The Respective Roles of Cognition and Motivation in Behavioral Dynamics, Intention, and Volition

Abstract

The respective roles of cognition and motivation in activating and directing human behavior have often been an issue with contradictory solutions in the history of psychology. For some ancient philosophers, the higher forms of “appetite” were so intimately related to rational intelligence that the mere understanding of what is “good” was assumed to move the individual to volition and action. More recently, ideodynamic and ideomotor theories also emphasized the dynamic role of representational cognitive contents. According to Freudian concepts, on the contrary, cognition and behavior dynamics are localized in two opposite zones of the “psychic apparatus,” so that the cognizing ego is practically devoid of dynamics, whereas the id is cognitively blind. Others have tried to eliminate both cognitive and motivational variables from the behavioral field, while at the present time an unrestrained comeback of “cognitive psychology” tends to interpret motivation in terms of cognitive processes and to obscure the impact of dynamic variables. It is my purpose in this theoretical contribution to disentangle some of these perplexities and to show, on the conceptual level, how both cognitive and motivational functions play their role in behavior dynamics. At the same time, I would like to emphasize their interaction. In fact, the conceptual distinction between cognitive and dynamic aspects in behavioral functioning should not obscure their integrated activity.