Motivation

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Deployment of energy is often evidence of motivation

In psychology, motivation refers to the initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of behavior (Geen, 1995). Motivation is a temporal and dynamic state that should not be confused with personality or emotion. Motivation is having the desire and willingness to do something. A motivated person can be reaching for a long-term goal such as becoming a professional writer or a more short-term goal like learning how to spell a particular word. Personality invariably refers to more or less permanent characteristics of an individual's state of being (e.g., shy, extrovert, conscientious). As opposed to motivation, emotion refers to temporal states that do not immediately link to behavior (e.g., anger, grief, happiness).

[edit] History of the concept

The claim that humans are hedonistically motivated was argued by Jeremy Bentham in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation:

“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do” (Bentham 1789).

[edit] Biological psychology of drives

[edit] Drive theory

There are a number of drive theories. The Drive Reduction Theory grows out of the concept that we have certain biological needs, such as hunger. As time passes the strength of the drive increases as it is not satisfied. Then as we satisfy that drive by fulfilling its desire, such as eating, the drive's strength is reduced. It is based on the theories of Freud and the idea of feedback control systems, such as a thermostat.

There are several problems, however, that leave the validity of the Drive Reduction Theory open for debate. The first problem is that it does not explain how Secondary Reinforcers reduce drive. For example, money does not satisfy any biological or psychological need but reduces drive on a regular basis through a pay check (see: second-order conditioning). Secondly, if the drive reduction theory held true we would not be able to explain how a hungry human being can prepare a meal without eating the food before the end of the preparation. Supposedly, the drive to satiate one's hunger would drive a person to consume the food, however we prepare food on a regular basis and "ignore" the drive to eat. Thirdly, a drive is not able to be measured and therefore cannot be proven to exist in the first place (Barker 2004).

[edit] Regulation of behavior

[edit] Rewards and incentives

A reward is that which is given following the occurrence of a behavior with the intention of acknowledging the positive nature of that behavior, and often with the additional intent of encouraging it to happen again. The definition of reward is not to be confused with the definition of reinforcer, which includes a measured increase in the rate of a desirable behavior following the addition of something to the environment. There are two kinds of rewards, extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic rewards are external to, or outside of, the individual; for example, praise or money. Intrinsic rewards are internal to, or within, the individual; for example, satisfaction or accomplishment.

It was previously thought that the two types of motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic) were additive, and could be combined to produce the highest level of motivation. Some authors differentiate between two forms of intrinsic motivation: one based on enjoyment, the other on obligation. In this context, obligation refers to motivation based on what an individual thinks ought to be done. For instance, a feeling of responsibility for a mission may lead to helping others beyond what is easily observable, rewarded, or fun.

[edit] Intrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation is evident when people engage in an activity for its own sake, without some obvious external incentive present. A hobby is a typical example.

Intrinsic motivation has been intensely studied by educational psychologists since the 1970s, and numerous studies have found it to be associated with high educational achievement and enjoyment by students.

There is currently no "grand unified theory" to explain the origin or elements of intrinsic motivation. Most explanations combine elements of Bernard Weiner's attribution theory, Bandura's work on self-efficacy and other studies relating to locus of control and goal orientation. Thus it is thought that students are more likely to experience intrinsic motivation if they:

• Attribute their educational results to internal factors that they can control (eg. the amount of effort they put in, not 'fixed ability').
• Believe they can be effective agents in reaching desired goals (eg. the results are not determined by dumb luck.)
• Are motivated towards deep 'mastery' of a topic, instead of just rote-learning 'performance' to get good grades.

Note that the idea of reward for achievement is absent from this model of intrinsic motivation, since rewards are an extrinsic factor.

In knowledge-sharing communities and organizations, people often cite altruistic reasons for their participation, including contributing to a common good, a moral obligation to the group, mentorship or 'giving back'. This model of intrinsic motivation has emerged from three decades of research by hundreds of educationalists and is still evolving. (See also Goal Theory.)

[edit] Extrinsic motivation

Traditionally, extrinsic motivation has been used to motivate employees:

• Tangible rewards such as payments, promotions (or punishments).
• Intangible rewards such as praise or public commendation.

Within economies transitioning from assembly lines to service industries, the importance of intrinsic motivation rises:

• The further jobs move away from pure assembly lines, the harder it becomes to measure individual productivity. This effect is most pronounced for knowledge workers and amplified in teamwork. A lack of objective or universally accepted criteria for measuring individual productivity may make individual rewards arbitrary.
• Since by definition intrinsic motivation does not rely on financial incentives, it is cheap in terms of dollars but expensive in the fact that the inherent rewards of the activity must be internalized before they can be experienced as intrinsically motivating.

However, intrinsic motivation is no panacea for employee motivation. Problems include:

• For many commercially viable activities it may not be possible to find any or enough intrinsically motivated people.
• Intrinsically motivated employees need to eat, too. Other forms of compensation remain necessary.
• Intrinsic motivation is easily destroyed. For instance, additional extrinsic motivation is known to have a negative impact on intrinsic motivation in many cases, perceived injustice in awarding such external incentives even more so. (See also work by Edward Deci and Bruno Frey who discusses crowding theory.)

[edit] Telic and Paratelic motivational modes

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Psychologist Michael Apter's studies of motivation led him to describe what he called the "telic" (from Greek telos or "goal") and "paratelic" motivational modes, or states. In the telic state, a person is motivated primarily by a particular goal or objective--such as earning payment for work done. In the paratelic mode, a person is motivated primarily by the activity itself--intrinsic motivation.

[edit] Punishment

Punishment, when referred in general, is an unfavorable condition introduced into the environment to eliminate undesirable behavior. This is used as one of the measures of Behavior Modification. Action resulting in punishment will dismotivate repetition of action.

[edit] Aggression

Aggression is generally used in the civil service area where units are devoted to maintaining law and order.^{[citation needed]} In some environments officers are grounded by their superiors in order to perform better and to stay out of illegal activities.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Stress

Stress works in a strange way to motivate, like reverse psychology. When under stress and difficult situations, a person feels pressured. This may trigger feelings of under-achieving, which results in a reverse mindset, to strive to achieve. This is almost sub-conscious. The net amount motivation under stress may motivate a person to work harder in order to "compensate" for his feelings.

Psychologists differentiate between this constructive form of stress, called eustress, and the unhelpful state of distress.

[edit] Secondary goals

These important biological needs tend to generate more powerful emotions and thus more powerful motivation than secondary goals. This is described in models like Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. A distinction can also be made between direct and indirect motivation: In direct motivation, the action satisfies the need, in indirect motivation, the action satisfies an intermediate goal, which can in turn lead to the satisfaction of a need. In work environments, money is typically viewed as a powerful indirect motivation, whereas job satisfaction and a pleasant social environment are more direct motivations. However, this example highlights well that an indirect motivational factor (money) towards an important goal (having food, clothes etc.) may well be more powerful than the direct motivation provided by an enjoyable workplace.

[edit] Coercion

The most obvious form of motivation is coercion, where the avoidance of pain or other negative consequences has an immediate effect. When such coercion is permanent, it is considered slavery. While coercion is considered morally reprehensible in many philosophies, it is widely practiced on prisoners, students in mandatory schooling, and in the form of conscription. Critics of modern capitalism charge that without social safety networks, wage slavery is inevitable. However, many capitalists such as Ayn Rand have been very vocal against coercion. Successful coercion sometimes can take priority over other types of motivation. Self-coercion is rarely substantially negative (typically only negative in the sense that it avoids a positive, such as undergoing an expensive dinner or a period of relaxation), however it is interesting in that it illustrates how lower levels of motivation may be sometimes tweaked to satisfy higher ones.

[edit] Social and self regulation

[edit] Self control

The self-control of motivation is increasingly understood as a subset of emotional intelligence; a person may be highly intelligent according to a more conservative definition (as measured by many intelligence tests), yet unmotivated to dedicate this intelligence to certain tasks. Victor Vroom's "expectancy theory" provides an account of when people will decide whether to exert self control to pursue a particular goal. Self control is often contrasted with automatic processes of stimulus-response, as in the methodological behaviorist's paradigm of JB Watson.

Drives and desires can be described as a deficiency or need that activates behaviour that is aimed at a goal or an incentive. These are thought to originate within the individual and may not require external stimuli to encourage the behaviour. Basic drives could be sparked by deficiencies such as hunger, which motivates a person to seek food; whereas more subtle drives might be the desire for praise and approval, which motivates a person to behave in a manner pleasing to others.

By contrast, the role of extrinsic rewards and stimuli can be seen in the example of training animals by giving them treats when they perform a trick correctly. The treat motivates the animals to perform the trick consistently, even later when the treat is removed from the process.

[edit] Maslow's theory

Main article: Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs theory is the most widely discussed theory of motivation.

The theory can be summarized as thus:

• Human beings have wants and desires which influence their behaviour, only unsatisfied needs can influence behaviour, satisfied needs cannot.
• Since needs are many, they are arranged in order of importance, from the basic to the complex.
• The person advances to the next level of needs only after the lower level need is at least minimally satisfied.
• The further the progress up the hierarchy, the more individuality, humanness and psychological health a person will show.

The needs, listed from basic (lowest, earliest) to most complex (highest, latest) are as follows:

• Physiological
• Safety and security
• Social
• Self esteem
• Self actualization

[edit] Herzberg’s two factor theory

Main article: Frederick Herzberg

Frederick Herzberg's two factor theory, concludes that certain factors in the workplace result in job satisfaction, while others do not, but if absent lead to dissatisfaction.

He distinguished between:

• Motivators; (e.g. challenging work, recognition, responsibility) which give positive satisfaction, and
• Hygiene factors; (e.g. status, job security, salary and fringe benefits) which do not motivate if present, but if absent will result in demotivation.

The name Hygiene factors is used because, like hygiene, the presence will not make you healthier, but absence can cause health deterioration.

The theory is sometimes called the "Motivator-Hygiene Theory."

[edit] Alderfer’s ERG theory

Main article: Clayton Alderfer

Created by Clayton Alderfer, Maslow's hierarchy of needs was expanded, leading to his ERG theory (existence, relatedness and growth). Physiological and safety, the lower order needs, are placed in the existence category, Love and self esteem needs in the relatedness category. The growth category contained the self actualization and self esteem needs.

[edit] Cognitive dissonance

Suggested by Leon Festinger, this occurs when an individual experiences some degree of mental discomfort resulting from an incompatibility between two cognitions. For example, a consumer may seek to reassure himself or herself regarding a purchase, feeling that another decision may have been, in retrospect, preferable.

Another example of cognitive dissonance is when a belief and a behavior are in conflict. A person may believe smoking is bad for one's health and yet continues to smoke.

[edit] Self-determination theory

Self-determination theory, developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, focuses on the importance of intrinsic motivation in driving human behavior. Like Maslow's hierarchical theory and others that built on it, SDT posits a natural tendency toward growth and development. Unlike these other theories, however, SDT does not include any sort of "autopilot" for achievement, but instead requires active encouragement from the environment. The primary factors that encourage motivation and development are autonomy, competence feedback, and relatedness.

[edit] McClelland's achievement motivation theory

Main article: David McClelland

David McClelland’s achievement motivation theory envisages that a person has need for three things but people differ in degree in which the various needs influence their behavior: Need for achievement Need for power Need for affiliation

[edit] Goal-setting theory

Goal-setting theory is based on the notion that individuals sometimes have a drive to reach a clearly defined end state. Often, this end state is a reward in itself. A goal's efficiency is affected by three features; proximity, difficulty and specificity. An ideal goal should present a situation where the time between the initiation of behavior and the end state is close in time. This explains why some children are more motivated to learn how to ride a bike than mastering algebra. A goal should be moderate, not too hard or too easy to complete. In both cases, most people are not optimally motivated, as many want a challenge (which assumes some kind of insecurity of success). At the same time people want to feel that there is a substantial probability that they will succeed. Specificity concerns the description of the goal. The goal should be objectively defined and intelligible for the individual. A classic example of a poorly specified goal is to get the highest possible grade. Most children have no idea how much effort they need to reach that goal. For further reading, see Locke and Latham (2002).

[edit] Controlling motivation

The control of motivation is only understood to a limited extent. There are many different approaches of motivation training, but many of these are considered pseudoscientific by critics. To understand how to control motivation it is first necessary to understand why many people lack motivation.

[edit] Early programming

Data by Harold Chugani on brain activity, (click image for source details). The red dots show activity in the frontal cortex, the "youngest" region in the human brain from an evolutionary perspective. It is important for analysis and creativity. The blue curve, copied from another diagram of the same source, shows the development of brain volume through childhood. As can be seen from the data, brain activity in children is much higher than in adults, making early influences critical for motivation in later life.

Modern imaging has provided solid empirical support for the psychological theory that emotional programming is largely defined in childhood. Harold Chugani, Medical Director of the PET Clinic at the Children's Hospital of Michigan and professor of pediatrics, neurology and radiology at Wayne State University School of Medicine, has found that children's brains are much more capable of consuming new information (linked to emotions) than those of adults. Brain activity in cortical regions is about twice as high in children as in adults from the third to the ninth year of life. After that period, it declines constantly to the low levels of adulthood. Brain volume, on the other hand, is already at about 95% of adult levels in the ninth year of life.

[edit] Organization

Besides the very direct approaches to motivation, beginning in early life, there are solutions which are more abstract but perhaps nevertheless more practical for self-motivation. Virtually every motivation guidebook includes at least one chapter about the proper organization of one's tasks and goals. It is usually suggested that it is critical to maintain a list of tasks, with a distinction between those which are completed and those which are not, thereby moving some of the required motivation for their completion from the tasks themselves into a "meta-task", namely the processing of the tasks in the task list, which can become a routine. The viewing of the list of completed tasks may also be considered motivating, as it can create a satisfying sense of accomplishment.

Most electronic to-do lists have this basic functionality, although the distinction between completed and non-completed tasks is not always clear (completed tasks are sometimes simply deleted, instead of kept in a separate list).

Other forms of information organization may also be motivational, such as the use of mind maps to organize one's ideas, and thereby "train" the neural network that is the human brain to focus on the given task. Simpler forms of idea notation such as simple bullet-point style lists may also be sufficient, or even more useful to less visually oriented persons.

[edit] Drugs

Some authors, especially in the transhumanist movement, have suggested the use of "smart drugs", also known as nootropics, as "motivation-enhancers". The effects of many of these drugs on the brain are not well understood, and their legal status often makes open experimentation difficult. It is a fact that some of history's most productive artists have also been drug users, although it is not clear whether this correlation is also of a causative nature.

Converging neurobiological evidence also supports the idea that addictive drugs such as cocaine, nicotine, alcohol, and heroin act on brain systems underlying motivation for natural rewards, such as the mesolimbic dopamine system. Normally, these brain systems serve to guide us toward fitness-enhancing rewards (food, water, sex, etc.), but they can be co-opted by repeated use of drugs of abuse, causing addicts to excessively pursue drug rewards. Therefore, drugs can hijack brain systems underlying other motivations, causing the almost singular pursuit of drugs characteristic of addiction.

[edit] Applications

[edit] Education

Motivation is of particular interest to Educational psychologists because of the crucial role it plays in student learning. However, the specific kind of motivation that is studied in the specialised setting of education differs qualitatively from the more general forms of motivation studied by psychologists in other fields.

Motivation in education can have several effects on how students learn and their behavior towards subject matter (Ormrod, 2003). It can:

1. Direct behavior toward particular goals
2. Lead to increased effort and energy
3. Increase initiation of, and persistence in, activities
4. Enhance cognitive processing
5. Determine what consequences are reinforcing
6. Lead to improved performance.

Because students are not always internally motivated, they sometimes need situated motivation, which is found in environmental conditions that the teacher creates.

There are two kinds of motivation:

• Intrinsic motivation occurs when people are internally motivated to do something because it either brings them pleasure, they think it is important, or they feel that what they are learning is morally significant.
• Extrinsic motivation comes into play when a student is compelled to do something or act a certain way because of factors external to him or her (like money or good grades).

Note also that there is already questioning and expansion about this dichotomy on motivation, e.g., Self-Determination Theory.

[edit] Business

At lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, such as Physiological needs, money is a motivator, however it tends to have a motivating effect on staff that lasts only for a short period (in accordance with Herzberg's two-factor model of motivation). At higher levels of the hierarchy, praise, respect, recognition, empowerment and a sense of belonging are far more powerful motivators than money, as both Abraham Maslow and Douglas McGregor's Theory X and theory Y have demonstrated vividly.

Maslow has money at the lowest level of the hierarchy and shows other needs are better motivators to staff. McGregor places money in his Theory X category and feels it is a poor motivator. Praise and recognition are placed in the Theory Y category and are considered stronger motivators than money.

• Motivated employees always look for better ways to do a job.
• Motivated employees are more quality oriented.
• Motivated workers are more productive.

[edit] Scientific management

Scientific management is a philosophy and set of methods that stresses the scientific study and organization of work at an operational level for improving efficiency. It is associated with Frederick Winslow Taylor, who is called the “father of Scientific Management.”

Scientific Management has contributed the following techniques that are used even today:

• Scientific method of doing work
• Planning tasks
• Standardization
• Specialization and division of labour

David McClelland believed that workers could be motivated by the mere need for money--that is, economic gains in the form of higher wages. Some criticized Mcclelland's approach, arguing that he dehumanized workers by treating them as mere factors of production. In reality, workers need a sense of job security, social fulfillment, and a challenging job as well as good pay.

[edit] Human relations model

Elton Mayo found out that the social contacts a worker has at the workplace are very important and that boredom and repetitiveness of tasks lead to reduced motivation. Mayo believed that workers could be motivated by acknowledging their social needs and making them feel important. As a result, employees were given freedom to make decisions on the job and greater attention was paid to informal work groups. Mayo named the model the Hawthorne effect. The problem with his model is undue reliance on social contacts at work situations for motivating employees.^[1]

[edit] See also

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• Behavior
• Equity theory
• Human behavior
• Humanistic psychology
• Human Potential Movement
• Organizational behavior
• Personality
• Preference
• Successories
• Victor Vroom
• operant conditioning
• Punished by RewardsAlfie Kohn ISBN 0-61800-181-6

[edit] References

1. ^ Human Resources Management, HT Graham and R Bennett M+E Handbooks(1993) ISBN 0-7121-0844-0

[edit] External links

• Basics About Employee Motivation (Including Steps You Can Take)
• No Intrinsic Motivation
• Factors of intrinsic motivation