ABSTRACT
Whether a man considers himself to be acting as an Origin or as a Pawn is the central issue for understanding the effects of personal causation in human motivation. When a person feels that he is an Origin, his behavior should be characteristically different from his behavior when he feels like a Pawn. This major hypothesis derives from our basic postulate that man's primary motivational propensity is to be effective in producing desirable changes in his environment. Thus we have reached the most fundamental aspect of human motivation-man's personal knowledge of his own motives.
