Overview

Paradigms or models of motivation have evolved from several distinct views about the nature of human beings. These views have progressed from early Freudian biological theories of negative urges, to behaviorist theories positing external conditioning on a blank slate, to humanistic notions of an innate propensity for goodness or self-actualization. In recent theories, cognitive, social-cognitive, and social-behaviorist perspectives have arisen to extend and refine these earlier views. Although theories have proliferated, basic assumptions about human nature have remained essentially deterministic, mechanistic, and reductionistic. In this paper, the major historical trends in theories of motivation are highlighted, and emerging efforts to extend motivational theories to more fully account for higher level processes such as insight, creativity, and wisdom, as well as the experience of personal agency and self-determination, are exemplified. The paper concludes with a discussion of what is missing in current theoretical perspectives and how this symposium has been designed to point us toward a new paradigm of human motivation, cognition, and learning.