What is inherent only to man, what creates his personality and distinguishes him from other people? This is his inner world, which is formed only according to its individual laws and has a specific content, based on which the external reality is refracted and rethought by a person in a special way. What, then, makes up the inner world? It consists of stable meanings of phenomena and objects of external reality formed under the influence of a person’s personal experience, their attitude to them, as well as needs and personal values ​​that are formed taking into account these meanings. In psychology, the inner world is called the value-semantic sphere of personality. It controls human behavior, which, in contrast to animal behavior, is not limited only to the satisfaction of biological urgent needs, but also has social and psychological ones.
To explain the causes of human behavior in psychology, the concepts of motive and motivation are used. Motivation is a psychological reason explaining a person’s behavior. This is a search for answers to the questions “for what?”, “Why?”, “What is the purpose?” etc. Motive - this is an internal property of a person, prompting him to some actions. The concept of motive is closely related to needs, i.e. urgent needs arising in certain conditions, necessary for normal development and life.
The presence of needs distinguishes living beings from nonliving ones. Making them look for ways to satisfy, they excite the body, stimulate behavior. Of course, as a higher being, a person has the widest range of needs necessary for his full existence. In addition to the physical, there are also material, social and spiritual, and individuals differ from each other inherent in their needs and their special combination. Motives or needs make up a complex structure built on the steps of the hierarchy - this is the motivational sphere of the personality. For the first time, the American psychologist A. Maslow created the motivational model in the fifties of the last century.
This outstanding psychologist composed a seven-step pyramid, each of which steps is a certain kind of needs. The first is physiological needs, the second is the need for safety, the third is the social need for love and community, the fourth is the desire for success and respect, the fifth is cognitive, the sixth is cultural and aesthetic, and finally the seventh is the desire for self-development, self-improvement. Maslow built all these steps, which make up the motivational sphere of the personality, in a strict sequence not by chance, thereby showing that it is based on lower physiological needs, only by satisfying which a person is able to move and develop further, and his behavior can manage already higher needs. The need-motivational sphere of the personality consists of several components: content, desire power, its frequency and methods of satisfaction.
Within the framework of the topic under discussion, one more significant concept should be singled out - the goal. A goal is a result, the achievement of which is aimed at satisfying an urgent need. From motives, needs and goals, the motivational sphere of personality is formed. For each person, it develops very individually, and it can be evaluated by the following three parameters: breadth, plasticity, and hierarchization.
The more diverse a person’s motives, needs, and goals, the wider and more developed his motivational sphere. Such a motivational sphere of a person is indicated as more plastic, when he uses more various means (in comparison with others) to achieve a result and satisfy a need. We give the simplest example. In an effort to gain knowledge, one person uses only the Internet, and the other, who has a more plastic incentive sphere, also uses books, communication with people, and the media for this. It should be noted that breadth and plasticity are different concepts. Latitude is a variety of objects with which a person satisfies an actual need, and plasticity is the interaction between different levels that make up the motivational sphere of a person: motives and goals, needs and motives, needs and goals.
Hierarchy is the structure of each individual level of the motivational sphere. In each of them, motives, needs and goals have different strength and frequency of occurrence. The more such differences, the more hierarchical the motivational sphere of personality.