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Significance of Motives:

Individual and collective behaviour is guided by some or other motives. These motives play the most effective role in bringing change in the behaviour of an individual and groups. In the education field, behaviour of students is channelised through behaviour. Motives cannot be directly seen.

A motive is a construct or mediating variable referring to the drive for particular goal. Objects, goals and targets can be specified in a motive. The child can be hostile toward his elder brother but not toward every other people. Some children are highly motivated to achieve in school and academic subjects but may not in sports.

Motive is inferred from behaviour. Individual differences in strength of motive are inferred from the directionality of the individual’s behaviour and his perseverance in trying to obtain the much desired goal. A motive may be highly salient and, yet it may not lead directly to behaviour that gratifies that motive. Fear or anxiety may inhibit goal directed behaviour in spite of a motive to achieve the goals.

Goods says motivation as, “the process of arousing sustaining and regulating activity.” According to Maslow “Motivation is constant, never ending, fluctuating and complex and is an almost universal characteristic of particularly every organic state of affairs.”

According to Gates and others, ‘Motives are conditions – physiological and psychological within the organism that disposes it to act in certain ways.”

To quote Atkinson ‘the term motivation refers to the arousal of tendency to act, to produce on or more effects.”

Coleman says “Motives refer to any inner condition of the individual that initiates or directs behaviour towards a specific goal.’

Guilford defines motivation as “any particular internal factor or condition that tends to initiate and sustain activity.

According to Morgan, ‘Motivation refers to behaviour that is instigated by needs within the individual and is directed toward goals that satisfy these needs.’

Drever finds motivation as ‘an effective conative factor which operates in determining the direction of an individual’s behaviour towards an end or goal consciously apprehended or unconscious.’

Bemad, says ‘Motivation refers to all those phenomena which are involved in the stimulation of action towards particular objectives where previously there was little or no movement towards those goals.’

Motivation and the Child:

The child expects to achieve his goals as a result of the behaviour. In another case, a child becomes anxious to express a motive on the one hand and does not try to grafity his motives as he will be rejected in the process. Many of the motives involves an approach avoidance conflict. This means there will be on the ‘one hand a desire to approach a goal and on the other, anxiety associated with the attainment of the goal.

When a child desires to disobey his mother openly, there are many forces impelling him from within to disobey and counter forces which oppose the direct expression of avoidance. The real behaviour of the child is a function of the interaction of these two forces. Whether the child will attend to obtain the desired goal will depend on the relative strength of the approach and avoidance tendencies.

In the course of this socialization training, the child learns that he must inhibit certain forbidden acts that he must delay the fulfilment of many of his desires. In the 1- year-old child, the arousal of a motive is prone to lead immediately to a behaviour aimed at gratifying the motive directly.

The pre-school child learns to exert some control over his aggressive: dependent and sexual impulses. He also modifies them and express them only in acceptable ways.

Behaviour and Motives:

Psychologists hold the view that behaviour is administered through the motives and they play a very significant role in channelising the behaviour. Generally it is believed that an internal force leads a person to activate and consequently the person makes attempts to achieve his goal.

This internal force that makes one to activate, is called as motivation. As a matter of fact, the process of activation starts from motivation. Thus it is very essential to understand the concept of motivation. Literally the term motivation got its origin from the Latin word ‘Moovers’ which means to move. As such it refers to the process of arousing movement in the organism.

The motives are as given below:

1. Motives are internal state.

2. Motives stimulates the individual to act.

3. It regulates and directs the pattern of activity.

4. It energizes and sustain behaviour.

5. It directs the behaviour towards a particular goal.

In brief it can be said that motivation is the root of all behaviour, it works at all levels, behind each and every activity of the individual. As such all those factors that propels a person to a particular kind of action and activates behaviour, come within the scope of motivation.