Steven Reiss

• Doctor of Psychology
• Professor Emeritus at The Ohio State University

R. W. White (1959) proposed that certain motives, such as curiosity, autonomy, and play (called intrinsic motives, or IMs), have common characteristics that distinguish them from drives. The evidence that mastery is common to IMs is anecdotal, not scientific. The assertion that "intrinsic enjoyment" is common to IMs exaggerates the significance of...

A psychological theory of religious experiences, sensitivity theory, is proposed. Whereas other theories maintain that religious motivation is about a few overarching desires, sensitivity theory provides a multifaceted analysis consistent with the diversity, richness, and individuality of religious experiences. Sixteen basic desires show the psycho...

A distinction is proposed between anxiety (frequency of symptom occurrence) and anxiety sensitivity (beliefs that anxiety experiences have negative implications). In Study 1, a newly-constructed Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI) was shown to have sound psychometric properties for each of two samples of college students. The important finding was that...

Based entirely on expansions of peer-reviewed comments published in APA journals and invited articles, Steven Reiss critically evaluates the hypothesis that incentives undermine intrinsic motivation. The construct of extrinsic motivation is suggested to be an error in logic and a misunderstanding of Aristotle's distinction between ends and means. A...

The purpose of this paper is to test theoretical assumptions of Reiss’s theory and the assessment of intrinsic motivations in children aged 4 to 11 years. Data from three samples are used to test theoretical proposition about the assessment of early motivations and examine construct validity of the child version of the Reiss Motivation Profile ® (R...

The purpose of this paper is to test theoretical assumptions of Reiss’s theory and the assessment of intrinsic motivations in children aged 4 to 11 years. Data from three samples are used to test theoretical proposition about the assessment of early motivations and examine construct validity of the child version of the Reiss Motivation Profile ® (R...

This is a quick guide to my multifaceted theory of motivation and its roots in my work on anxiety sensitivity.

Previous scholars including Freud, James, Durkheim, Fraser, Niebuhr, and Rashdall did not successfully identify the essence of religion as fear of death, mysticism, sacredness, magic, transcendence, or morality because religion has no single essence. Religion is about the values motivated by the 16 basic desires of human nature. It has mass appeal...

The Reiss Motivation Profile® (RMP) is a standardized assessment of how an individual values and prioritizes each of 16 universal ("intrinsic") motives. . The book is intended as a training/ user manual. A free site is available prioritizing student research. The RMP is available in multiple versions and many languages.

Psychologists have posited two types of motivation theories. Dualistic theories divide motivation into two types: intrinsic and extrinsic. Multifaceted theories, in contrast, recognize a number of genetically distinct motives. Intrinsic-extrinsic dualism fails on at least three counts: construct validity, measurement reliability, and experimental c...

Discusses innovative ways to plan for people with developmental disabilities based on a comprehensive assessment of psychological needs.

Reiss (The normal personality: a new way of thinking about people. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2008) empirically derived a reliable and valid taxonomy of 16 life motives (“psychological needs”). The model suggests six motivational reasons for low achievement in school. Low achievement may be motivated by fear of failure (high need for acc...

The hypothesis was that mental retardation is associated with a special vulnerability to stress. In a 2 (Groups) X 3 (Conditions) factorial experiment, mildly retarded and nonretarded adults waited to perform a counting task under conditions designed to induce stress, no particular emotional state, or relaxation. Physiological, behavioural, and sel...

Many Psychologists regard personality and mental illness as closely related. The shadow of Freudian analysis looms over modern psychopathology, driving many psychologists to try to understand their clients' personal troubles and personalities using constructs developed to study mental illness. They believe that dark, unconscious mental forces that...

I don’t have a copy of this manual to share.

The preparedness theory of phobias implies that fear-relevant stimuli are biologically contrapre-pared for safety-signal conditioning. Thus it should be very difficult to establish a pictorial snake as a safety-signal predicting the absence of shock in a Pavlovian conditioned inhibition paradigm. Since this contrapreparedness is postulated as speci...

This book introduces the 16 basic desires for a professional audience. It has more detailed information than the author's, "Who am I," book which is for the general population. It suggests the connections between universal motives, individual values, and traits of personality. Also suggests how motives play out in relationships.

We reviewed the literature on accessibility and outcomes of organ transplantation in individuals with mental retardation (MR) and on the prevalence of organ donation in this population. Six centers have published outcome data on renal transplantation in 34 individuals with MR. The one- and three-yr patient survival rates were 100% and 90%, respecti...

Maslow’s hierarchy implies that human growth is associated with adult maturity, a decrease in the prepotency of “lower” motives and an increase in the prepotency of “higher” motives. These hypotheses were evaluated with data from 1,712 participants who had been tested with the Reiss Profile, which is a standardized assessment of a comprehensive ran...

The undermining effect of extrinsic reward on intrinsic motivation remains unproven. The key unresolved issues are construct invalidity (all four definitions are unproved and two are illogical); measurement unreliability (the free-choice measure requires unreliable, subjective judgments to infer intrinsic motivation); inadequate experimental contro...

Personality may play a role in disputes between religion and science. Personality is influenced by sixteen basic desires and core values, which provide the psychological foundation of meaningful experience. How we prioritize these sixteen desires is what makes us individuals. Religious persons may place a low priority on the desire for self-relianc...

We assessed the appeal of reality TV by asking 239 adults to rate themselves on each of 16 basic motives using the Reiss Profile standardized instrument and to rate how much they watched and enjoyed various reality television shows. The results suggested that the people who watched reality television had above-average trait motivation to feel self-...

Too much of the behavior shown by people with mental retardation is attributed to their having subaverage intelligence and not enough to their other human qualities. In an effort to correct this imbalance, Zigler (1971) called for the study of the ‘‘whole person’’ and showed that subaverage IQs do not predict personalities. A decade later, Reiss, L...

Sensitivity theory provides an analysis of personality based on what people say motivates their behavior. After Reiss and Havercamp (1998) confirmed a 15-factor solution to self-reported human strivings, the Reiss Profile of Fundamental Goals and Motivation Sensitivities (Reiss & Havercamp, 1998) psychometric instrument was standardized. In 3 studi...

We evaluated the relevance of Reiss's (2000) empirically derived system of basic motives and values for understanding the incompatibility of housemates in publicly funded residential programs for people with mental retardation. The compatible group consisted of 57 dyads who had lived without significant conflict in the same residential unit; the in...

Two approaches for studying sports motivation — personality theory and motivation theory — were combined in a novel way that permitted an assessment of individual differences in 15 motivational traits. The Reiss Profile of Fundamental Goals and Motivational Sensitivities was administered to college students (n=415) who had participated in zero, one...

This chapter provides a summary of anxiety sensitivity (AS) in children, showing that significantprogress has been made toward demonstrating an early risk factor for anxiety. The chapter reviews theoretical, measurement, and research issues on high AS, and aims to summarize existing knowledge and stimulate additional research on AS in children

Comments on the article by M. Csikszentmihalyi (see record 1999-11644-003) on materialism and the flow experience as an explanation of happiness. His analysis put forth research issues psychologists should attend to in greater detail. However, he made a number of errors in logic and paid inadequate attention to human individuality. (PsycINFO Databa...

The Reiss Profile of Fundamental Goals and Motivational Sensitivities, a standardized psychological measure that assesses 15 fundamental desires, was administered to college students (n= 214) and to mental retardation service providers (n = 344), total N = 558, who rated themselves as “very,”“somewhat,” and “not” religious. How religious a person r...

Langer's (1989) concept of mindfulness is analyzed in terms of Reiss's (in press a) 16 desires and then is applied to mental retardation. Mindfulness is motivated by desires for high curiosity, low order, and high independence. High curiosity is satisfied when we mindfully focus attention on individuality, as opposed to when we mindlessly use diagn...

Reiss's 16 basic desires is a list of psychological needs that was empirically derived. All motivation arises from one or more of these desires. This book explains each desire and suggests how they play out in relationships.

Freeman et al. (1998) asserted that sensitivity theory is circular, unsupported by empirical evidence, and represents an "either/or" decision in regard to applied behavior analysis. We reply by showing that sensitivities are objectively measured and that our theory permits testable predictions. Further, we briefly summarize the results of recent st...

Two instruments were developed to provide a comprehensive assessment of the strength of a person's fundamental end goals and motivational sensitivities. One instrument was a self-report inventory for adolescents and adults in general, and the other was an informant-rating scale for adolescents and adults with mental retardation and development disa...

Comments that the Women's Health Initiative described by K. A. Matthews (see record 1997-02873-001) should be expanded to include research on underserved populations, especially women with mental retardation and developmental disabilities. It is stated that the goal should be to study the health care needs of this population across the life span, n...

Comments that the Women's Health Initiative described by K. A. Matthews (see record 1997-02873-001 ) should be expanded to include research on underserved populations, especially women with mental retardation and developmental disabilities. It is stated that the goal should be to study the health care needs of this population across the life span,...

The present authors invited 115 scientists, practitioners and consumers from 11 nations to form an international consensus panel on best practices and clinical effects regarding psychoactive medicines and intellectual disability. Co-sponsors included the American Association on Mental Retardation, the American Psychiatric Association, the American...

We tested the factorial stability of the Reiss Screen for Maladaptive Behavior (Reiss, 1988a, The Reiss Screen for Maladaptive Behavior test manual). Reasonable fit was demonstrated in a geographically diverse sample of 448 individuals with mild, moderate, severe and profound mental retardation according to four measures of overall fit: RMSEA, ECVI...

Sturmey's factor analysis of the Reiss Screen for Maladaptive Behavior is based upon several significant errors, some of which are of general interest because misuse of factor analysis is common (Ford et al. 1986). In this commentary, the author discusses; the concept of factor robustness; appropriate samples for evaluating the factor structure of...

Sensitivity theory holds that aberrant behavior is a function of aberrant contingencies (direct reinforcement of maladaptive behavior), aberrant motivation (a desire for an excessive amount of reinforcement), and aberrant environments (situations in which most people cannot satiate their fundamental desires by behaving appropriately). Applied behav...

Trait anxiety began as a psychodynamic concept, poorly tied to observables, and requiring Freudian defense mechanisms to explain recurrent anxiety episodes. Spielberger's thoughtful efforts improved the concept, but some important limitations remained. Lilienfeld, Turner, and Jacob (1989, 1993, 1996) uncritically accepted Spielberger's work on trai...

Sensitivity theory holds that people differ in both the types of reinforcement they desire and in the amounts of reinforcement they need to satiate. People who crave too much love, too much attention, too much acceptance, too much companionship, or too much of some other fundamental reinforcer are at risk for aberrant behavior because normative beh...

This study tested the hypothesis that separate ratings of frequency and duration add significant information to ratings of problem severity in the assessment of psychopathology in people with mental retardation. The Reiss Screen was modified to require ratings of problem severity, frequency and duration for each of 38 maladaptive behaviours. The 17...

Responses were made to MacMillan, Gresham, and Siperstein's (1993) criticisms of the new AAMR definition. The new AAMR definition does not raise the IQ limit and is not intended to increase the number of people considered to have mental retardation. There is no intent to change who is and who is not considered to have mental retardation. Instead, t...

The 1992 American Association on Mental Retardation's (AAMR) definition and classification of mental retardation is different from the previous classification system in that: (a) a single diagnostic code of mental retardation is used if the person meets the three criteria of age of onset (18 or under), significantly subaverage abilities in intellec...

A total of 583 children and adolescents with mental retardation were rated on a new psychometric instrument designed to screen for dual diagnosis (psychopathology in individuals with mental retardation). Two psychiatrists and two clinical psychologists judged the items to have face validity as expressions of psychopathology in children and adolesce...

A total of 583 children and adolescents with mental retardation were rated on a new psychometric instrument designed to screen for dual diagnosis (psychopathology in individuals with mental retardation). Two psychiatrists and two clinical psychologists judged the items to have face validity as expressions of psychopathology in children and adolesce...

The relationship between aggression and depression was evaluated for 528 adults, adolescents and children, who were rated on either the adult or child versions of the Reiss instruments for dual diagnosis (Reiss 1988; Reiss & Valenti-Hein 1990). Criterion levels of depression were evident in about four times as many aggressive as nonaggressive subje...

What is mental health? Mental health is a goal for all people, including those with mental retardation, not just those having difficulties. Mental health is an essential ingredient in the quality of life. The two main aspects of mental health are emotional well-being and rewarding social and interpersonal relationships. Emotional well-being is an i...

This case assessment of a man with dual diagnosis exemplifies the use of recent psychological measures, computerized programs, and structured assessment, including the Reiss Screen for Maladaptive Behavior, the Psychopathology Inventory for Mentally Retarded Adults, the Apperceptive Personality Test, and the Residential Services Indicator. In this...

The purposes of this article are to summarize the author's expectancy model of fear, review the recent studies evaluating this model, and suggest directions for future research. Reiss' expectancy model holds that there are three fundamental fears (called sensitivities): the fear of injury, the fear of anxiety, and the fear of negative evaluation. T...

A two-step methodology was used to estimate the prevalence of dual diagnosis among persons participating in community-based day programs in the Chicago metropolitan area. In Step 1, a dual diagnosis screening test was administered to a random sample of 205 people with mental retardation. In Step 2, 59 subjects were evaluated by clinical psychologis...

Every year new service models are demonstrated by energetic professionals who are seeking better ways to serve mentally retarded people (e.g., Menolascino & Stark, 1984). The new models are constantly challenging behavior modifiers to broaden their horizons or risk the possibility of becoming outdated (Reiss, 1987). In this chapter, we will conside...

This investigation evaluated the relationship between anxiety sensitivity (the fear of anxiety) and other fears. The results are based on new analyses of previously published data for a sample of 147 college students. In the first study, a factor analysis of pooled items from the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI) and the Fear Survey Schedule-II (FSS-...

The hypothesis was the common fears can be analyzed into separate factors for danger and anxiety expectancies. Six scales were constructed to measure danger and anxiety expectancies for the fears of flying, heights, and public speaking. The internal reliabilities of the scales were assessed in Study 1. The unreliable items were then deleted, and th...

The consequences of untreated emotional problems among mentally retarded people include intense suffering (Reiss & Benson, 1984), unemployment (Greenspan & Shoultz, 1981), placement in state institutions (Eyman, O’Connor, Tarjan, & Justice, 1972), suicide (Benson & Laman, 1986), and crime. For example, depression in mentally retarded people is asso...

Many people with anxiety disorders and phobias are afraid of experiencing anxiety. Psychoanalytic, existential, conditioning, and cognitive statements of the fear of anxiety are reviewed in this article. One conclusion is that there is a surprising degree of similarity among the various schools of thought. Another conclusion is that the fear of anx...

The purpose of this study was to validate the Reiss-Epstein-Gursky Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI) as a measure of the fear of anxiety. College students were asked to respond to two questions about the experience of anxiety and to two questions about anxiety-irrelevant topics. Mahl's speech disturbance ratio, a valid and unobtrusive indicator of an...

Specific social skill deficiencies associated with depressed mood were identified in a group of 45 mentally retarded adults with mixed or no psychiatric diagnoses. Self-report and informant-rated measures of social skills, social support, and depressed mood were obtained. One set of results replicated previous findings that high levels of depressed...

This is the second report on the results of an investigation of the psychosocial correlates of depression in mildly mentally retarded adults. Results of the present study showed that depression was associated with informant ratings of poor social skills. The results of the entire investigation suggest that further research is necessary on the assoc...

Two hypotheses were tested in a study with 28 mildly mentally retarded, emotionally disturbed adults and 17 mildly mentally retarded adults for whom an emotional disorder had not been diagnosed: depression is associated with (a) low levels of social support and (b) high levels of perceived stigmatization. Self-report and informant measures of depre...

The Mental Health Program of the University of Illinois at Chicago has demonstrated significant consumer demand for outpatient community mental health services for people with mental retardation. Sixty-three agencies referred 274 clients during a 27-month period, a referral rate that exceeded the clinic's capacity to provide services. The demand fo...

The test-retest reliability and factorial validity of a newly constructed Parent Perception Inventory were assessed in Study 1. In Study 2, possible age-related trends in adults’ perceptions of their living mothers were evaluated. In this study 79 women and 57 men between the ages of 20–29, 30–39, and 40–64 described their mothers on the Parent Per...

Many mentally retarded people experience negative social conditions for long periods in their lives. These include the stigmatizing effects of being labeled mentally retarded, rejection and ridicule, segregation, infantilization, social disruption, restricted opportunities, and victimization. Many mildly and some moderately retarded people are high...

A factor analytic study of a symptom checklist was conducted with 131 emotionally disturbed, mentally retarded people who were outpatients at a developmental disabilities mental health clinic in Chicago, Illinois. Item loadings of .40 or greater were used as the criterion for inclusion in factors. Scores reflecting the frequency of significant occu...

In a 2 X 2 experimental design, advanced students in social work and clinical psychology rated the same case description of a debilitating fear on eight scales of psychopathology and need for therapy. The fear was rated as less neurotic, less irrational, and less likely to require desensitization therapy when the client was mentally retarded vs. of...

Possible associations between professional experience with mentally retarded people and diagnostic overshadowing were evaluated. In a 3 X 2 factorial experiment, psychologists at state developmental disabilities facilities (high-experience group), psychologists at state mental health facilities (moderate-experience group), and clinical graduate stu...

The Institute for the Study of Developmental Disabilities Mental Health Program provides outpatient services to mentally retarded people of all ages and all levels of mental retardation. The results of a survey of 66 referrals to the program are reported. This study differs from previous surveys of outpatient clinics in two respects: the client sam...

Evaluated the effects of separation-relevant play on separation anxiety in young children to test the hypothesis that play can reduce anxiety. Ss were 32 males and 32 females, aged 2–6 yrs, rated by their teachers as anxious about separation from parents. Ss were assigned to 1 of 3 thematic-play conditions (free play, directed play, and modeling) a...

Two experiments evaluated the effects of the condition of mental retardation on psychologists' impressions of emotional problems of a retarded subject. In Experiment 1 we found that the same debilitating phobia was less likely to be considered an example of a neurosis or an emotional disturbance when the subject also was suggested to be mentally re...

Evaluated the effects of separation-relevant play on separation anxiety in young children to test the hypothesis that play can reduce anxiety. Ss were 32 males and 32 females, aged 2–6 yrs, rated by their teachers as anxious about separation from parents. Ss were assigned to 1 of 3 thematic-play conditions (free play, directed play, and modeling) a...

Discusses the need to increase the supply of psychotherapeutic services for the emotional problems of mentally retarded people as well as those of people with IQs between 70 and 80. Low IQ may increase the risk of emotional disturbance because it creates special adjustment problems while limiting the individual's ability to solve these problems. Lo...

Discusses the need to increase the supply of psychotherapeutic services for the emotional problems of mentally retarded people as well as those of people with IQs between 70 and 80. Low IQ may increase the risk of emotional disturbance because it creates special adjustment problems while limiting the individual's ability to solve these problems. Lo...

Seligman's preparedness theory of phobias implies that fear-relevant stimuli are contraprepared for safety-signal conditioning. This means that it should be very difficult to establish a fear-relevant stimulus as a safety-signal in nonphobic subjects. This hypothesis was tested in an electrodermal conditioning experiment with a picture of a snake s...

Behavior therapists have explained phobias in terms of the contiguity principle of Pavlovian conditoning, which holds that conditioning results from CS-US temporal pairings. This principle provides a problematic account of phobias because CS-US pairings are neither necessary nor sufficient for fear acquisition in humans and because it cannot explai...

Argues that in revising their overjustification hypothesis, M. R. Lepper and D. Greene (1976) have stated so many qualifications without specifying antecedent empirical conditions that it is unclear whether their hypothesis can be falsified. They implicitly propose that tests for persistance should evaluate intrinsic motivation either completely or...

Tested the hypotheses that (a) open-space environments promote persistence on difficult tasks and (b) persistence and achievement are more positively correlated in open-space than in conventional classes. Approximately 30 White 2nd graders were randomly sampled from each of 3 open-space and 3 conventional schools. In a posttest-only design, Ss were...

Comments on F. M. Levine and G. Fasnacht's (see record 1975-07966-001) article on token learning, focusing on (1) the validity of the overjustification hypothesis, (2) the nature of intrinsic interest, and (3) the implications of overjustification studies for token economies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

This study evaluated the effects of 14 months' exposure to open space environments on preference for delayed reward. Three hundred eighty-nine pupils in open space and conventional classes in grades 4 and 5 were individually administered one of four tests for delay of gratification. These tests consisted of a choice between an immediate, smaller re...

The overjustification hypothesis proposes that expectation of reward for an inherently interesting activity produces less interest in the activity when reward is subsequently unavailable. 2 experiments, with a total of 41 kindergarten and 1st-grade Ss, designed to test this hypothesis are reported. Exp I replicated previous findings that a single t...

Determined the transfer effects of behavior changes in the presence of 1 reinforcing agent (Experimenter A) on behavior in the presence of another agent (Experimenter B). Ss were 36 boys 6-10 yrs old in grades 1-3, judged to have poor attention span and low achievement in arithmetic. The experimental task consisted of a series of counting problems....

The effects of nonreinforced, preconditioning exposures to a CS were investigated in two experiments involving Pavlovian eyelid conditioning in the rabbit. Experiment 1 replicated the often-reported consequent retardation in appearance of conditioned responding, or “latent inhibition effect” (e.g.,Lubow & Moore, 1959;Siegel, 1969). Experiment 2 emp...

Thomas Szasz's position that mental illness is a myth is found by the author to involve the following beliefs: 1) the term "mental illness" is universally defined as a biological disease state; 2) because some similarities exist between the mental health movement and the Inquisition, mental illness is as nonexistent as witchcraft; and 3) the value...

151 college students to whom the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI) was administered in 1984 were retested in 1987 for anxiety sensitivity and tested for panic attacks, state-trait anxiety, and anxiety disorder history. ASI scores in 1984 predicted the frequency and intensity of panic attacks in 1987. Compared to Ss with low 1984 ASI scores, Ss with h...

The traditional behavioristic position that objectivity (agreement among independent observers) is not possible with subjective data (thoughts and feelings) is abandoned in favor of the position that subjective data are as objective as the language employed for their conceptualization. Accordingly, linguistic behaviorism is defined as a philosophy...