Biological Drives: The Need for Food and Water

Unit 5. MotivationsWhy Do We Do What We Do?

Human beings spend most of their time during the day engaged in actions.

They drive cars, raise children, have vocations, spend time with hobbies, go on vacations, gamble, take unnecessary risks, play, and so forth. Why do we do what we do? This is the great question associated with the subject of motivation.

The word motivation is related to words such as motor, motion, and emotion. All of these words imply some form of activity, some kind of movement. And this is one of the principal features of life—a kind of restless movement that appears to arise from sources within the organism. These sources are called motives.

A motive is a state of physiological or psychological arousal that is assumed to play a causal role in behavior. Physiological arousal refers to such states as hunger and thirst. Psychological arousal refers to motives such as the need for achievement.

The two factors, physiological and psychological, of course interact. For example, a biological drive such as sex tends to interact with a psychological motive such as the need to be loved.

It is important to note that from the point of view of psychology- as a science, a motive is an intervening variable. An intervening variable is a variable used to explain behavior. It is assumed to reside within the organism and “intervene" between stimulus and response. An intervening variable can’t be seen or otherwise directly observed. It is inferred from studying behavior. If we see someone buying a sandwich in a snack bar, we may infer that the individual is hungry. However, he or she may in fact be buying the sandwich for a friend. The important point is that when we act as investigators of the behavior of others, we do not experience their motives.

Biological Drives: The Need for Food and Water

We would not do anything at all if we were not alive. That is why in some sense it can be argued that the root cause of all behavior can be traced to a group of biological drives. Biological drives are inborn drives, and their principal feature is that they impel us to attend to our tissue needs, to maintain ourselves as organisms. The basic theme associated with biological drives is survive!We would die fairly quickly if we did not follow the dictates of our biological drives on a fairly regular basis.

The biological drives are familiar. The following are frequently specified: hunger, thirst, sleep, temperature, oxygen hunger, pain, and sex. Note that if the word hunger appears without an adjective in front of it, then the word refers to the hunger for food. Als o note how any of the biological drives can act as a motive.

For example, if your temperature level is such that you feel cold, you might be motivated to put a coat on.

Most of the drives direct us toward a stimulus. We seek food if we are hungry.

We seek water if we are thirsty. Pain is unlike the other drives in this particular regard. Pain directs us axay from a stimulus. It motivates us to escape from the source of the pain.

Sex also has a unique status among the biological drives. The general theme of the biological drives, as already noted, is survival. Usually we think of this as the survival of the individual. However, in the case of sex, survival is generalized beyond the individual. The long-run purpose of sex is to assure the survival of the species.

An important physiological process associated with the biological drives is homeostasis. Homeostasis is a physiological process characterized by a tendency for biological drives to maintain themselves at optimal levels of arousal. The term homeostasis was introduced in the 1920s by the physiologist Walter Б. Cannon, and it can be roughly translated as “an unchanging sameness.”

The hunger drive provides an example of how homeostasis works. If your blood sugar is low, you will feel hungry. You will be motivated to seek food and eat. If you eat an appropriate amount of food, your blood sugar will gradually rise to an optimal level. On the other hand, if you happen to overeat, your blood sugar win rapidly rise to an overly high level. Under these circumstances, your pancreas will secrete extra insulin, returning your blood sugar from its overly high level to a lower one. The body's goal is to maintain blood sugar at an optimal level. activity of the biological drives. YCe have already seen how the hormone melatonin is involved in the regulation of sleep. The estrogen hormones and testosterone are associated with the sexual drive.

Biological drives play a significant role in the learning process. Drive reduction theory states that when an action pays off in such a way that it reduces the tension associated with a biological drive in a state of arousal, then that action is reinforced. It is reinforcing for a hungry rat in an operant conditioning apparatus to obtain food by pressing a lever. This principle can be readily generalized to some human behavior. A hunter’s learned actions provide an example. These may include how- to load a particular kind of gun or the skills involved in tracking a specific animal. If the ultimate goal of a series of actions is food, water, escape from pain, sexual gratification, or another biological drive, then the drive reduction principle may operate to shape learned behavior.