Work Motivation for Performance
Content Theories of Motivation
Manifest Needs Theory
One major problem with the need approach to motivation is that we can make up a need for every human behavior. Do we "need" to talk or be silent? The possibilities are endless. In fact, around the 1920s, some 6,000 human needs had been identified by behavioral scientists!
Henry A. Murray recognized this problem and condensed the list into a few instinctive and learned needs. Instincts, which Murray called primary needs, include physiological needs for food, water, sex (procreation), urination, and so on. Learned needs, which Murray called secondary needs, are learned throughout one's life and are basically psychological in nature. They include such needs as the need for achievement, for love, and for affiliation (see Table 7.1).
| Sample Items from Murray's List of Needs | |
|---|---|
| Social Motive | Brief Definition |
| Abasement | To submit passively to external force. To accept injury, blame, criticism, punishment. To surrender. |
| Achievement | To accomplish something difficult. To master, manipulate, or organize physical objects, human beings, or ideas. |
| Affiliation | To draw near and enjoyably cooperate or reciprocate with an allied other (an other who resembles the subject or who likes the subject). To please and win affection of a coveted object. To adhere and remain loyal to a friend. |
| Aggression | To overcome opposition forcefully. To fight. To revenge an injury. To attack, injure, or kill another. To oppose forcefully or punish another. |
| Autonomy | To get free, shake off restraint, break out of confinement. |
| Counteraction | To master or make up for a failure by restriving. |
| Defendance | To defend the self against assault, criticism, and blame. To conceal or justify a misdeed, failure, or humiliation. To vindicate the ego. |
| Deference | To admire and support a superior. To praise, honor, or eulogize. |
| Dominance | To control one's human environment. To influence or direct the behavior of others by suggestion, seduction, persuasion, or command. |
| Exhibition | To make an impression. To be seen and heard. To excite, amaze, fascinate, entertain, shock, intrigue, amuse, or entice others. |
| Harm avoidance | To avoid pain, physical injury, illness, and death. To escape from a dangerous situation. To take precautionary measures. |
| Infavoidance | To avoid humiliation. To quit embarrassing situations or to avoid conditions that may lead to belittlement or the scorn or indifference of others. |
| Nurturance | To give sympathy and gratify the needs of a helpless object: an infant or any object that is weak, disabled, tired, inexperienced, infirm, defeated, humiliated, lonely, dejected, sick, or mentally confused. To assist an object in danger. To feed, help, support, console, protect, comfort, nurse, heal. |
| Order | To put things in order. To achieve cleanliness, arrangement, organization, balance, neatness, tidiness, and precision. |
| Play | To act for "fun" without further purpose. To like to laugh and make jokes. To seek enjoyable relaxation from stress. |
| Rejection | To separate oneself from a negatively valued object. To exclude, abandon, expel, or remain indifferent to an inferior object. To snub or jilt an object. |
| Sentience | To seek and enjoy sensuous impressions. |
| Sex | To form and further an erotic relationship. To have sexual intercourse. |
| Succorance | To have one's needs gratified by the sympathetic aid of an allied object. |
| Understanding | To ask or answer general questions. To be interested in theory. To speculate, formulate, analyze, and generalize. |
Murray's main premise was that people have a variety of needs, but only a few are expressed at a given time. When a person is behaving in a way that satisfies some need, Murray called the need manifest. Manifest needs theory assumes that human behavior is driven by the desire to satisfy needs. Lucretia's chattiness probably indicates her need for affiliation. This is a manifest need. But what if Lucretia also has a need to dominate others? Could we detect that need from her current behavior? If not, Murray calls this a latent need. A latent need cannot be inferred from a person's behavior at a given time, yet the person may still possess that need. The person may not have had the opportunity to express the need. Or she may not be in the proper environment to solicit behaviors to satisfy the need. Lucretia's need to dominate may not be motivating her current behavior because she is with friends instead of coworkers.
Manifest needs theory laid the groundwork for later theories, most notably McClelland's learned needs theory, that have greatly influenced the study of organizational behavior. The major implication for management is that some employee needs are latent. Managers often assume that employees do not have certain needs because the employees never try to satisfy them at work. Such needs may exist (latent needs); the work environment is simply not conducive to their manifestation (manifest needs). A reclusive accountant may not have been given the opportunity to demonstrate his need for achievement because he never received challenging assignments.