Psychology 305B: Theories of Personality
Lecture 4
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Midterm: October 13th, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
• Please bring a pencil, eraser, pen, and your student
ID to the exam. Note that hats (e.g., baseball caps)
should not be worn during the exam.
• The exam is worth 20% of your final grade.
• The exam will include 30 multiple choice questions (1
point each) and several short answer questions
(ranging in value from 2 – 8 points each). It will be
scored out of 50.
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Lecture 4
Questions That Will be Answered in Today’s Lecture
Dispositional Perspective on Personality: Needs and
Motives Approach
1. What are needs?
2. What are motives?
3. What is environmental press?
4. How are needs measured?
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What are needs?
• “A need is a physiochemical force in the brain that
organizes perception, intellection, and action in such a
way as to transform an unsatisfying situation into a
more satisfying one.”
-- Murray, 1981
• Noteworthy points about this definition:
1. “Physiochemical”
2. “Organizes perception, intellection, and action”
3. “As to transform an unsatisfying situation into a
more satisfying one”
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•
Murray divided needs into 2 broad categories:
1. Viscerogenic or primary needs:
Basic biological needs; related to survival.
E.g.,
n Coldavoidance, n Expiration, n Food,
n Harmavoidance, n Heatavoidance,
n Inspiration, n Noxavoidance,
n Sentience, n Sex, n Water.
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2. Psychogenic or secondary needs:
Needs that arise or derive from primary needs;
related to emotional satisfaction or psychological
gratification rather than survival, per se.
E.g.,
n Abasement, n Achievement, n Affiliation,
n Aggression, n Autonomy, n Blamavoidance,
n Deference, n Dominance, n Exhibition,
n Infavoidance, n Inviolacy, n Social Recognition, n
Understanding.
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• Murray believed that the viscerogenic and
psychogenic needs that he identified are experienced
by all people to varying degrees.
• He maintained that each person’s viscerogenic and
psychogenic needs could be rank ordered from
strongest to weakest, to create a “hierarchy of
needs.” This hierarchy, he argued, could be used to
define the individual’s personality.
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• Murray identified 4 possible interrelations among
needs.
1. Fusion of needs:
Occurs when two or more non-conflicting needs
are satisfied by a single action pattern.
E.g.,
A child who tackles her bully is satisfying:
n Aggression and n Harmavoidance.
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2. Subsidiation of needs:
Occurs when one or more needs are activated to
aid in the satisfaction of another need.
E.g.,
A politician removes a spot from his suit because he
doesn’t wish to make a bad impression, and thus
diminish his chances of winning the approval and
friendship of Mr. Smith, from whom he hopes to
obtain slanderous facts relating to his political
opponent, Ms. Doe. He plans to publish these facts
to damage the reputation of Ms. Doe and thus assure
his own election to office.
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E.g., continued
A politician removes a spot from his suit because he
doesn’t wish to make a bad impression (n Inviolacy),
and thus diminish his chances of winning the approval
and friendship of Mr. Smith (n Affiliation), from whom
he hopes to obtain slanderous facts relating to his
political opponent, Ms. Doe. He plans to publish these
facts to damage the reputation of Ms. Doe (n
Aggression) and thus assure his own election to
office (n Achievement).
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3. Contrafaction of needs:
Occurs when conflicting needs arise and are
satisfied in alternating phases.
E.g.,
An individual who is highly dominant at work but
highly deferential at home with his family is
alternating between phases characterized by:
n Dominance and n Deference, respectively.
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4. Conflict of needs:
Occurs when conflicting needs arise simultaneously;
the conflict ensures that both needs are only
moderately satisfied.
E.g.,
An individual who moderates her sexual conduct
because she is concerned that her family will disapprove
of her actions is experiencing a conflict between:
n Sex and n Blamavoidance.
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What are motives?
• According to Murray’s theory, motives:
(a) are elicited by needs.
(b) influence thought.
(c) direct behaviour toward or away from specific
objects, people, or goals.
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E.g.,
Thought (thinking of
last night’s dinner,
fantasizing about a big
meal, perceiving a rock
as a loaf of bread)
Need
(for food)
Motive
(hunger)
Behaviour (prepare a
meal, go to a restaurant)
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What is environmental press?
• According to Murray’s theory, environmental press
refers to any environmental or situational factor
that influences people’s motives.
• Through its influence on motives, environmental
press can alter thought and behaviour.
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E.g.,
Need
(for food)
Thought (thinking of
last night’s dinner,
fantasizing about a big
meal, perceiving a rock
as a loaf of bread)
Motive
(hunger)
Environmental press
(upcoming exam, exposure
to a noxious stimulus)
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Behaviour (prepare a
meal, go to a restaurant)
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E.g.,
Need
(for food)
Environmental press
(upcoming exam)
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Thought (I’ll eat after I
finish reading this
chapter, I’ll fail the exam
if I don’t focus on
studying right now)
Motive
(hunger)
Behaviour (continue
studying)
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How are needs measured?
• Several measures have been developed to assess needs.
1. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
 Developed by Murray and Morgan in 1935.
 Currently, the most widely used measure of needs.
 Involves presenting participants with up to
20 black-and-white drawings that depict
ambiguous situations.
 Participants are told that they are completing a
test of creative imagination.
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 Instructions:
“I am going to show you some pictures, one at a
time, and your task will be to make up a story for
each card. In your story, be sure to tell what has led
up to the event shown in the picture, describe what
is happening at the moment, what the characters
are feeling and thinking, and give the outcome. Tell
a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end.
Do you understand? I will write your stories
verbatim as you tell them. Here’s the first card.”
-- Murray, 1943
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 In developing the measure, Murray and Morgan
assumed that people’s needs influence how they
interpret and perceive external stimuli, particularly
ambiguous stimuli.
 The measure is referred to as a projective test because
it is based on the assumption that people project their
needs onto the stimuli that comprise the test.
 Murray used the term “apperception” to describe the
process of projecting needs onto external stimuli;
apperception may be a conscious or unconscious
process.
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 The stories that a participant generates are analyzed
to identify his or her dominant needs; this is
accomplished by simply counting the number of
references that the participant makes to specific
needs in the stories.
 The dominant needs that are identified are thought to
be of central importance to the participant and to form
the defining characteristics of his or her personality.
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E.g.,
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Interpretation 1
This is a picture of a woman who all of her life has been a
very suspicious and conniving person. She’s looking in the
mirror and she sees reflected behind her an image of what
she will be as an old woman—still a suspicious, conniving
sort of person. She can’t stand the thought that that’s what
her life will eventually lead her to and she smashes the mirror
and runs out of the house screaming and goes out of her
mind and lives in an institution for the rest of her life.
Dominant needs: n Abasement, n Dominance, ….
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Interpretation 2
This woman has always emphasized beauty in her life. As a
little girl she was praised for being pretty and as a young
woman was able to attract lots of men with her beauty. While
secretly feeling anxious and unworthy much of the time, her
outer beauty helped to disguise these feelings from the world
and, sometimes, from herself. Now that she is getting on in
years and her children are leaving home, she is worried about
the future. She looks in the mirror and imagines herself as an
old hag—the worst possible person she could become, ugly
and nasty—and wonders what the future holds for her. It is a
difficult and depressing time for her.
Dominant needs: n Abasement, n Defendance, n Exhibition ….
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E.g. 2,
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Interpretation 1
After years of abuse, this woman has done the unthinkable …
she has shot her husband. She had wanted to leave him for
several years, but she felt hopelessly trapped. He always told
her that if she left, he would find her and kill her. Despite
having taken her power back, she is grief-stricken. After all,
she did love him at one time. She knows that she must now
go to the police to report her crime. Although she does not
know what their reaction will be, she hopes that they will
understand that she had no alternatives.
Dominant needs: n Abasement, n Change, n Defendance ….
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Interpretation 2
This woman has just watched her husband die. He had been
sick for some time and both he and she knew that the end
was near. He was her first and only love—her sole mate. As
he was dying, he told her of his never-ending love for her.
Now that he is gone, she doesn’t know what she is going to
do. She feels that she has lost the most important person in
her life. Outside their bedroom, she is overcome by feelings
of despair, ultimately falling to the ground and asking God to
take her life too.
Dominant needs: n Affiliation, n Nurturance, n Succorance ….
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2. Personality Research Form (PRF)
 Developed by Jackson in 1984; his goal was to
provide a measure of needs that could be scored
more objectively than the TAT.
 A self-report measure comprised of 352 T/F items;
the items assess a subset of 20 of the needs
identified by Murray.
 E.g., items used to assess n Achievement:
I look more to the future than to the past or present.
I enjoy situations that allow me to use my skill.
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 Participants’ responses to the items are used to
create personality profiles relating to the 20 needs.
E.g.,
Jack is highly motivated by the needs for affiliation,
harmavoidance, and nurturance.
Jill is highly motivated by the needs for aggression,
dominance, exhibition, and impulsivity.
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Questions That Were Answered in Today’s Lecture
Dispositional Perspective on Personality: Needs and
Motives Approach
1. What are needs?
2. What are motives?
3. What is environmental press?
4. How are needs measured?
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