Chapter 2 - Motivation in Historical and Contemporary Perspective

• The study of motivation haven't been that long (less than 100 years), but their origin dates back to the ancient Greeks: Socrates, Plato, & Aristotle.

• Plato proposed that motivation is tripartile, which means having three parts/aspects. The three aspects are:

1. Appetitive aspect - is related to bodily appetites and desires, for example, hunger and sex.
2. Competitive aspect - is related to socially referenced standards, for example, feeling honored or shamed.
3. Calculating aspect - is related to decision-making capacities, for example, reason and choosing.

• Plato's portrayal of motivation anticipated Sigmund Freud's psychodynamics rather well:

1. Plato's appetitive aspect corresponds to Freud's id
2. The competitive aspect to the superego
3. The calculating aspect to the ego

• Aristotle endorsed Plato's tripartite, except calling them differently

1. Nutritive aspect - was the most impulsive, irrational, and animal-like. It contribute bodily urges necessary for the maintenance of life.
   
2. Sensitive aspect - was also bodily related, but it regulated pleasure and pain.
   
3. Rational aspect - was unique to human beings, as it was idea-related, intellectual, and featured the will. (The will operated as the soul's highest level as it utilized intention, choice, and that which is divine and immortal.

Hundreds of years later, the Greek's tripartile psyche was reducted to a dualism - the passions of the body and the reason of the mind. It breaks down its chief distinction between that which was irrational, impulsive, and biological (the body) versus that which was rational, intelligent, and spiritual (the mind).

• Rene Descartes

1. Passive aspect - the body was a mechanical and motivationally passive agent
2. Active aspect - whereas the will was an immaterial and motivationally active agent

What is the will?

The will initiated and directed action; it chose whether to act and what to do when acting. Bodily needs, passions, pleasures, and pains created impulses to action, but these impulses only excited the will. The will was a faculty (a power) of the mind that controlled the bodily appetites and passions in the interests of virtue and salvation by exercising its power of choice.

Do we really have the will to do or not to do what we want to do?
What if someone who is living in a dysfunctional family and she wants to learn to love and care for other people, but since love is a learning behavior, how can she asserts love when she wasn't taught to love. What is her will in this situation? To learn to love by observing other people or not to learn that behavior, so she does have a will even under this fixed circumstances.

What is a grand theory?
To connote an all-encompassing theory that seeks to explain the full range of motivated action - why we eat, drink, work, play, compete, fear certain things, read, fall in love, and so on.

Three grand theories of motivation exist. They are:

• Will - a will simply means having a choice, to choose whether or not act (to act or not to act), for example, "you have the will to drink or not to drink at a party. if you decide to drink and get into a DUI then it is all your fault because it is your decision, no one can point a gun to your head and force you to drink if you don't want to" "you have the will to get a good education and a better future even if you have a low-economic background, as long as you know your away around or opportunity, get financial aids for school, you can be just like anyone else" The will is what you choose to do. I am hungry "should I eat or should i go hungry?" "Should I tell someone that I like them or not?" A will is like making a decision - you decide whether to act on something or just let it slips you by.
  

There are three factors in will:

• Will - Descartes
  

1. Choosing - the ability to decide whether to act upon something (deciding whether to act or not to act) - "i want to go to college but i don't have the money, but i choose to go regardless"
   
2. Striving - the ability to create impulses to act (if i want to act on it, what are my available options?) "what are my available options? i can either pay the tuition with my paycheck or apply for financial aid"
   
3. Resisting - the ability to engage in self-denial or resisting temptation (for whatever reasons, maybe i should let it go). "maybe going to college isn't a good choice because it is hard and time consuming" People have the will to cheat. But some people choose not to cheat on their spouses because of their kids. Therefore, they want to delay gratification, and resist temptation. people do have a will. and their options to resist temptations.
   

• Instinct (Charles Darwin) - he believed in determinism - which is the cause and effect theory, denying free-will. 1. people behave the way they do because of biological and genetic needs, for example, according to the evoluntionary theory, female selects males who are financial secure while males select females who are capable of reproduce to spread theirs seeds. 2. how animals use their resourse to adapt to the prevailing demands of the environment. maybe they do things because they have to, not because they have a choice, for example, international brides, they want to escape poverty when opportunities arrive. maybe their family depends on them. they have no choice but to marry someone they don't love.
• Drive -