Human Motivation

Successful with over 24000 students in two earlier motivation books Weiner''s text - newly available in paper - depicts motivation as an unfolding story with plot and characters. He offers insights into the history and study of motivation and captures the excitement of the field as it evolves.Theories are explored in the context of the dominant metaphor or paradigm of various eras. First to be discussed is the machine metaphor which took a mechanistic view of human motivation and gave rise to Freudian Hullian and Gestalt theories. Then Weiner discusses why this paradigm was abandoned in favour of another which led to Expectancy-Value and Attribution theories. The rise of a further paradigm which sees humans as evaluating judges is then examined. The author concludes with a comparison of the theories reviewed and suggestions for future theoretical development.Each chapter opens with a biographical sketch of the theorist being discussed. In addition Human Motivation contains 12 experiments for students to complete that permit the testing of a key prediction.