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and external motivators affect behaviors
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There is an assumption that the word motivation comes from
the Latin word “movere”, which would in English
mean “move”. Nowadays such simple definition of
the word is considered insufficient. But in reality it is
rather difficult to present a definition of this notion, as
motivation has a hypothetical construction. We are not able
to observe the motivation of a person directly. We are able
to see only the surrounding of the person and his behavior
as a reaction to it and to some other facts. Thus we are able
to come to certain conclusions concerning motivation. It is
still only an assumption that there is something inside the
person that appears in some certain situation, under some
certain circumstances and makes the person act this or that
way. This thing we can not see or measure directly. The final
general definition of motivation is as follows: "A system
of psychological factors that arises maintains and directs
behavior." (5).
So, motivation is the main factor, the main energy that prescribes
the behavior of people.
An interesting fact is that there is little difference between
cognition, motivation and emotions in the every day life.
An example of cognitive activity would be the planning of
a vacation. This panning process is connected with person’s
ideas about his/her holiday, hope for a good rest and fears
that something goes wrong. Thus the planning process plays
an important role and all the thoughts are supported by emotive
values.
It is not possible to separate cognition and motivation as
high cognitive processes, for example problem solving is appropriate
only in case when it helps to reach some goals of a person,
that means as well that it is motivated. Often this very aspect
of cognition is ignored.
It is as well important that motivation goes before cognition,
cognition is based on the motivational system, and this system
in its way is able to function without cognition.
Thus the motivational state is characterized by two important
properties, first of all the motivational state is the center
of the whole being. All the time the being is influenced by
some motivational state, which provides the single engagement.
The motivational state is dynamic, it means that it can change
any time as soon as internal needs or external possibilities
change.
Behavior is determined by learning a lot, but the more important
determinant is motivation. The older theories didn’t
take the motivation into consideration related to the matters
of behavior. They were talking only about learning. The famous
experiments of Pavlov ignored the motivation and its role.
It seems strange as the association of a bell with salivation
was a part of learning process only in case the dog was hungry.
The dog would not be able to produce salivation effect if
it didn’t want to eat.
The experiments of Thorndike show even less interesting in
motivation. People gave the cat food when it managed to run
away from a box, but it was actually an afterthought. We can
never state for sure what was the reason was for the cat to
escape, either the longing for food or wish to be free from
the box.
The experiments of Clark came close to the role of both learning
and motivation. Rats were trained to press a bar to get food.
Later on these rats were separated into some groups and didn’t
get food from 1 to 23 hours. The longer the rats were not
getting their food the faster they were pressing the bar.
All the rats were trained together and thus the learning results
were the same, this would mean that the reason of this difference
was hidden somewhere else. The conclusion is that motivation
– in this case this is getting food – played a
great role in determining the behavior of animals.
In this connection Hull talked about the state of drive as
an aversive state of the organism. Drive is a part of a need
which as well motivates the behavior. Hull stated that drive
was an important energy for motivating the behavior, but that
it was not able to determine the exact kind of behavior. It
was later called a generalized drive or the concept of arousal.
Drive is one of the most versatile and vague terms in psychology.
There are a lot of cases and a lot of meanings when this term
is used and there are even some negative ones. Here we are
talking about drive as “a state or value representing
the urgency of a behavior”. Drive has also to do with
the states of organism which lacks or gets too much of food,
hormones and so on. There are cases when drive is related
to the presence of noxious stimuli – loud noise, pain
etc. There are the so-called constant drives that do not change
with the time. Generally six types of drives are identified.
Homeostatic drives – comes from violation of homeostatics,
examples are simple – hunger or thirst. When homeostatics
is violated the motivational system gets the signal. This
type of drives is close to the model of Powers. “Powers'
model is built on the assumption that the present action of
an organism is a function of its present perceptions and an
internal reference perception. These are compared to generate
an error signal which facilitates behavior” (3). It
means that the difference between the present state of an
organism and the desired state causes the behavior.
According to his model behavior has two variants of function
– the present perception and the reference perception,
there is an opinion that his scheme misses one more component
– the present motivational state.
Noxious drives – the signals of noxious stimuli could
be also considered as drivers. The bright example of such
type of driver would be the sensation of pain.
Cyclical drives – these drives change depending on the
time of the day or of the year season. They are hardly directly
influenced by internal or external stimuli. They come from
oscillator, which in its turn depends upon the length of a
day or the amount of light. Most hunger drives also belong
to this type.
Default drives – they are called so as they have the
influence power only because there are no other. Usually this
is a kind of behavior when there is no other choice what to
do.
Exploratory drives – very close to default drives, but
it can also “interact with the perception of unknown
stimuli to produce exploratory behavior which is directed
toward a specific stimulus” (3).
Anticipatory drives – there are some reasons to believe
that at least higher animals have the so-called sixth sense
source of drive signals. They have nothing to do with present
time needs, they are used for planning the future needs and
can influence other types of drives, especially homeostatic
drives.
Schachter talked a lot about the distinction between internal
and external determinants of behavior. Different people are
more or less under the influence of either internal or external
signals.
The external motivation usually depends upon the environment
and conditions in which the person exists. Satisfaction and
motivation are created with the help of external rewards,
for example money, praise, recognition and negative such as
punishment or rejection as well.
Internal motivation appears when the behavior is not controlled
by the environment. The inner motivation is the result of
a need of competence and self- determination. Thus the difference
between external and internal motivation is not difficult
for understanding, but a really big mistake is made when intrinsic/extrinsic
are confused with internal/external. No matter internally
or externally a person is motivated in two different ways:
-intrinsically – it happens when a person is himself
passionate about doing some task
-extrinsically – when a person is made to perform a
task, either externally (for example for getting money or
avoiding punishment) or internally (because of an individual
sense of self-worth).
The motivational system helps an individual to make the optional
choice of behavior. A lot depends on the goal of a person.
A person would try to build his behavior so that he gets maximum
of reward and minimum of some negative consequences. Thus
the motivational system has to calculate the potential results
of each possible action in a concrete situation with the respect
of a specific goal. Sometimes there is more than one goal
and then the closest goal has to be calculated.
We come to the conclusion that the motivational state is influenced
by three main factors: internal and external incentive and
drive. Both incentives inform an individual about the present
possibilities of fulfilling the need and the drive signal
informs about the level of urgency of this need. There is
another classification of incentives – primary or innate
or secondary – acquired. Primary incentives are associated
with primary motivators and secondary incentives – with
secondary motivators.
In nowadays life people are influenced by both internal and
external motivators constantly, sometimes it is even hard
for others to determine the real motivators of the behavior
of an individual in some certain situation. Motivation itself
is a very important psychological component as it serves a
base for determination of human behavior.
Sources:
1. Ball, S. 1982
Motivation. In H. E. Mitzel (Ed.) Encyclopedia of educationalresearch
(Vol 3. pp. 1256- 1263) New York: Macmillan
2. Day, H. I. 1985
Motivation. In T. Husen & N. T. Postlethwaite (Eds.) InternationalEncyclopedia
of education pp. 3425 - 3430). Oxford: Pergamon.
3. Deci, E. L. & Ryan, R. M. 1985
Intrinsic motivation and selfdetermination in human behavior.New
York: Plenum.
4. Herzberg, F. 1975
One more time: How to you motivate employees? In R. M. Steers&
L. W. Porter (Eds), Motivation and work behaviour. (pp.91
- 194) New York: McGraw-Hill.
5. Mowday, R. T. 1982
Expectancy theory approaches to faculty motivation. In J.
Bess(Ed.) New directions for teaching and learning (Motivating
professorsto teach effectively, No. 10.) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
6. Steers, R. M. and Porter, L. W. 1987
Motivation and work behavior. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
7. Vroom, V. H. 1964 Work and Motivation. New York: Wiley.
8. Rogers, C., On Becoming a Person, Houghton Mifflin Company,
Boston, 1961.
9. Spitzer D., Supermotivation, AMACOM, New York, 1995.
10. Tjosvold, D. and Tjosvold, M., Psychology for Leaders,
John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1995.
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