The Incentive Theory of Motivation

Alfred Adler (1870-1937), the Austrian psychologist who founded the school
of individual psychology, rejected Freud’s emphases on sex and aggression as
fundamental aspects of motivation. Breaking from Freud, who had been
among his earliest professional associates, Adler contended that childhood
feelings of helplessness led to later feelings of inferiority. His means of treating
the inferiority complex, as this condition came to be known, was to engage
his patients in positive social interaction. To do this, he developed an
incentive theory of motivation, as articulated in his two major works, Praxis
und Theorie der Individual psychologie (1920; The Practice and Theory of Individual
Psychology, 1924) and Menschenkenntnis (1927; Understanding Human Nature,
1927).
Adler’s theory focused on helping people to realize the satisfaction involved
in achieving superiority and competence in areas in which they had
some aptitude. The motivation to do so is strictly personal and individual.
Adler’s entire system was based on the satisfactions to be derived from
achieving a modicum of superiority. The incentive approach views competence
as a basic motivation activated by people’s wish to avoid failure. This is
a reward/punishment approach, although it is quite different from that of
the behaviorists and is, in essence, humanistic. The reward is competence;
the punishment is failure. Both factors stimulate subjects’ motivation.