In fact, when others from outside of the field discuss a behavioral approach to motivation, it is often pejorative and presented in the context of the proposed problems of contrived extrinsic reinforcement. This inconsistency left the reader of Honig in a quandary about how to relate the basic principles of behavior to the topic of motivation.īehaviorists are rarely credited for any positive contribution to the study of motivation. In addition, Teitelbaum was “critical of some of the assumptions about motivation in Skinner's earlier treatments” ( Michael, 1993, p. 192). However, Teitelbaum made no use of Skinner's analysis of motivation, and focused primarily on the traditional physiological aspects of motivation. For example, the prestigious textbook by Honig (1966), the behavioral bible for many students in the 1960s and 1970s, contained a chapter on motivation ( Teitelbaum, 1966). ![]() Surprisingly, the same effect has occurred in our own literature. Most introductory psychology textbooks have a whole chapter on motivation, but it is typically disconnected from the chapter in the same textbook on learning that usually presents the work of Pavlov, Skinner, and others. Michael (1993) began his discussion of establishing operations (EOs) by pointing out that motivation is a major topic in psychology, especially applied psychology. Many of these points can be found in Michael's 1993 paper, as well as throughout his other writings on the topic. The current paper pays tribute to Jack Michael and the 20th anniversary of his 1993 paper “Establishing Operations” by identifying, with direct quotations, 30 separate points that Skinner makes about motivation in his book Verbal Behavior. ![]() The failure to address motivation makes our field vulnerable to claims that behavior analysis is impoverished, or incapable of addressing motivation as it relates to various conceptual and applied issues. Michael also pointed out that the neglect of motivation as a basic principle in behavior analysis “leaves a gap in our understanding of operant functional relations” (p. 191). Despite the focus that Skinner, Keller, and Schoenfeld placed on motivation and its distinction from stimulus effects, Michael (1993) noted that “the basic notion plays only a small role in the approach currently referred to as behavior analysis” (p. 191). ![]() Michael and colleagues provided a series of refinements and extensions of Skinner's basic analysis of motivation with a number of papers and book chapters ( Laraway, Snycerski, Michael, & Poling, 2003 Michael, 1982, 1988, 1993, 2000, 2004, 2007). Skinner further developed this conceptualization of motivation with three chapters on the topic in Science and Human Behavior (1953, chapters 9–11), and throughout the book Verbal Behavior (1957). Keller and Schoenfeld also suggest that the term “establishing operation” be used to distinguish the effects of deprivation, satiation, and aversive stimulation from various stimulus effects. Several years later, Keller and Schoenfeld (1950) elaborated on Skinner's position in the section titled, “A drive is not a stimulus” (p. 276), where they stated, “a drive has neither the status, nor the functions, nor the place in a reflex that a stimulus has … it is not, in itself either eliciting, reinforcing, or discriminative” (p. 276). He also maintained that these motivative variables were antecedent events and separate from all types of stimulus variables. In Behavior of Organisms (1938) Skinner argued that the causes of behaviors related to “drive” were environmental events, namely deprivation, satiation, and aversive stimulation, not internal states such as thirst or anger.
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