Motivation

• Motivation is a need or desire that energizes and directs behavior toward a goal

• We have primary and secondary needs

  • Primary needs are innate or unlearned, like biological necessities, food, water, need for warmth, etc.

  • Secondary needs are not tangible and psychological, like social approval, belongingness, and love

• Motivations can be very different and can be deconstructed very far

• You may want to go for a jog to reduce stress, get active, or look better

  • And behind all of those reasons are more motivations

• No single theory can explain why we are motivated to engage in any particular behavior

  • Different emotions and scenarios may fit better into other theories

Theories

Drive-Reduction Theory

• Drive is a state of tension or arousal caused by biological/psychological needs

  • This is an unpleasant state

• Drive-reducing behaviors are the way we seek to resolve that drive

  • We aim to return the body to homeostasis, or chemical balance

• Clark Hull, the author of this theory, was a behaviorist

• A lack of homeostasis induces a need, which creates a drive

  • The drive makes a motivation to reduce the drive, prompting behavior that returns to homeostasis

  • The cycle then repeats once there is a disruption to the established balance

Behaviorism

• Thorndike’s law of effect states that any behavior that leads to a desirable outcome will be repeated

• If homeostasis is achieved by eating, drinking, exercising, or taking a drug, that behavior will be repeated

Incentive Theory

• This theory proposes that we are pulled by incentives to behave in a certain matter

  • This can be contracted with the way drives push us to behave in Drive-Reduction Theory

• Motivation originates from incentives that promise some values outcome (reward) or the avoidance of an aversive stimulus (punishment)

• Incentives are either positive or negative stimuli that motivate or pull us toward a behavior

• Motivations can be intrinsic, within, or extrinsic, from outside

  • Intrinsic motivations include feeling good, fulfilling personal preferences, or doing something just because you enjoy it, and have been shown to contribute more to well-being

  • Extrinsic motivators may be money, bodily changes, and grades— these are often conditioned or biological

• The overjustification effect occurs when an expected external incentive such as money or prizes decreases a person’s intrinsic motivation to perform a task

  • Experiments relating to this phenomenon prove that people who do things for intrinsic reasons like enjoyment are much more productive in that behavior

  • Whereas too large of a reward can actually decrease performance

  • When something becomes an obligation, most people will do the bare minimum to reach the expected reward

Behaviorism and Biological Perspectives

• Recall the law of effect from above

• Biologically speaking, the neurotransmitter dopamine is released in a neural reward circuit when we feel pleasure

• We are motivated to then engage in that pleasure-inducing behavior repeatedly

(Optimal-)Arousal Theory

• People are motivated to take actions to either increase or decrease their arousal levels in order to achieve and maintain a personal optimum level of arousal

• Some people seek high arousal levels and spend their weekends chasing adrenaline

• Others seek low arousal levels and may spend the weekend at home, calming down from the week

• The behavior may change depending on what kind of equilibrium/optimal arousal a person is seeking, like biological, emotional, or intellectual

Yerkes-Dodson Law

• This law describes the relationship between arousal and performance

• It proposes that too much or too little arousal is detrimental to performance

• Having too little arousal means the motivation for the behavior is not there

• Having too much creates anxiety or overcompensation, also harming performance

• This relates to optimal arousal as it suggests we prepare ourselves to be optimally aroused for certain events

  • People may be yelling and running around before a highly anticipated football game

  • Whereas they are silent and calm before a major exam