Prime theory: An integrated view of motivation and emotion.

Abstract

Motivation and emotion are viewed as different aspects of a single process in which emotion involves the of motivational potential inherent in hierarchically organized primary motivational/emotional systems (primes). The most basic readout, Emotion 7, involves adaptive-homeostatic functions. In species where communication about the state of certain primes became important, Emotion II, involving their outward expression, evolved. With cognition, a third type of readout evolved, Emotion III, involving the direct experience of certain primes. A model of the interaction between primes and cognition is presented, and the unique role of language in human motivation-emotion is discussed. In recent years there has been a virtual explosion of new information relevant to the analysis of motivation and emotion that has left attempts at theoretical integration far behind. In the realm usually termed motivation, there has been increasing realization that behavior can be initiated by external stimuli and cognitive processes as well as by the biological deficits that have served as the cornerstone of the drive-reduction model. Mogenson and Phillips (1976) pointed out that any contemporary analysis of motivation must account for behavior based on the expectation of reward (incentive motivation: Bindra, 1968; Bolles, 1972) and for adaptive behavior that anticipates homeostatic deficits before they occur. The apparent ability of animals to make responses that anticipate their needs suggests that they must use processes that represent within the brain the nature of the outside world (Oatley, 1973, p. 12). In this article I argue that such processes involve phenomena that have been traditionally relegated to the realm of emotion. The major physiological models of motivation have generally avoided the concept of emotion, with its taint of subjectivism. These

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Affiliated Institutions

• University of Connecticut US

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