Modern Psychology · 1943 to Present · Internal Tensions and the Basis of All Motivation
The greatest motivational act one person can do for another is to listen.Roy Moody — as attributed
Drive theory, developed by Clark Hull in the 1940s, proposes that behavior is motivated by internal tensions — biological or psychological states of deprivation or imbalance that the organism is compelled to reduce. A hungry animal is driven to seek food; a thirsty one to seek water; a lonely one to seek connection. The behavior that successfully reduces the drive is reinforced, making it more likely to occur when the drive arises again. This is the fundamental learning mechanism: drives create behavior, and behaviors that successfully reduce drives become habits.
The philosophical implications are significant even where the technical details of Hull's theory have been superseded. The insight that behavior is motivated by felt states of insufficiency or imbalance — that we are driven toward goals not merely by their attractiveness but by the discomfort of their absence — aligns with a broad range of motivational accounts across traditions. Maslow's hierarchy is organized around deficiency needs (security, belonging, esteem) that motivate behavior precisely when they are not being met; fulfillment of the need reduces the drive and allows attention to shift to higher-order needs.
Napoleon Hill's account of burning desire — the intense, specific, emotionally charged want that he placed at the foundation of his achievement philosophy — can be understood through a drive theory lens. The person with a definiteness of purpose that they genuinely, viscerally want has created a drive state that motivates sustained effort toward its satisfaction. The deliberate cultivation of desire, through autosuggestion and emotional engagement with one's purpose, is the deliberate creation of a drive that the achievement of the purpose will satisfy.
Hull published his comprehensive drive theory in Principles of Behavior in 1943, attempting to provide a mathematical, mechanistic account of learning and motivation that would make psychology a rigorous natural science. The ambition exceeded the results — the technical aspects of Hull's theory were largely abandoned by the 1960s — but the core insight about the motivational role of internal states of tension and their reduction proved durable and influential.
Abraham Maslow's distinction between deficiency needs and growth needs is an extension and critique of drive theory. Deficiency needs operate like Hull's drives: they motivate behavior through the discomfort of their absence, and their satisfaction reduces the motivation. Growth needs are different: their satisfaction increases rather than reduces the drive. The person who achieves genuine self-actualization finds that their desire for further development increases rather than diminishes — they are not reducing a tension but expressing a positive direction that deepens as it is pursued.
The Stoic tradition offers an interesting commentary on drive theory from a different angle. The Stoics distinguished between natural desires (for food, water, companionship, reasonable comfort) which they acknowledged as appropriate to satisfy, and unnecessary desires (for wealth beyond sufficiency, fame, luxury) which they argued produced suffering rather than satisfaction because they could never be finally and permanently satisfied. This distinction maps onto the difference between drives that have genuine fulfillment conditions and desires that are structurally insatiable.
The secret of getting ahead is understanding what drives you.Napoleon Hill — Think and Grow Rich, 1937