[Psychological theories of motivation].

Abstract

The comprehension of the principles guiding the human actions has always been an important aspect of philosophy. The development of experimental psychology first completely rejected all mental explanations such as will, intentions or motives. Behavior should then only be understood as determined by conditioning and learning. However, different theories denied that human behavior could be considered as purely reactive to the environment and stressed the active role of the organism on the environment. Theories from the humanist psychology and the social psychology described two kinds of motivation. The extrinsic motivation results from external stimuli and the intrinsic motivation from the organism himself. Our behavior is therefore determined by an interaction between our beliefs, expectations, needs and the environment. Actually, the concept of motivation is not well specified. It refers either to a global dynamic structure responsible for action either to a specific tendency toward some specific actions. Anyway, motivation is a concept infered from behavior. Therefore, its evaluation could only be secondary.