Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Motivation

Abstract

Evolutionary and comparative perspectives on motivation and emotion are almost absent from contemporary social and behavioral sciences. The history of psychology, particularly the relation between motivational, comparative, and learning psychology has made the phylogeny of motivation a largely ignored topic. The author briefly reviews the extent to which these perspectives are influential in the history and present state of motivational psychology, and discusses how motivational and emotional mechanisms might provide the missing link to the environment-need fit in the activation and deactivation of behavioral and cognitive modules. In this way, behavioral regulation by motivation may be part of a multilevel architecture of the mammal and the human mind. A number of basic motivational modules that might be involved in processes of goal engagement and disengagement in humans are proposed, which together may favor an overall preference for controlling the environment and maximizing one's resources and capacities for control.