ABSTRACT
Psychologists and non-psychologists alike have always wanted to explain why people do the things that they do. Different people seem to be driven by different motives: while one devotes the majority of his or her time to achieving the largest possible business empire, another chooses to focus on creating beautiful works of art. While one strives to achieve the greatest possible success in a chosen field, another just wants a quiet and relatively anonymous life. Such considerations give rise to many questions about the nature of motivation. Are we all driven by the same basic mot ives so that business success and artistic creativity equally sat isfy the same underlying need? Or are they qualitatively different types of motivation? How are different motives related to one another? Are some motives basic and others in some way secondary to, or derived from them? How does the satisfaction of one motive affect other motivation? Are there specifically human types of motivation, or are human motives elaborations of motives that we share with other species? To what extent are we aware of the motives that govern our own behaviour?
