As modern society develops, the human preferences caused by aspiration of everyone in possession by the variety which offers technical progress as a whole also change . In line with these processes human motives play the special role which stand at the origins of human preferences and are the formation basis of an individual choice of the subject. The purpose of article is to correct theoretical understanding of a phenomenon "motive" concerning which definition there are essential contradictions. The main objective predetermined statement and the solution of specific research objectives: 1) to reveal value of this problem in modern research activity; 2) to specify some characteristics of functioning of an ideal and regulatory subsystem in activity; 3) to define an essence and functional value of the concept "motive". The methodological and theoretical basis of this article is made by substantsional-active approach in the social and philosophical theory according to which the motive is connected with valuable preference in human activity, and its essence is in the preference characteristic of something to something. Along with it methods of the comparative and structurally functional analysis were applied in work. A number of starting provisions of article rely on the works of modern domestic and foreign scientists: K.Kh.Momdzhyan, A.N.Leontyev, S.L. Rubenstein, D.N. Uznadze, B.F. Lomova, E.P. Ilyin, V.A. Ivannikov; V.K. Vilyunasa, G. Olport, D. Maklellanda. The data obtained by the results of the last time researches - both in the field of social and philosophical knowledge, and in the field of behavior psychology were also used in the article. The necessity of combination of these two research plans is caused by complexity and diversity of the set subject.
