Theory
world (one cognition) and then there’s their senses’
view of the world (a second and perhaps di?erent
cognition). So a person may like a tidy house, but
there are children’s toys left everywhere, so cognitive
dissonance motivates them to tidy up! This theory
explains why groups of people trying to lose weight
together works. A client agrees to try to lose weight
by next week. Cognitive dissonance stops them
eating a large slab of cake (etc) the night before a
weigh-in day! Simply put, people are motivated to
reduce dissonance. Therapists can help people to
change their views about things so that cognitive
dissonance brings about desired behaviours.
Pritchard and Ashwood suggested that motivation
is the process used to allocate energy to maximize
the satisfaction of needs. And there are plenty of
‘need’ theories of motivation.
Maslow came up with a hierarchy of needs – from
the simplest needed to survive to the highest – see
right.
According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,
Let’s think about our very basic needs. Let’s assume
that we’re on a spaceship right now and the alarms are
?ashing and sounding very loud in the cold and ever
thinning air.
What do we need to survive?
There’s a saying that a person can survive without
oxygen for three minutes, without water for three
days, and without food for three weeks. That gives us
a starting point. We need oxygen, water, and food.
But oxygen needs to be around the 21% mark and the
inert nitrogen needs to make up the other 78% of the
air we breathe. Although you can replace the nitrogen
with other inert gasses, and that’s why very deep sea
divers use helium in the mix. And, in a way, that gives us
another need – we need the air around us to be within
people are motivated by unsatis?ed needs. Lower
level needs need to be satis?ed before higher level
needs can be satis?ed. So, there’s no point trying to
encourage a client to write a reframe (which might
be the self-actualization level) if they’re hungry (the
physiological level). Or maybe a client simply needs
Selfactualisation
Pursue inner talent
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