January 2017
Not to complicate this higher philosophic level of human behavior explanation we’ll just note goal-making includes intellectual activities together with automation response area. Thus a motive is made of emotional and rational elements. The structure of these elements may act contrary to the standard animal inner world determinants. Actually we’re talking about homeostasis support and pleasure center stimulation. The typical response range could include some advice of the kind of the opponent processes theory: avoid pain even by rejecting pleasures that cause it. However, once we go out to the world around us with this quite simple set of principles, we face so-called social programs.
Individual and species survival demand that organisms find and obtain needed resources (e.g., food and shelter) and opportunities . Such survival-relevant natural goals act as “rewards,” i.e., they are pursued with the anticipation that their consumption (or consummation) will produce desired outcomes (i.e., will “make things better”). Behaviors with rewarding goals tend to persist strongly to a conclusion and increase over time (i.e., they are positively reinforcing) (21). Internal motivational states, such as hunger, thirst, and sexual arousal, increase the incentive value of goal-related cues and of the goal objects themselves and also increase the pleasure of consumption (e.g., food tastes better when one is hungry) (22). External cues related to rewards (incentive stimuli), such as the sight or odor of food or the odor of an estrous female, can initiate or strengthen motivational states, increasing the likelihood that complex and often difficult behavioral sequences, such as foraging or hunting for food, will be brought to a successful conclusion, even in the face of obstacles.
Any change in behavior can be described as a choice. Out of many alternatives a human always chooses one leaving others aside. Once we are not satisfied with the choice made, sometimes, when it’s possible we can try again an abandoned alternative. Is it possible to predict or even stimulate this choice? In the simplest case – probably yes. In fact, under the condition of the plenty of demand, for example, when a supermarket shelf is full of products with the same eating qualities there’s a problem to make a consumer buy a definite product.