Article
The Motivating Operations Concept: Current Status and Critical Response
The Psychological Record
(2014)
Abstract
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.
Keywords
- Motivating operations,
- Conditioned motivating operations,
- Establishing operations,
- Abolishing operations,
- Evocative effect,
- Abative effect,
- Motivation,
- Consequence valuing operations
Disciplines
Publication Date
September, 2014
DOI
10.1007/s40732-014-0080-5
Publisher Statement
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Citation Information
Sean Laraway, Susan Snycerski, Ryan Olson, Bernd W. Becker, et al.. "The Motivating Operations Concept: Current Status and Critical Response" The Psychological Record Vol. 64 Iss. 3 (2014) p. 601 - 623 ISSN: 2163-3452 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/bernd_becker/17/