The shift of the motive to the goal is a process characterized by the fact that the original motive changes in the course of performing the action. This happens, for example, when an activity that we do not like at first gradually begins to fill with a special (other) meaning and as a result we want to engage in this activity.
Example
The student is preparing for the exam. Initially, he reads a book because he has a clear goal (or even a need): to pass the exam. The student may not like the subject, but he carefully reads this book. This action has no intrinsic motivation, it is directed towards something else. If this student is told that the exam is canceled, he will immediately stop reading an uninteresting subject. But if, in the course of reading and preparing answers, the student has an interest in this subject, the news that the exam has been canceled will not stop him. In this case, the shift of the motive to the goal will take place: what was initially not attractive and was necessary only due to other circumstances, now acquires its own significance, that is, it becomes valuable in itself for a person. The initial motive for passing the exam is shifted in the second case to the reading process itself.
Example 2
… Before us is the image of the hero of Gogol’s story «The Overcoat» Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin. He served in a certain department as an official for rewriting government papers, and in this occupation he saw a whole diverse and attractive world. Having finished work, Akaky Akakievich immediately went home. After a quick lunch, he took out a jar of ink and began to copy the papers that he brought home, but if there were none, he made copies on purpose, for himself, for his own pleasure. “Having written to his heart’s content,” Gogol narrates, “he went to bed, smiling in advance at the thought of tomorrow: God will send something to rewrite tomorrow.”
How did it happen, how did it happen that the rewriting of government papers took a central place in his personality, became the meaning of his life? We do not know the specific circumstances, but one way or another, these circumstances led to the fact that there was a shift of one of the main motives to usually completely impersonal operations, which, because of this, turned into an independent activity, in this capacity they acted as characterizing the personality.
What is the mechanism for shifting the motive to the goal? It seems that the most probable mechanism is elementary self-reinforcement based on the action of associative reflexes, see the Law of Parallel Reinforcement. If the student became interested while reading, if Akaky Akakievich enjoyed copying papers, then these actions of theirs received natural reinforcement and became attractive, desirable, and an internal motivation arose for these actions. They became motives.