“ MOTIVE (from Lat. movere, to move) , in psychology, a general term signifying any element of consciousness which prompts an agent to a decision. The older psychology usually regarded motives as strictly analogous to mechanical forces exerting pressure or tension, and explained human action as necessarily determined by the resultant of various, possibly conflicting, motives. Contemporary psychological research tends to show with increasing clearness that we must recognize a power of decision in the self, and that the analogy of mechanical forces is inadequate to explain the facts. ”