Motivational Theories

Motivational theories have been studied by many scientists for many years. Motivation is “the processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal.” In laymen terms motivation has been said to be a reasoning of why people do the things that they do or say some of the things they say and want some of the things they want. Many scientists put a lot of time and effort into the study of human beings and this intriguing topic testing hypotheses on individuals. Some of these hypotheses developed into motivational theories that encouraged the reasoning behind human behavior. The topic discussed in this paper will elaborate how a particular theory would or would not be applicable if applied to two or more workplace situations from my personal experience.
There are many motivational theories that have been produced. However the text discusses grand theories and mini-theories. According to the textbook there are three theories known as grand theories they are will, instinct, and drive. Freud and Hull also created their own belief surrounding the third grand theory of drive. However researchers studied the drive theory more thoroughly and decided more research needed to be done surrounding drive to truly understand its correlation to motivation. The 1950s and 1960s were known as the post drive theory years. During those years alternative theories of motivation incentive and arousal were created by many scientists with hopes of taking the place of grand theories. Those alternative theories did not supersede the grand theories. Therefore scientists turned their attention to mini-theories with hopes that these smaller theories would explain the behavior of motivation on a smaller spectrum rather than the broad spectrum of the grand theories. The following theories were identified as mini-theories achievement motivation theory, attributional theory of achievement motivation, cognitive dissonance theory, effectance