Incentive motivation: A historical survey of theoretical issues

We have always tried to explain the origin of animal and human behaviors. But it is only during the 20th century that science carried out major progresses in the understanding of the processes that control them. From the intuitive concepts of instinct and drive has emerged the notion of incentive motivation, which suggests that motivated behavior results from a change in the perception of some stimuli in some circumstances. Those stimuli may consist of banal objects that come to acquire the status of rewards without the involvement of any internal pulse, relearning or anticipation of pleasure. Incentive motivation is an unconscious process under dopaminergic control, capable of accounting for a broad range of phenomena-in particular, Pavlovian phenomena. However, it is shown that all forms of attraction for a stimulus involving dopamine cannot be reduced to the incentive salience of that stimulus.