Identification as the basis for a theory of motivation; Nelson Foote

Pg 14 – “…A person learns to recognize standard situations and to play expected roles in them according to the status defined for him in each.”

~ Role theory; personal history combined with cultures makes self-conceptions that turn into roles that dominate how the working-self-concept function. Basically, creates identities.

Pg 14 – “Lindesmith and Strauss are far more daring in describing motives, like Mills, as rationalizations of acts, whereby one relates his acts to previous experience and to the values of the groups to which one feels he must justify his behavior.”

~ Personal history combines with cultures to create values/rank identities & roles.

Pg 15 – “So that we may ignore non-motivated behavior, motivation or motivated behavior has to be defined.”

~ Have to define things to be able to understand them completely.

Pg 15 – “To generalize, motivated behavior is distinguished by its prospective reference to ends in view, by being more or less subject to conscious control through choice among alternative ends and means.”

~ Motivation is the driving force in what makes us make decisions. Without motivation we would not be able to function.

Pg 15 – “In a sentence, we take motivation to refer to the degree to which a human being as a participant in the ongoing social process in which he necessarily finds himself, defines a problematic situation as calling for performance of a particular act, with more or less anticipated consummations and consequences, and thereby his organism releases the energy appropriate to performing it.”

~ In other words, motivation is the amount of self-definition, energy and action on uses in situation.

Pg 16 – “It is in the fact that the empty bottle of role and status suddenly has a content. That content is not drives, tensions, or needs; it is identity.”

~ Role + status = identity. Therefore, self-conception + ranked culture = identity.

Pg 16 – “And as the analogy suggests, the process of analyzing the self into its parts may go on indefinitely.”

~ Haha, good thing I stopped before I went too far.

Pg 16 – “Just this wrapping of all the particular constituents of a person’s identity into one round bundle and labeling it “the self” have long delayed the analysis of the self and of identity.”

~ The self and identity are separate, but they do not always get defined separately and they need to be to be able to understand both.

Pg 17 – “We mean by identification appropriation of and commitment to a particular identity or series of identities. As a process, it proceeds by naming; its products are ever-evolving self-conceptions – with the emphasis on the con-, that is, upon ratification by significant other.”

~ Self-identification is the self-concept committing to identities, which creates self-conceptions. Outsider-identification is when others identify us. Basically, self-conceptions are the way we see our identities. We can have multiple self-conceptions for the same identity, though. For instance, I am a tennis player (identity) but my self-conception of myself playing tennis when I was in high school is completely different than my self-conception of me as a tennis player now. Therefore, the identity has remained, but the self-conception has changed.

Pg 17 – “Every man must categorize his fellows in order to interact with them. We never approach another person purely as a human being or purely as an individual. If a being is human, it shares characteristics with a class of human beings which distinguish them from the non-human.”

~ Categorization is what defines us and how we define. It is crucial to us understanding the world around us. We can never completely uncategorized, so we must understand why we categorize to understand ourselves.

Pg 17-18 – “The common man is always classifying thus. And to make things harder for the social psychologist, his classifications vary with time and place, as identities are elaborated and re-determined. Moreover, the common man assumes that categories applied to his fellows immediately indicate the motives to be imputed to them. “I dislike Communists because I am a Catholic and they are atheistic” is an example of such common-sense behavior.”

~ Thoughts change so quickly that it is hard to study and understand them.

Pg 18 – “Likewise, his identities give common meaning, stability and predictability to his own behavior as long as he clings to them.”

~ Identity, such as my tennis player identity, stabilizes the variety of self-conceptions and possible selves that come from one identity.

Pg 18 – “If the regularities in human behavior are organized responses to situations which have been classified more or less in common by the actors in them, then names motivate behavior.”

~ Having roles and identities motivate our actions because they tell us what to do to keep the status quo.

Pg 18 – “Establishment of one’s own identity to oneself is as important in interaction as to establish it for the other. One’s own identity in a situation is not absolutely given but is more or less problematic.”

~ Not only is self-definition important to identity, but outsider-definition is just as important. One’s self-definition is not a given, but can cause problems with outsider-definitions.

Pg 18 – “Social situations always contain standard elements, and always some unique elements, if only a different position in time and space. When one enters a new situation, he attempts to relate it to old ones by familiar sigs, and his response may be automatic. Or the preponderance of new elements may make the situation too problematic for a habitual response to be appropriate. For its definition, nonetheless, he must approach it from some fixed point of reference. He must start from what is most definite, find some given elements in it. His capacities are given, but they constitute only inert limits to his potential behavior, so they are not definitive enough. Although some pressing organic irritation may be quite definite, again his physical condition helps create the situation he confronts, but does not alone dictate what his response will be. The identity of the others involved is dependent upon his own in the familiar reciprocal manner. So inevitably the elements which have to be “taken as given” are his identities or, more exactly, his special pattern of identity.”

~ Every social situation is different. We deal with the change by relating new things to old things, new situations to old situations. We always start with what we already know and have defined. Experience limits potential selves and potential behavior. Other’s identities relate to ours because they judge off of our responses and their own personal history.

Pg 18 – “When doubt of identity creeps in, action is paralyzed. Only full commitment to one’s identity permits a full picture of motivation.”

~ If you reach a moratorium, you cannot do anything. You must be fully committed to have full motivation. This is why rnnking selves is so important. The more commitment you have to a self or identity, the more motivation you have to fulfill that self or identity.

Pg 19 – “Doubt of identity, or confusion, where it does not cause complete disorientation, certainly drains action of meaning, and thus limits mobilization of the organic correlates of emotion, drive and energy which constitute the introspectively-sensed “push” of motivated action.”

~ Doubt of identity leads to a lack of motivation, and a lack of action. Therefore, this limits the ability of the person to function in social settings.

Pg 19 – “We are limited to the experience available to us from birth, although these limitations become more flexible as we gain in variety of experience.”

~ We are limited to our own personal histories; we cannot have others. Although, as we grow older and gain experiences our personal history grows and lessens our limitations accordingly.

Pg 19 – “Primarily then the compulsive effect of identification upon behavior must arise from absence of alternatives, from unquestioned acceptance of the identities case upon one by circumstances beyond his control (or thought to be).”

~ Unquestioned acceptance of identities only happens when no other identity alternatives are there (rare).

Pg 19 – “His accruing conceptions of who he is are usually taken as something verging upon ultimate reality rather than as ultimately arbitrarily ascriptions by others.”

~ As one gain more and more self-conceptions the person gets closer and closer to complete self-actualization, not closer and closer to having the self be completely outsider-defined.

Pg 19 – “Thenceforth his identities accrue from more conscious choice and pursuit of the values he has discovered in his experience.”

~ Identities grow in size due to the choices and actions of a person due to their own unique personal history.

Pg 19 – “Value, we would insist, is discovered in experience, not conferred upon it from without.”

~ Ranking comes from within, not from outsider-definition.

Pg 19 – “While we can only mobilize for our next act when it or its elements can be construed as similar to acts which have gone before, the determination of the appropriate act is made in the situation, not prior to it.”

~ We cannot predecide motivation, it happens in the moment with the working self-concept and identity all working together.

Pg 19-20 – “Experience is continually being recombined in new patterns; and even the most habitual act must be defined as appropriate to its immediate context to be launched overtly.”

~ Personal history constantly changes because the present is constantly becoming the past. Even habits we form can change if our present changes.

Pg 20 – “Because we have the capacity through language for conceptualizing these remembered goods as values, and the ingenuity to devise new schemes ofrelations under which they may be revived in the same or fuller measure, we can invent new roles or deviate from conventional ones. Also, we simultaneously inherit thereby the constant possibility of conflict – both internal and external – which characterizes members of human society.”

~We have the ability to change or create new roles and identities because of our ability to rank our own selves and cultures. Therefore, we constantly have dissonance through internal and external changes and developments going on.

Pg 20 – “Without the binding thread of identity, one could not evaluate the succession of situations. Literally, one could say there would be no value in living, since value only exists or occurs relative to particular identities – at least value as experienced by organisms which do not live in the mere present…”

~ Without identity we would have nothing ranked or valued. Therefore, we would not know what motivations we have, therefore we wouldn’t really exist because we would never take action.

Pg 20 – “Moreover, it is only through identification as the sharing of identity that individual motives become social values and social values, individual motives.”

~ Identification leads to culture. Culture is the sharing of identity. Identity is the outward sharing of internal self-conceptions.

Pg 20 – “It is only because one conceives of himself, via a certain identity, as a member of a class which includes certain others, that he can enjoy or suffer the successes and failures of a group.”

~ Can only enjoy or suffer with culture if one has an identity of that culture.

Pg 21 – “…(3) identification is the process whereby individuals are effectively linked with their fellows in groups…”

~ Classification and identification are inherently linked. Identity leads to classification, but need identity to self-define and be motivated.

Pg 21 – “…(5) these categorizations of experience motivate behavior through the necessary commitment of individuals to particular concatenations of identity in all situations…”

~ Says what I say above about motivation.

Pg 21 – “…(6) commitment to particular identities arises through a limiting and discovering process of acquiring conceptions of self, which are confirmed, revised or elaborated partly by instruction from significant others and partly through direct experience…”

~ Ranking of selves comes from working self-conceptions which stay the same, change, or end due to social interaction and experience.

Pg 21 – “One has no identity apart from society; one has no individuality apart from identity”

~ Need others to form identity; need identity to form self. Therefore, need others to form self.