Why does an organism respond at all? PSY8348 examines motivation through the lens most relevant to behavior analysis: not as an internal driving force inferred from behavior, but as the environmental variables that alter the value of consequences and the probability of behavior — a framework with direct, practical assessment and intervention implications.
Motivating operations
Jack Michael's reformulation of "drive"
- Establishing operations: Environmental events or conditions that increase the current effectiveness of a particular consequence as a reinforcer and increase the current frequency of behavior that has previously produced that consequence (for example, food deprivation increasing both the reinforcing value of food and the frequency of food-seeking behavior)
- Abolishing operations: Environmental events or conditions that decrease the current effectiveness of a consequence as a reinforcer and decrease the current frequency of related behavior (for example, recent consumption of food decreasing both food's reinforcing value and food-seeking behavior)
- Value-altering and behavior-altering effects: PSY8348 examines Michael's two-part definition of motivating operations — the value-altering effect (changing how reinforcing or punishing a consequence currently is) and the behavior-altering effect (changing the current frequency of behavior historically associated with that consequence) — and why both components are necessary to fully specify a motivating operation's influence
Motivating operations versus discriminative stimuli
The course draws a careful distinction PSY8348 treats as conceptually critical: motivating operations alter the value of a consequence and the current frequency of relevant behavior, while discriminative stimuli signal the availability of that consequence without altering its value — a distinction with direct functional assessment implications, since a behavior analyst conducting a functional behavior assessment must determine not just what reinforces a problem behavior, but what motivating operations are currently in effect that make that reinforcer more or less valuable at a given moment, since an intervention plan addressing only the discriminative stimuli while ignoring the relevant motivating operations is unlikely to be fully effective.
Intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation debates
PSY8348 engages the broader psychological literature on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, including Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory and its three basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness), alongside the historically influential and contested overjustification effect literature (suggesting that providing extrinsic reward for an already intrinsically motivated behavior can, under some conditions, undermine subsequent intrinsic motivation for that behavior). The course examines behavior-analytic critiques and reinterpretations of this literature, including arguments that apparent "undermining" effects can often be explained through more parsimonious behavioral concepts (such as motivating operations, contrast effects, and reinforcer satiation) without requiring an appeal to a separate, qualitatively distinct construct of "intrinsic motivation."
Applied motivation assessment
The course connects motivating operations directly to applied assessment practice, particularly preference assessments (systematic procedures for identifying which stimuli function as reinforcers for a given individual at a given time) and the practical reality that reinforcer effectiveness is not fixed but fluctuates with current motivating conditions — meaning effective applied practice requires ongoing, not one-time, assessment of what currently motivates a learner's behavior, directly informing reinforcer selection and intervention timing decisions in applied behavior analysis programming.
PSY8348 assignments include motivating operations analyses, preference assessment case studies, and self-determination theory critiques
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Motivating operations analyses, preference assessment case studies, self-determination theory critiques, applied motivation papers.
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Frequently asked questions
This distinction is one of the conceptually subtlest, and practically most consequential, pieces of content PSY8348 covers, because the two concepts are easy to conflate at first encounter yet lead to genuinely different intervention strategies when applied to a real case, which is exactly why functional behavior assessment protocols are built to evaluate them as separate variables rather than treating "what controls this behavior" as a single undifferentiated question. A discriminative stimulus is a signal: its function is to indicate, based on the individual's learning history, that a particular consequence is currently available contingent on a particular response — it does not change how much that consequence is wanted or valued in the moment, it simply tells the organism whether responding right now is likely to be followed by that consequence given the current circumstances. A motivating operation, by contrast, doesn't signal availability at all; it directly changes the current value of the consequence itself, and correspondingly the current frequency of behavior historically tied to obtaining or avoiding it, regardless of whether any signal indicating the consequence's availability is present. Consider a concrete case directly relevant to applied practice: a child engages in a problem behavior that has historically been reinforced by adult attention. The presence of an adult in the room functions as a discriminative stimulus, signaling that attention is potentially available contingent on the behavior — but this alone doesn't explain why the same child, with the same adult present, might show much higher rates of the attention-seeking behavior on some days or moments than others. That variation is explained by motivating operations: if the child has just experienced an extended period with little social interaction (an establishing operation with respect to attention as a reinforcer), attention becomes more valuable right now, and the attention-maintained behavior becomes more probable even with the discriminative stimulus (the adult's presence) unchanged from a moment when the child had just received substantial attention (an abolishing operation, making attention currently less valuable and the behavior correspondingly less probable). The practical, intervention-relevant consequence PSY8348 draws from this distinction is that a complete functional behavior assessment, and an effective resulting intervention plan, cannot stop at identifying the reinforcer and the discriminative stimuli that signal its availability — it must also identify the relevant motivating operations currently affecting that reinforcer's value, because an intervention that successfully manages discriminative stimuli (for example, removing or altering cues that signal attention is available) while ignoring an unaddressed motivating operation (the child's continuing high deprivation of attention generally) is likely to be only partially effective, or to see the problem behavior persist or reemerge through alternative paths to the same now highly-valued reinforcer; effective intervention often deliberately manipulates motivating operations directly (for example, scheduling noncontingent attention to abolish the deprivation state) precisely because this addresses the variable making the reinforcer valuable in the first place, rather than only managing the signals around it.