The motivating operations concept: current status and critical response

Details

• Personal Author:
  Becker B ; Laraway S ; Olson, Ryan ; Poling A ; Snycerski S
• Description:
  This paper reviews the current status of the Motivating Operation Concept (MOC), followed by a critical response to Whelan and D. Barnes-Holmes (2010), who argued against the MOC and proposed an alternative analysis of motivation, the Consequence-Valuing Operation (CVO). In this paper, we: (a) review the MOC and discuss its conceptual and empirical status, (b) clarify certain aspects of the MOC, (c) correct Whelan and D. Barnes-Holmes's inaccurate descriptions of the MOC, and (d) critique the CVO and related concepts. We demonstrate that the MOC is a high-impact innovation in behavior analysis that provides a useful theoretical framework for analyses of operant (instrumental) behavior. In contrast, the case made by Whelan and D. Barnes-Holmes for the competing CVO concept suffers from a range of problems. We, therefore, conclude that the MOC provides a superior and more useful behavioral analysis of motivation. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Behavior Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Abative Effect Abolishing Operations Author Keywords: Motivating Operations Conditioned Motivating Operations Consequence Valuing Operations Establishing Operations Evocative Effect Motivation Psychological Adaptation Psychological Factors Worker Health Worker Motivation Workers Work Operations

  More +
• ISSN:
  0033-2933
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Oregon ; OSHA Region 10
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Volume:
  64
• Issue:
  3
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20048611
• Citation:
  Psychol Rec 2014 Sep; 64(3):601-623
• Contact Point Address:
  S. Laraway Department of Psychology, San José State University, One Washington Square, SanJosé, CA 95192-0120, USA
• Email:
  sean.laraway@sjsu.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2014
• Performing Organization:
  Portland State University
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  The Psychological Record
• End Date:
  20250630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:adfd40d22d5a08546118380970af98db094503b0768ba72f06dd9245e0bc925366cd6963c2daca1b6a21bac871b928ba96e233fc362b592117b695a6a4bc6c9b
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/203327/cdc_203327_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 526.04 KB ]