Forres Gump motives.

By Mariana Meja Succar. The aim of this work is to explain, different characteristics from Forrest Gumps behavior, by using different theories from learning and from motivation, two highly related concepts. Forrest Gump is the main character from the movie under the same name, he is a man with a 75% IQ which make him behave in a very special way, but he learns just the way every human does, and has the same biological drives that help him to survive. Along the movie Forrest shows a lot of behaviors which have many different meanings, and they will be explained thru this document. Forrest learned that when somebody came to bother him he needed to run, he learned it because Jenny told him that was the way he should do it, here we have an example of classical conditioning in which the conditioned stimulus is people coming to bother him and the conditioned reflex is to start running. Also in operant conditioning people coming to bother him woul be a negative reinforcer, something he wants to avoid and as a consequence he performs an action which in this case is to start running. Joining the football tea mis a sign of a need for affiliation, because he needs to know that he is part of something, also it is impulsed by an activity drive. Joining the army is a prosocial behavior because it contribute to the goals of the country, it can also be seemd as the need of affiliation, need for autonomy because he is leaving his house an his mom for the first time, joining the army could be explained also as a need for agression, but this is not the case because he did not know very well what he was getting into, so It was impulsed more by a curiosity drive; hewas in the need for new experiences. While Forrest is in the hospital he learns to play ping-pong this is latent learning because he learns without any reinforcement, but when he is in the national team he gets lots of secondary reinforcements, as money and prices. His relationship with Jenny shows the need for affection, or in Maslows hierarchy of needs, the nee for love and belongigness; two times in the movie we can see Forrest hitting two of Jennys boyfriends this is an example of the need for dominance and achievement, Forrest wants to protect Jenny of course, but also he wants to show her that he is capable of doing those kinds of things and wants her to notice him. When Jenny abandons him, after living in his house for a while and he starts running it is an unconscious motive that is acting there, because he is repressing something and looking for something else to avoid the real problema, he is escaping from reality by running; here we also see an activity drive.

Joining teams, the army, and running all over the country are all signs of the need for self-actualization, and it is because he has all the other needs covered that he is able to reach this level, in which he maximize his potentials. Maybe fo Forrest Gump the will to meaning was Jenny, because all he did was in order to please her, or just thinking about her. I hope this paper has been able to briefly explain Forrest Gump, learning and motives, and why he acted the way he did.