's inner potential (which is where Maslow places the emphasis).

McLelland

The industrial psychologist McLelland established these needs:

NEED FOR
Achievement	Power	Affiliation
People need to see that their efforts achieve something worthwhile	People need control over what they are doing and want to persuade and influence others	People need others around them with whom they share the same ideas
They need to know:	They need responsibility for:	They need people to:
how their efforts fit into the overall scheme of things	themselves and others	talk to
how successful they have been	their work	value them
	their patch	encourage them

 

McLelland investigated n-ach and concluded that people who have a high degree of it tend to be task-oriented rather than person-oriented. They are likely to rise to power because they need to achieve it, but also because they have a low need for affiliation and aren't troubled by any negative feedback from their colleagues.

The importance of the need for achievement suggests that it is important to set people targets which they can reasonably be expected to achieve. This does not mean that it is appropriate to set low and undemanding targets. As we have seen above, it is likely that showing that one has high expectations of people is likely to make people feel valued. Yet it certainly does mean that we should avoid setting impossibly high targets, a habit which macho managements often pride themselves on, though it is ultimately self-defeating, as people's experience of their performance is one of repeated failure. 

Motivation - psychographics

Lifestyle analysis

As you will know, advertisers spend fortunes on motivational research. Whether it's any use or not is another matter. As we've seen people are motivated by a range of different needs. Sometimes those needs will conflict, as with the British old-age pensioner who needs to keep warm and eat. People won't all have their needs in the same proportion - as with those who are high on n-ach, but low on affiliation needs.

Some market research companies have been turning increasingly to lifestyle analysis as a means of identifying people's needs. The TV programme looked at one market research company which uses lifestyle analysis. This is what they came up with:

GROUP	NEED	TYPIFIED BY	Commercial targeting mainstreamers
mainstreamers	security	branded goods	the advert for the Abbey National where a series of people come up from the Underground into the pouring rain. Each opens an umbrella, which, for one reason or another, doesn't work. Then up comes the mainstreamer with a working umbrella which protects him entirely from the rain. the advert for the Abbey National where a series of people come up from the Underground into the pouring rain. Each opens an umbrella, which, for one reason or another, doesn't work. Then up comes the mainstreamer with a working umbrella which protects him entirely from the rain.
		regular savings
		unpretentious house
		sensible car
		British goods
		'regular' rhythm of life
GROUP	NEED	TYPIFIED BY	Commercial targeting aspirers
aspirers	status	know what they want and are determined to get it	the bank ad which shows a young man living alone in a Docklands loft. He gets up on Sunday morning to give the cat some milk - no milk in the 'fridge. We see him walking down the street past the newspaper seller to whom he jauntily displays his empty pockets. He withdraws cash from the cash machine
		like expensively badged goods on display (Rolex watch, Porsche car)
		like to have ready cash available
GROUP	NEED	TYPIFIED BY	Commercial targeting succeeders
succeeders	control	high n-ach	the ad for British airways where businessmen sit gloating about the competitor they have tricked by booking him on to the 'red eye' flight from New York and arranging for him to be brought by taxi straight from the airport. He will, they predict arrive shattered, incapable of doing business. While they talk we see him being fed on the flight, relaxing, sleeping, freshening up. He arrives ready to do business - in control
		private transport (need to be in control)
		have succeeded in getting where they want to be

 

Those are not the only categories used for lifestyle analysis. The National Readership Survey uses some entertaining categories such as the following 'Super Profiles': Affluent Achievers, Thriving Greys, Settled Suburbans, Nest Builder, Urban Ventures, Country Life, Senior Citizens, Producers, Hard-pressed Family and Have-nots. Quite where they would put a hard-pressed grey like me, I don't know.

Psychographics

In order to determine such characteristics of their audiences, advertisers use a technique rather grandly known as psychographics. It would be possible to build up a picture of lifestyles by using in-depth interviews, but that is immensely time-consuming and does not produce easily quantifiable results.

The term AIO measure is used to focus attention on the

Activities
Interests
Opinions

of consumers. There will almost certainly also be some demographic data which the researchers will wish to gather.

The Likert technique is used to gather responses to a range of statements which allow the researchers to distinguish between the members of different lifestyle groups.

Spooncer (1992) takes the example of lifestyle analysis of young men who are to be targeted by a drink-drive campaign. The four groups which emerge from the psychographic survey are:

Because of their high drink-driving and their relatively large share of the target group, it might be best, suggests Spooncer, to target the good-timers. A disregard for fear is part of the macho image, so an appeal to safety or concern for others would probably fail. How would you address them? What medium would you use? What would your message be?

Criticism

The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1972) is critical of all this American discussion of primary and secondary needs, which he refers to as a 'vulgar metaphysics with which psychology, sociology and economics are complicit'. For Baudrillard, talk of primary and secondary needs is just a kind of white magic. This view is one which one might expect to come from post-structuralism, which has dispensed with the Cartesian unitary subject (see the section on the decentred self). As he sees it, talk of subjects and objects obviously necessitates an explanation of some kind of relationship between them and the concept of need conveniently supplies the 'magic footbridge' from object to subject. The subject is defined by reference to the object and vice versa in a 'gigantic tautology'. For Baudrillard, this is no more of an explanation than saying that opium makes you sleep because of its dormitive properties. And it's no good saying that talk of needs is the explanation spontaneaously given by people themselves, because that is simply a naïve naturalization of the processes of exchange and signification which totally misses the underlying social logic. A theory of needs is meaningless; there can only be a theory of the ideological concept of needs. To talk of primary and secondary needs is not much use either, except as an ideology. In all societies, the minimum which is needed to satisfy supposed primary needs has always been determined by the requirement to generate an excess, whether it be the share for God, for sacrifice, for economic profit or whatever. In all societies it is the 'unnecessary' expenditure which takes precedence over minimal subsistence.

Just as phonemes do not have any absolute meaning in linguistics, but acquire their significance by opposition to other phonemes within a particular code, so the 'object of consumption' acquires its meaning from its difference from other objects in a hierarchical code of significations. The object as a sign does not acquire its meaning in the concrete relationship between two persons, but in the differential relationship with other signs. The acceptance of this hierarchy of differential signs and the interiorisation by the individual of the norms, values and social imperatives which signs are is the fundamental form of social control.

This is completely missed by economics which has no place in its calculations for a psychological logic of the unconscious or a logic of social structures and, therefore, under the sign of 'interdisciplinarity', makes its peace with feeble (débile) and inoffensive forms of sociology and psychology. This approach might just progress from standard psychology to mucking about (bricolage) with a little social psychology such as Merton's notion of reference groups, and may even go as far as introducing a little culturalism: needs are the functions of the respective histories and cultures of each society. But that's as far as liberal analysis goes.

As a result,

the purchase of a car can be broken down into motivations which are variously biographical, technical, utilitarian, psychosymbolic (overcompensation, aggression), sociological (group norms, desire for prestige, for conformism or originality). The worst is that they are all just as 'true' as one another. It would be difficult to find one which is false.

(1972: 75)

Baudrillard concedes that the results of such analysis may be interesting, but they distract attention from the analysis of the social logic which should be the first principle of any analysis. That is not to say that individuals' or groups' desire for prestige, whether conscious or suconscious, should not be taken into account; nevertheless, the fundamental level of analysis should be that of the unconscious structures which order the social production of differences. One is not free in Western societies to live off uncooked roots and fresh water:

Today the minimum for life is the 'standard package, the minimum of consumption imposed upon us. Below that minimum, you are an outcast - and is loss of status, social inexistence less serious than hunger?

(1972: 86)

Once it has reached the verge of breakdown, capitalism is obliged to produce the individual as consumer. Needs are nothing more than the characteristic effect, at the level of individuals, of a certain structure of monopolistic productivity, of a totalitarian economy, whether capitalist or socialist:

in its totalitarian logic, a system of productivist growth (capitalist, but not only) can do no other than produce and reproduce men in their deepest determinations, in their freedom, in their 'needs', in their very unsconscious as productive forces. The system can do no other than produce and reproduce individuals as elements of the system. There can be no exception.

(1972: 93)

Related articles:

Attitudes

Measurement of attitudes, see:

Fishbein

Kelly's Personal Construct Theory

Likert technique

Osgood's semantic differential

Needs see also:

Transactional analysis: hungers

Need for homeostasis see also:

Consistency theory