Toward a sociological theory of motivation
Theorizing about motivation and interaction
There are forces mobilizing, driving and energizing individuals to act, interact and organize.
This complex topic was narrowed into a model of motivation in the analysis of cognitive processes.
Contemporary models of motivation:
Utilitarian theory – desire to maximize gratifications or utilities and to avoid deprivations or punishments in social transactions. This desire is mediated by cognitive processed applied to available information to make rational calculations of probable payoffs and losses for pursuing various lines of conduct (Smith 1759).
Behavioral theory – Under the advocacy of Watson (1919, 1913) and later Skinner (1938), radical behaviorism stressed the enumeration of observable stimuli and overt behavioral responses. Despite its emphais on studying only the observable, behaviorism implicitly entered Watson’s mystery box of cognition, for in assuming that stimuli reveal the capacity to punish or bestow gratification, and in invoking notions of atiation, behaviorism developed implicit models about hierarchies of preferences.
Exchange theory – represents an extension of utilitarian and behaviorist theorizing into a sociologically interesting situation where individuals are the source of utility or reinforcement for each other.
For Mead (1934), the uniquie capacitiers ofhumans that Watson excluded – the ability to use conventional gestures, to see oneself as an object, to weigh alternatives, to anticipate consequences, and to assume the perspectiov of others-are behaviors that are learned through reinforcement processes in ongoing group contexts. In Mead’s view, the capacity to cooperate with others in concerted activity is highly valuable. And hence those capacities, that facilitate such adjustment and adaptation will be retained in the behavioral repertoire of individuals.
Figure 2 models there variables as they have been used to extedn Mead’s social behaviorism into interactionism. Two fundamental forcces are hypothesized to mobilize humant thought and action – the need for a sense of iverall identity (Strauss 1959, McCall and Simmons 1966) and the need to cooperate with the latter often influencing the former in creating needs for more situational identities (Stryker 1980)
In Figure 3 this implicit theory of motivation in ethnomethodological theory is schematically represented. Implicit needs for a sense of facticity-that is a presumption that individuals in interaction share common external and internal worlds – motivates actors to use folk methods. Three basic types of interpersonal techniques have been analyzed by ethnomethodologists:
- those that are invoked to repair breached itneractions (where the sense of facticity has been broken)
- those that provide documentary interpreattions for conducht (why acots are doing what they are doing)
- those that are used to sustain the flow of ongoing interactions (encouraging actors to gloss, let pass, or not question). Thus the gesturing activities of individuals, especially their conversational exchanges, revolve around procedures for
- filling in, waiting, or glossing over information in a conversattion in order to promote the sense or illusion that these actors share a common world
- providing informationa bout the normal forma and background materials necessary tio interpret statemnets in conversation
- repairing conversations by providing new documentary information (statements of form and background materials, for exampel) or new sequences of glossing over potentially unclear information. Such repair wor, per se escaltes needs for facticity
Among contemporary sociological theories Giddens’s (1984) structuration theory has been dthe most willing to criticize and then selectively borrow from the works of Freud as well as more sociologically inclined revisionsts, such as Erik Erikson (1950) and Harry Stack Sullivan (1953). Moreover, Giddens has combined psychoanalytic ideas with more recent phenomenological and sociological analyses of language and interaction. This use of the psychoanlytic approach is most evident in Giddens’s examination of unconscious motive, although he rejects Freud’s early contentiin that day-to-day activities are uncounsiously motivated. Instead, borrowing formSchutz (1932) as well as more contemporary phenomenologists and enthnomethodologists, Giddens sees conduct as revolving around the reflexive monitoring of conduct at two leves of consciousness. First, there is discursive consicousness or the capacity to give reasons for and to talk about what one does. Second, there is practical consciousness or the unarticualted stocks of implicit understandings about vayring types of social situations.
Figure 4 summarizes in schematic form Gidden’s answer. Here Giddens emphasizes the uncounsicous, but he abandons Freud’s conception of libido in favor of more sociological adaptations of Freud’s ideas. Using Erikson’s (1950) conceptsz for his own purposes, Giddens sees the drive to achieve a sense of trust with others as central to motivation. Another related drive is the need for a kind of ultimate ontological security where one feels that “matters in the social world are as they appear to be”.
The underlying model in Collins’s (1986, 1975) theory is represented in Figure 5. At the core of Collins’s approach is the Durkheimian presumption that group membersihp is the prime driving force behind the expendirutre of energy and cultural capital. The mechanics of interaction revolve around the monitoring of situations to determine the nature of the conversational resources required, and then, the spending of emotinal emnergy as well as cultural capital in ana effor to extract an emotinal and cultural profit. If such profits are not forthocming, then motivational energy may initially increase in ana effor to recover one’s losses, but if profits are still not forthocoming, then motivational energy will decrease. as a result, actors will sek to avoid such situations, and if this is not possible, then their talk and conversation will be perfunctory,highly ritualized and involve little investment of energy or capital.
Each of the models presented in Figures 1 through 5 extends and elaborates the early theoretical legacy in creative Ways. Despite ecahc theory’s effort at syntheisis, none alone completely captures the full dynamics of motivation. It is appropriate therefore, to atempt a provisional coupling of these five models in order to develop a more robust sociological theory of motivation. This syntheiss is presented in Figure 6, where selected variables from previous models are labeled and juxtaposed in a manner that can facilitate theoretical consolidation.
The term needs is used in the descripion of the seven classes of variables in the middle and left portions of the model. While the concept of needs has a long and problematics history, it si used here to denote fundamental states of beign in humans which, if unsatisfied, generate feelings of deprivation. Such feelings of deprivation mobilize and organize behavioral responses in interaction.
Turner, J. H. (1987). Toward a sociological theory of motivation. American Sociological Review, 15-27.