Most people believe that the formation of habits is due to the subconscious behavior formed by the individual repeating an event over and over again. But the psychologist Spencer does not see it that way, he thinks that individual habit formation is influenced by motivational triggers, which act as a mediating variable to affect the intensity of habits.
Kenneth Spencer was born in Chicago in 1907 and studied at McGill University, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1929. He studied psychology at Yale University, where he received his master's degree in 1930 and his doctorate in 1933. In 1937, he became a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. He was an American psychologist and Hull's closest collaborator and successor. Hull quoted some of his ideas and hypotheses during his lifetime, and the two influenced each other, and the theoretical system developed by Hull is often referred to as the "Hullspence Theory". In 1953, he was awarded the Warren Medal.
Spencer's two most influential theories in psychology are discriminative learning theory and inducing motivational action theory.
Spencer argues that the excitatory and inhibitory tendencies established for positive stimuli (S+) and negative stimuli (S-) will generalize to similar stimuli, and the degree of generalization decreases with the degree of similarity. Thus, the pure tendency of response to any stimulus depends on the difference between excitation and inhibition generalized to that particular stimulus. For example, an individual is afraid of snakes and therefore responds most to snake stimuli and runs when they see a snake, while hemp rope is highly similar to snakes, so the individual will also have a strong reaction, but this reaction intensity is not as strong as that of a true snake. The bucket does not resemble a snake, so it does not react.
The theory of caus-motivation is a theory developed by Spencer and Hull, who argue that habit intensity is the strength of the stimulus-response connection, and this habit intensity is affected by reinforcement conditions. The motivational effect of inducement refers to the intensity of approaching a certain target. Habit intensity always increases as reinforcement increases. Once a habit is formed, it is maintained permanently, and its intensity only increases, not decreases. And the greater the amount of rewards, the greater the intensity of the habit. Spencer and Hull argue that there is an indirect effect between reward and individual behavioral habits, that is, reward rewards affect responses through inducement and motivation, rather than directly affecting the intensity of behavioral habits themselves. This theory takes into account both the reinforcement principle and the proximity principle, which opens up a new perspective for the study of motivational psychology.
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