motivation

motivation in psychology, the intention of achieving a goal, leading to goal-directed behavior. Some human activity seems to be best explained by postulating an inner directing drive. While a drive is often considered to be an innate biological mechanism that determines the organism's activity (see instinct ), a motive is defined as an innate mechanism modified by learning . In this view human drives serve to satisfy biological needs, such as hunger, while motives serve to satisfy needs that are not directly tied to the body requirements, such as companionship. Learned motives are sometimes linked with drives; e.g., the motivation to achieve social status is often viewed as a derivitive of the sex drive. Motives are sometimes classed as deficiency motives, such as the need to remove the physiological deficiency of hunger or thirst, or abundancy motives, i.e., motives to attain greater satisfaction and stimulation. American psychologist Abraham Maslow has classified motives into five developmental levels, with the satisfaction of physiological needs most important and esteem and self-actualization needs least important. According to Maslow, the most basic needs must be satisfied before successively higher needs can emerge. Cognitive psychologists such as Albert Bandura have suggested that individual mental processes, such as beliefs, play an important role in motivation, through the expectation of certain reinforcements for certain behaviors. Studies have shown that humans and other animals are likely to seek sensory stimulation, even where there may be no foreseeable goal. In recent years, the use of various tools for brain scanning has worked toward the discovery of a neurological basis for motivation.

motivation The mental processes that arouse, sustain, and direct human behaviour. Motivation may stem from processes taking place within an individual (intrinsic motivation) or from the impact of factors acting on the individual from outside (extrinsic motivation); in most cases these two influences are continually interacting.

The vocabulary associated with motivation is large; such terms as purpose, desire, need, goal, preference, perception, attitude, recognition, achievement, and incentive are commonly used. Many of these drives can act on an individual simultaneously, causing varying degrees of conflict. A consumer deciding between buying chocolate and buying ice cream is in conflict. An employee who wants to disagree with the boss but also wants to keep his or her job is in conflict.

In a business context, an understanding of human motivation is crucial to understanding consumer buying behaviour. It is also vital to the design of organizational norms and structures, including reward structures, that encourage effort and achievement on the part of employees. In the realm of theory considerable importance has been given to the hierarchy of needs investigated by Abraham Maslow (1908–70; see Maslow's motivational hierarchy), which places the basic needs of human survival at the bottom of the scale of human motivation and self-actualization at the top. The more flexible ERG theory focuses on three groups of needs that form a hierarchy: existence needs (physical and material wants); relatedness needs (the desire for interpersonal relationships); and growth needs (desires to be creative and productive).

Although most psychologists now believe that human needs and motives are too variable to be confined to a fixed hierarchy, these theories have the merit of emphasizing that, besides goals, ambitions, and rewards, there is a need for success to be recognized by others and a need to develop and progress. A person in an organization never works in a vacuum; there can be a real conflict between different motivations that relate to the organization: Would I be worse paid working elsewhere? But would I be more secure/better trained/more appreciated elsewhere? See achievement motivation theory; alienation; Theory X and Theory Y; Theory Z; valency-instrumentality-expectancy theory.

motivation The cause for a spontaneous change in the behaviour of an animal which occurs independently of any outside stimulus, or of a change in the threshold of responsiveness of an animal to a stimulus, and which is not due to fatigue, learning, or the maturation of the animal.