Clark Hull is apbehavioral psychologist he interested in the study of animal learning and concerned with the subject of motivation. He influenced by the theory of evolution. He understood that the needs of the body were the forces that prompted him to action, which should reduce or eliminate these needs. He distinguished between primary drives and secondary drives. The primary ones are associated with states of need and have an innate character.
The secondary ones are based on avoidance learning. He came up with three theories. The first, elaborated in the 1930s, consisted of a purely associative theory, in which there were practically no motivational elements. The second was based on the concept of impulse, collected in his work The principles of behavior. Finally he worked on an incentive-based theory of motivation. Miller and Dollard used the concept of acquired momentum to explain motivation in learning.
Williams and Perin's experiments. Hull relied on the results of these experiments to deduce the characteristics of the impulse. Perin trained four groups of rats to press a lever to obtain food after a 3-hour deprivation, providing different numbers of reinforced trials (5, 8, 30, 70). The resistance to extinction of the response is what is shown in the graph of results. Williams trained 4 groups of rats with 22 hours of deprivation and various amounts of reinforced trials. The dependent variable in the two experiments was the number of times the animal pressed the lever before the criterion occurred. Hull reached two main conclusions:
- The existence of a regular growth of resistance to extinction as a function of the number of tests. It is a continuous and growing function. The more reinforced tests, the greater the resistance to extinction. The level of execution depends on the motivation. Its rate is equivalent in the two deprivation conditions. The force of conduct depended on habit. Habit does not depend on impulse.
- Both curves depend on the deprivation conditions. It is necessary to postulate another construct, the result of which is to strengthen behavior. This construct is the momentum. Habit and drive combine to produce the action potential.
Barry he measured the speed of the running behavior. The speed of the race depends on the momentum. According to Hull, the impulse does not participate in the directionality of the behavior, what it does is only provide energy to the previously acquired habits. Hull believed that drive and habits were independent. The habit was produced by a more or less permanent change in the nervous system, the impulse had a rather transitory and temporary motivational character. Another question of his theory is that of the independence of impulse and incentive.
It has not been possible to verify in an experimental way that impulse and incentive are really independent. Contribution of Spence Hull's theory Hull defended the theory that reinforcement reduced stress. Spence never did. Hull began by pointing out that incentives influence strength of habit, and then went on to propose that incentives influenced performance. Spence always understood motivation as an incentive. Spence used classical and instrumental learning. The first is important because anticipatory responses to the goal are produced in it.
The instrumental is directed by the incentive, as it is the one that directs the execution of the instrumental behavior. He considered that the general impulse was multiplied by the force of habit. He recognized the value of incentives. Momentum and incentive have a additive effect. The sum of impulse and incentive is multiplied by the force of habit to give rise to the action potential. He has recognized the role of inhibition based on anticipation of reward. The individual becomes frustrated when there is a lack of reward. The action potential formula is: EPR = f (EHR X - In)
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