Running head: BASIC PERSPECTIVES ON MOTIVATION

Basic Perspectives on Motivation: Evaluating Five
Accounts for Sleep and Sleep Deprivation
David Hickson
University of Southern Queensland

Abstract
Sleep deprivation is prevalent in industrialized societies and has been linked to serious health issues and traffic accidents. This essay views sleep and sleep deprivation from five different motivational perspectives in order to gain a holistic understanding of the phenomena. From evolutionary, psychodynamic, behaviourist, cognitive, and hierarchy of needs perspectives, it is inferred that the cognitive and behaviourist perspectives uphold the most merit for gaining understanding into sleep and sleep deprivation. However, it is
After comprehensive observation of sleep behaviour, a test is applied to make deductions about contending motives. The biological variable is sleep; the theoretical variable is the internal contention between motives. It is expected that when sleep motivation submits to a tenacious motivation, sleep deprivation will occur. One of the merits of psychodynamic research is that it permits the examination of phenomena not easily replicated by an experiment. It is, however, difficult to measure such intangible concepts as contending motives without researcher bias, and by employing a case study causation cannot be established. The psychodynamic perspective is not exclusively recommended for explaining motivations for sleep and sleep deprivation. Behaviourism was originally theorised by John Watson, but was later developed into a psychological perspective by B. F. Skinner. Behaviourists propose that all behaviour is learned; controlled entirely by environmental circumstances; and that internal states, such as thoughts and feelings, bear no causal function in human motivation. Behaviourists also suggest that human behaviour is either rewarded or punished by the environment, motivating either persistence or desistence of particular behaviours (Burton et al., 2009). Behaviourists deem sleep to be a learned behaviour. The act of sleeping is rewarded by physical and mental rejuvenation, thus the