UNIT-9 (NINE)

MOTIVATION
 Nature and characteristics of motivation, instinct, drive-
reduction approach, arousal approach, incentive approach
of motivation, Cognitive approach to motivation
 Physiological need and motivations(Hunger and sex),
Socio-psychological motivation(need for achievement and
power)
 UNIT-9 (NINE)
MOTIVATION
 The word motivation comes from the Latin word “movere” which
means “to move”. Motivation emphasizes on internal and external
forces that lead us to move.
Motivation synonymously used with the word desire, wants,
wishes, aims, goals, needs, drives, motives, incentives etc.
Psychologically, motivation refers to activation, urge, and internal
craving from within the organism. For eg, a girl wants to be a doctor
or nurse, a man strives for political power, a hungry man wants to
eat etc.
Motivation is an internal process that actively guides and
maintains behavior. It is a driving force behind behavior that leads us
to pursue some things and avoid others. Motives are the center of
our lives which direct what we think, feel and act.
Introduction of Motivation
 Motivation is an internal process that actively guides and maintains
behavior. It helps to explain causes of behavior. It is driving force
behind behavior that leads us to pursue some things and avoid
others.
 Davis and Palladino: “ Motivation is a physiological and
psychological factors that account for the energizing, direction, and
persistence of behavior.”
 Lahey: “Motivation is an internal state that activates and gives
direction to our thoughts.”
 Motivation is the forces within a person that affect his or direction,
intensity and persistence of voluntary behavior. Why we behave
and how we behave in a particular moment can be understood in
terms of motivation. It is one’s motivation which prompts, compels
and energizes him to engage in a particular behavior .
IMPORTANCE OF MOTIVATION
 To survive the life of an organism by reducing hunger
thirst and sex drives.
 To keep a person mentally healthy by relating people to
fellow beings and letting them succeed or exert influence
on others.
 To initiate activities and behaviors, and direct them to
some goals.
 To maintain the efforts until the goals are achieved.
 To direct and energize behavior.
 To restore the energy of body by letting organism
rest(sleep) regularly.
 To reduce drive of body.
Nature and Characteristics of motivation
1. Motivation is a higher mental process.
2. Motivation is not directly observable. It has to be
inferred from the patterns of organism’s behaviors.
3. Motivation continues in a cycle. Needs arise. Needs
cause drive, drive push to start behaviors or efforts.
4. Motivation can be affected by intrinsic and extrinsic
factors. Intrinsic factors like appreciation, recognition,
and inner satisfaction are more motivators than
external motivators money and material incentives.
5. When the goal-seeking behaviors are blocked,
disturbed or interrupted, frustration is the result.
6. Motivation is related to mental state of a person as it
arises in the mind of a person and directs to act in a
particular way.
7. Motivation is never ending process or dynamic in
nature as desires, wants, needs and motives come in
the existence continuously.
8. Motivation is related to human resources and needs. It
is concerned with the feelings, desires, motives and
needs of a person.
9. Motivation is the cause and effect of human
satisfaction. A man works to fulfill his own motive.
Wants, desires, environment, condition, attitude,
thought or experiences are the several causes that may
encourage a man to work to get satisfaction.
10. Motivation is concerned to inspiration and encouragement
which is very complex task. It is unpredictable too that no one can
determine, explain and predict the behavior of a person as the
desires, drives and attitudes are changed frequently in a varying
situation and circumstances.
11. Motivation may be positive or negative on the part of employer.
Positive motivation is concerned with the use of incentives like
increase in salary. allowances, grant of reward, promotion etc.
Whereas, negative motivation includes forcing people to work by
holding out threats or punishment such as loss of job, demotion,
deduction of salary etc.
Motivational Cycle
 Motivational cycle starts with need followed by drive.
Drive pushes the behaviors and incentives or rewards
pull the behaviors.
 The achievement of goal is the direction of behaviors in
motivation. The achievement of goal once is not
enough.
 The need renews and the cycle of motivation repeats
again and again.
The activating forces working in motivation may be named as needs,
drives or motives.
NEEDS
 The physical or psychological deprivation in the body creates the needs.
It is the lack of what we want. When the stimuli remains constant we
do not feel need.
 Needs are general wants or desires and are said to be the very basis of
our behavior. Needs can be broadly classified as biological and socio-
psychological. Biological needs include all our bodily or organic needs
like need for oxygen, food, water, rest, sleep, sex etc
 Socio-psychological needs like need for love and affection, security,
affiliation, self-actualization, freedom and independence, achievement,
social company, self-assertion(power), prestige, status etc.
 The tendency to restore a balanced condition in the body is known as
Homeostasis. The term homeostasis was coined by W.B. Cannon. He
suggested that our body system constantly works towards an
optimum level of functioning maintaining a normal state of balance
between input and output. For eg, when blood sugar level drops, the
brain, glands, stomach and other parts of the body send out signals
that activate a hunger drive and makes one hungry.
DRIVES
 An internal motivational state that is created by a need is a drive.
For example, need for food creates a drive state of arousal or
tension. The organism seeks to reduce his drive by doing something
to satisfy the need.
 A need gives rise to a drive that activates an individual from within
and directs its activities to a goal that may bring about the
satisfaction of the need. Drives are the action oriented component
or the motion to fulfill the desire of the motivated behavior.
 Biological needs give birth to biological drives such as hunger, thirst
and sex and socio-psychological needs produce socio-psychological
drives such as fear, anxiety, approval and achievement.
 For eg, the person who is hungry moves to find food. If food is not
freely available, he may try other responses to secure food.
 Drives are also influenced and guided by incentives in terms of
working as reinforcing agents. Praise, appreciation, rewards,
bonus, fulfillment of one’s needs and getting the desired
objectives are some of the examples in this regard.
MOTIVES
 Motive is an energetic force or tendency working within the
individual to compel, persuade or inspire him to act for
satisfaction of his basic needs or attainment of some specific
purposes.
 Hunger motive primarily arises on account of our body’s need for
food and thirst motive on account of the need for fluid. The need
regarding food or fluid is conveyed to our brain which in turn
produces the motivation behavior involving hunger or thirst.
 Sex motive, maternal motive, achievement motive, aggression
motive( the behaviors intended to inflict physical or psychological
harm on others), affiliation motive etc are some examples.
 Motives are needs. Motive is the shortage of what a
human requires.
Types of Motives:
 Motives can be physiological(biogenic) or
psychological(psychogenic).
 Physiological motives are also called primary motives
that include hunger, sex, thirst and sleep.
 Psychological motives are also called secondary motives
that include need for affiliation, need for approval, need
for achievement and need for power.
PHYSIOLOGICAL MOTIVES
 Physiological motives can be termed as innate, unlearned,
biological, and primary. They are natural and vital which the
individual brings with him upon his entry into the world.
They are important for our survival, without which we can
not live.
 These universal needs balance the body and if remained
unsatisfied, may lead to different behavioral disturbances.
Hunger, thirst, the need of air, activity, rest, and the sex
motive all are biological or physiological motives.
HUNGER
 Hunger drive is regulated by small forebrain structures, the
hypothalamus and related parts. This part of the brain regulates the
feeding system and satiety system. The feeding system initiates
eating food while the satiety system stops eating food when enough
food has been consumed.
Hunger motive is regulated by different mechanisms:
 Stomach Contraction:- Hypothalamus regulates the amount of food
taken into the stomach. A hungry person’s stomach contracts while
a full stomach activates the satiety system.
 Blood sugar levels:- Hypothalamus regulates sugar levels in the
blood. Hunger is detected on the basis of amount of the
glucose(sugar) in the blood. Besides hypothalamus, liver and
duodenum actively feed information about hunger drive to the
brain. Experiments have demonstrated that when insulin is injected
into the bloodstream of a satiated person, the person feels hungry
because insulin causes a drop in the glucose level.
 Blood fat levels:- The fat in the blood is called glycerol. When a
person gains weight blood glycerol increases. Hypothalamus detects
the blood fat levels in regulating an individual’s hunger drive.
 It has also now been experimentally proved that besides the
chemical composition and brain mechanism certain other personal,
social cultural and psychological factors like choice or preference for
a specific food, boredom, loneliness, nervousness, insecurity,
anxiety, depression, socio-cultural demands, and acquired food
habits, etc work for deciding the eating behavior of human beings.
SEX
 Sex motive, although not so essential for an individual’s survival like
food and water, constitutes a highly powerful psycho-physical
motive. Its satisfaction results in immense happiness and well being
to an individual and as a medium of survival to the species.
 Due to the existence of many social restrictions to express it freely,
sex drives influences human behavior in various ways and may lead
to socially improper sex conduct.
 Human sex drive seems to be stimulated by three factors, the
presence of sex hormones, external stimulation, and cerebral
activity. Sexual hormones are primarily responsible for sexual
motivation.
 The human sex motive is termed as a complex blend of innate
(inborn) as well as acquired tendencies. In human beings although
the pregnancy is possible only in the estrus periods, the sex drive
is not dependent upon the occurrence of an estrus periods.
 In general, human females and males can be sexually motivated at
any time quite independent of the period of fertility and
hormones production.
 PSYCHOLOGICAL MOTIVES
 Psychological motives are also known as acquired, secondary, social
and learned motives. Psychological motives are learned and
developed through social contacts and experience. They are not
directly related to biological survival of the individual or the species.
 Psychological motives or needs are equally important because an
individual’s happiness and wellbeing depend on the satisfaction of
these motives. Power, prestige, need for affilitiation, security and
status are important secondary drives. People even show mal-
adjusting symptoms and attempt suicide when these motives are
unfulfilled.
 Many of our physiological motives are expressed in the
psychological way; they are modified with age and experience. The
hunger drive can be satisfied in different manners among different
cultures. We develop preferences for certain types of food through
our social environment. The type of food and the mode of eating is
also acquired by the child as a result of social influences.
 For example, people in Nepal prefer to eat rice twice in the morning
and evening. They use their hand while eating. While westerners
prefer wheat items and use spoon and fork.
Some important secondary drives are;
Achievement Need
 The need to attain victory in a competitive situation can be
described as achievement need. Those who have achieved success
are likely to be rewarded. People who are always highly motivated
to achieve greater things always fear of failure.
 Achievement behaviors are directed toward attaining a pleasurable
award or avoiding an aversive event. Children learn achievement
motivation.
 Studies have shown that children whose parents are high in
achievement demanding occupation encourage and reinforce
achievement in their children.
 Achievement motivation develops from praise, reinforcement,
training, practice, and concentration, in an individual who has a
strong desire, high ambition and energy to perform and
manipulate the environment to some extent.
Power Motive or need
THEORIES OF MOTIVATION
What motivates human behavior is not a simple question to
answer. Psychologists have a long study and have tried to
explain the process and mechanism of motivation in a
number of ways. Some of the theories are mentioned here;
1. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Motive
2. Instinct Theory of Motivation
3. Drive Theory of Motivation
4. Cognitive Theory of Motivation
5. Goal-setting Theory of Motivation
6. Arousal Theory of Motivation
7. Equity Theory of Motivation
SOME THEORIES OF MOTIVATION
Instinct Theory of Motivation
 In 1908, William McDougall proposed that humans are
motivated by instincts.
 People are born with certain instincts that guide their
behaviors. Instincts are the predetermined and innate
pattern of behaviors characteristic of a particular species.
Instinct:- a natural tendency for people and animals to behave
in a particular way using the knowledge and abilities that
they were born with rather than thought or training.
Gratification:- a media to provide intense pleasure,
satisfaction and meaning to one’s life.
 Some examples of instincts are mating, search for food,
curiosity, greed, cleanliness, parental love, sociability and
affiliation.
 Freud’s theory of motivation was based on instincts. In his last
book, outline of psycho-analysis, he asserted that Eros (life or
erotic instinct) and the death instinct(desire to destroy one’s
self) are the ultimate cause of the motivation in behavior.
 Life instinct, the urge for self-preservation dominates the
earlier scenes of one’s life. When life instinct stops, death
instinct comes into operation.
 For example, the lover who has failed in his love affair may
think of committing suicide. However, what moves or
energizes the activities of the life instinct is the need for
sexual gratification.
 Freud maintained that from birth onwards human beings
experience sex gratification and sex motive and it is the
ultimate sole motive that works in energizing the human
behavior.
Behaviorist’s view point(need and drive reduction theory)
 Behaviorists like Watson, Clark Hull and Skinner emphasize
that needs and drives work as stimuli to evoke responses in
the form of motivation behavior.
 Need in the form of stimulation gives birth to a drive or
motive which in turn sets the motivational behavior in
motion. The reduction of the need and the associate drive,
then works as a reinforcer for maintaining behavior.
 This theory says that we are motivated to reduce the drive
that arises because of needs of biological or psychological
nature.
 Food and sex are examples of biological motives and self-
esteem and approval are examples of psychological motives.
 Physiological needs are innate but psychological needs are
acquired by learning.
 Lack of fulfillment of psychological motives may degrade
mental health of an individual.
 Drives are the state of tension or agitation. For eg, when we
are hungry, stomach churns. For the biological needs, the
body works on the rule of homeostasis.
 Homeostasis is the state of physiological equilibrium and it
drives people to search for material that is lacking in body.
 When materials essential for body is lacking, need arises.
Need gives rise to drive and drive pushes the behavior
towards some goal.
 We are motivated to reduce this state of tension or agitation
called drive.
Arousal Theory of Motivation
 Arousal means stimulation or activation. It is the state in
which we feel excited, activated or very alert.
 Arousal theory of motivation says that human beings seek an
optimal level of arousal rather than minimum level of
arousal.
 People are found to be writing poem or stories despite not
getting any return. Their desire keeps increasing.
 Well-fed animals get out of shelter to explore their
environment. Young children are attracted by the unfamiliar.
So, their drive to explore maintains an optimum level of
arousal.
 Level of arousal depends on nature of persons’ personality
(other individual differences), nature of task being done, or
even time of the day.
 A semi employed person seeks more working hours to
increase his arousal. A person stressed by workload wants to
lower his working hours to decrease his or her arousal.
 It means we need optimal arousal-not too little nor too
much. Too less stimulation leads to boredom and too much
stimulation leads to stress.
 Very high levels of arousal and very low levels of arousal are
quite unpleasant for people. An optimum level of arousal
give the best performance.
 For difficult tasks, low arousal is enough and for easier tasks,
peak performance demands higher degree of arousal.
 Yerkes-Dodson law states that arousal causes increase in
performance up to a point beyond which performance
decreases.
Cognitive approach(Goal-oriented Theory)
• Cognitive psychologists say that there are two types of
factors that activate and energize behaviors; intrinsic and
extrinsic factors.
• Intrinsic factors are internal factors like enjoyment in job,
satisfaction, recognition and appreciation where as extrinsic
factors are external rewards like money.
• Intrinsic motivation means engaging in activities to create
personal satisfaction and to fulfill beliefs or expectations.
Extrinsic motivation is engaging in activities to reduce
biological needs or obtain incentives.
• For eg, if you play football for fun, you are intrinsically
motivated to play it. If your parents want you to make a
professional footballer and you play it, then you are
extrinsically motivated.
 Researches have shown that the intrinsic motivating factors
are more powerful than the extrinsic factors.
 Under cognitive approach of motivation, three theories can
be discussed;
a. Self-efficacy theory: (Albert Bandura)
b. Expectancy theory
c. Two factor theory