Core constructs such as core values, deeply held beliefs, core attitudes, and what theologian Paul Tillich (1957) called the “ultimate concern” or ultimate dependency of the soul profoundly shape human motivation because they provide enduring frameworks of meaning, identity, and purpose that direct attention, emotion, and behaviour across situations.

Early work by Gordon Allport (1937) connected values and personality dispositions, while Abraham Maslow (1943, 1954) argued that motivation develops through hierarchies of needs culminating in self-actualisation and ultimately transcendence. Milton Rokeach (1973) advanced the influential view that values are enduring beliefs about preferable modes of conduct and end states that organise attitudes and motivate action. Later, Shalom H. Schwartz (1992) empirically demonstrated across cultures that universal human values function as trans-situational motivational goals arranged in a coherent motivational structure, showing how priorities such as benevolence, achievement, security, or self-direction systematically influence attitudes and behaviours, while Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan (1985, 2000) developed Self-Determination Theory, explaining that intrinsic motivation and wellbeing flourish when the deep psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are aligned with personally endorsed values and identity commitments. Contemporary research further confirms that values and motivational structures predict civic participation, wellbeing, charitable behaviour, and social cooperation.

From a Christian perspective, motivation is ultimately rooted not merely in psychological drives but in humanity’s orientation toward God as the soul’s highest good and final dependency. Ultimate dependence on God is supremely expressed in the individual daily walking and talking with Him in an experiential faith relationship. The Holy Spirit works to transform of the mind, renewing it according to Divine truth (Romans 12:2). In the life of such a disciple, beliefs, values, and attitudes are made healthy as they are ordered toward love of God and neighbour and progressively reshaped through conversation with Christ (Matthew 22:37–39). The Spirit-filled believer pursues virtue through the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23), and there is a recognition that “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

Christian theology from Augustine of Hippo to Thomas Aquinas has emphasised that the restless human heart seeks fulfilment in God, implying that distorted motivations emerge when ultimate dependence is misplaced onto wealth, power, pleasure, or ideology, whereas rightly ordered loves foster integrity, compassion, resilience, and social justice.

Integrating these psychological and theological insights is valuable for personal wellbeing because it enhances meaning, moral coherence, emotional resilience, and intrinsic motivation. It also benefits societal health by strengthening empathy, ethical responsibility, prosocial behaviour, community trust, and civic flourishing through value systems oriented toward human dignity and the common good.