McGraw-Hill Science & Technology Encyclopedia: Motivation

Source of information: http://www.answers.com/topic/motivation

The intentions, desires, goals, and needs that determine human and animal behavior. An inquiry is made into a person’s motives in order to explain that person’s actions.

Different roles have been assigned to motivational factors in the causation of behavior. Some have defined motivation as a nonspecific energizing of all behavior. Others define it as recruiting and directing behavior, selecting which of many possible actions the organism will perform. The likely answer is that both aspects exist. More specific determinants of action may be superimposed on a dimension of activation or arousal that affects a variety of actions nonselectively. The situation determines what the animal does; arousal level affects the vigor, promptness, or persistence with which the animal does it.

Early drive theorists saw motivated behavior as adjunct to physiological mechanisms of homeostasis, that is, the mechanisms by which the body regulates internal variables such as temperature, blood sugar level, and the volume and concentration of body fluids. Thus, motivated behavior forms part of a negative-feedback loop, an arrangement characteristic of regulatory systems.

However, the homeostatic model faces difficulties. First, not all «basic biological drives» work this way. Second, motivated behavior can be influenced by external as well as internal factors. Since these external influences are not coupled with the animal’s internal state, they can lead to behavior that does not promote homeostasis and may even threaten it. To add to the complexity, internal and external factors are not independent and additive; rather they interact with each other. In such cases, internal influences affect behavior by setting the animal’s responsiveness to certain external signals. The interaction occurs in the opposite direction as well: external signals can affect internal state. Third, especially in humans, vigorous and persistent goal-directed behavior can occur in the absence of any physiological need. See also Homeostasis.

Even relatively simple motives can be influenced by much more than the existing internal and external situation. They respond to potential or expected factors, as registered by cognitive apparatus. Even relatively simple motives such as hunger and thirst are responsive to cognitive factors.

To a hungry rat, food becomes a goal. The rat will make various responses, including arbitrary learned ones or operants, that lead to contact with food. A rat can be trained to do whatever else is necessary (within its capabilities) to attain its goal. It is this flexibility of goal-directed behavior that justifies the concept of motivation. If an animal will do whatever is necessary to obtain food, it must want food. Internal factors then may act by setting the goal status of environmental commodities: the effect of hunger is to make food a goal.

There is a question as to how behavior can be guided by a state or event (goal attainment) that does not yet exist. Modern approaches to this question lean heavily on cognitive concepts. Mammals, birds, and even some insects can represent to themselves a nonexistent state of affairs. They can represent what a goal object is (search images): a chimpanzee may show behavioral signs of surprise if a different food is substituted for the usual one. They can represent where it is (cognitive maps): a digger wasp remembers the location of its nest relative to arbitrary landmarks, and will fly to the wrong place if the landmarks are moved.

If this idea is generalized, motivated behavior can be thought of as guided by a feedback control system with a set point. A set point establishes a goal state which the control system seeks to bring about. Behavior is controlled, not by present external or internal stimuli alone, but by a comparison between the existing state of affairs and a desired state of affairs, that is, the set point or goal, registered or specified within the brain. The animal then acts to reduce the difference between the existing and the desired state of affairs.

This way of looking at motivation helps bridge the gap between simple motives in animals and complex ones in humans. If to be motivated is to do whatever is necessary to bring about an imagined state of affairs, then human motives can literally be as complex, and be projected as far into the future, as human imaginations permit. See also Cognition.

Another approach to motivation comes from ethology, which has formed links with cognitive psychology. The broken-wing display of the piping plover provides an example. If a predator approaches a nest with eggs, the parent bird may behave as if injured (hence easy prey) and thus lead the intruder away from the nest. This action pattern is characteristic of the species and unlearned in its gross topography; yet the bird monitors the intruder’s behavior and modulates the display accordingly. It may approach more closely and intensify the display if the intruder is not at first diverted from its path. Thus a species-typical action pattern can be used in ways suggestive of purpose and goal direction: the bird modifies it as necessary to promote the goal of diverting the intruder. See also Ethology.

Motivation and emotion are closely related. Indeed, it has been argued that emotions are the true motivators and that other factors internal, situational, and cognitive take hold of behavior by way of the emotions they evoke. In the simplest case, pleasure and displeasure have been recognized for centuries as having motivational force. In more complex cases, the role of cognitive operations, such as how an individual feels about an event, as well as what is done about it, can depend heavily on how an individual thinks about it.

The culture in which an individual is raised has a powerful effect on how the individual behaves. It has been argued that culture teaches its members what to believe are the consequences of a specific action (cognitive), and how the individuals should feel about those consequences or about the actions themselves (emotional/motivational).