Theories Of Motivation

By David Johne


Motivation is basically a psychological factor or feature that induces any organism to take necessary actions to achieve certain objectives or goals. It brings out, controls, and maintains all the behaviors of any organism to achieve its goals. It is actually the driving force of the universe and organisms living in it.

One of the most basic motivations for any organism, including human beings, is hunger. Hunger elicits the motivation to eat, which requires some kind of action or effort on the part of the organism to get the food required to satiate the hunger. As such, it is the psychological cause or purpose of any action by any living organism.

Extrinsic motivation allows people to perform activities with the explicit aim of attaining a specific outcome. The most common extrinsic motivating factors are either rewards for achieving something or threat of punishment for failure. Competition is a powerful extrinsic motivator, where an individual beats others and proves superiority, even though there might be no intrinsic motivator to win.

It is the inner drive in every organism to act or behave in a specific manner. If you have enough motivation, you might get up early in the morning and continue with your daily activities in a vigorous manner. If you do not have any motivation at all, you might be loitering around the house throughout the day in a lazy manner, doing nothing.

The inner conditions of the mind, such as desires, wishes, goals, ambitions, perspectives, etc. activate the living organisms to move in a specific direction, act in a particular manner, or behavior in a certain fashion. Still, these motivations could be due to either fully conscious or totally unconscious activities. The unconscious actions could result from basic evolutionary calculations, while conscious actions could stem from positive or even benign emotions.

The theory of Machiavelli states that human beings have the motivation to seek status and power over other things. Modern research confirms that people with such traits usually go after money and power, using others as mere instruments to achieve their ends.




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