Introduction

Attempts to explain human behavior date back to the dawn of time. Questions relating to motives, motivation, and volition, as discussed in Chapter 1, have been addressed from various perspectives under different labels, and have prompted a variety of explanatory models. What is common to all these attempts is that they seek to establish the reasons for actions, their individual differences, and for the activation, control, and persistence of goal-oriented behavior. It would go beyond the scope of this chapter to review the intricate and involved history of this endeavor (see Bolles, 1975, for such a review). What Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909) supposedly said about psychology, namely that it has a long past but a short history, applies equally to the study of motivation.

Once psychology became scientific, i.e., experimental, questions relating to motivation began to emerge in quite different contexts. Labels and definitions differed, reflecting the changing perspectives on the issues. The connotative content of concepts also changed with the biases and assumptions that dominated a particular era, however, increasing or decreasing their popularity. The nomenclature at the beginning of the last century is a case in point. At that time, the battle was between “motives” and “reasons” as directing the choice between alternative courses of behavior or as governing the emergence of a decision to do or not to do something. It was then that volition or “will” took effect to insure that an intention, once formed, would be followed up by the active pursuit of a goal.