Psychology and Motivation
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Wikipedia-Article "Psychology"
Psychology (ancient Greek: psyche = "soul" or "mind", logos/-ology = "study of") is an academic and applied field involving the study of mind and behavior. "Psychology" also refers to the application of such knowledge to various spheres of human activity, including problems of individuals' daily lives and the treatment of mental illness.
Psychology differs from sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science in part because it involves studying the mental processes and behavior of individuals (alone or in groups) rather than the behavior of the groups or aggregates themselves. Psychology differs from biology and neuroscience in that it is primarily concerned with the interaction of mental processes and behavior and of the overall processes of a system, and not simply the biological or neural processes themselves.
Although psychological questions were asked in antiquity (see Aristotle's De Memoria et Reminiscentia or "On Memory and Recollection"), psychology emerged as a separate discipline only recently. The first person to call himself a "psychologist", Wilhelm Wundt, opened the first psychological laboratory in 1879.
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History
Main article: History of psychology
The late 19th century marks the start of psychology as a scientific enterprise. The year 1879 is commonly seen as the start of psychology as an independent field of study, because in that year German scientist Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory dedicated exclusively to psychological research in Leipzig, Germany. Other important early contributors to the field include Hermann Ebbinghaus (a pioneer in studies on memory), the Russian Ivan Pavlov (who discovered the learning process of classical conditioning), and the Austrian Sigmund Freud. Freud's influence has been enormous, though more as cultural icon than a force in (scientific) psychology. Freud's basic theories postulated the existence in humans of various unconscious and instinctive "drives", and that the "self" existed as a perpetual battle between the desires and demands of the internal id, ego, and superego. The mid century saw a rejection of Freud's theories among many psychologists as being too unscientific, as well as a reaction against Edward Titchener's abstract approach to the mind. This led to the formulation of behaviorism by John B. Watson, which was popularized by B.F. Skinner. Behaviorism proposed epistemologically limiting psychological study to overt behavior, since that could be quantified and easily measured. Scientific knowledge of the "mind" was considered too metaphysical, hence impossible to achieve. The final decades of the 20th century have seen the rise of a new interdisciplinary approach to studying human psychology, known collectively as cognitive science. Cognitive science again considers the "mind" as a subject for investigation, using the tools of evolutionary psychology, linguistics, computer science, philosophy, and neurobiology. This new form of investigation has proposed that a wide understanding of the human mind is possible, and that such an understanding may be applied to other research domains, such as artificial intelligence.
Principles of psychology
Mind and brain
Psychology does not necessarily refer to the brain or nervous system and can be framed purely in terms of phenomenological or information processing theories of the mind. Increasingly, though, an understanding of brain function is being included in psychological theory and practice, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence, neuropsychology, and cognitive neuroscience.
Schools of thought
Various schools of thought have argued for a particular model to be used as a guiding theory by which all, or the majority, of human behavior can be explained. The popularity of these has waxed and waned over time. Some psychologists may think of themselves as adherents to a particular school of thought and reject the others, although most consider each as an approach to understanding the mind, and not necessarily as mutually exclusive theories. See psychological schools of thought for a comprehensive list.
Scope of psychology
Psychology is an extremely broad field, encompassing many different approaches to the study of mental processes and behavior. Below are the major areas of inquiry that comprise psychology. A comprehensive list of the sub-fields and areas within psychology can be found at the list of psychological topics.
Biological basis: the brain
Main articles: Behavioral neuroscience, Cognitive neuroscience, Neuropsychology, Evolutionary psychology
Because all behavior is controlled by the central nervous system, it is sensible to study how the brain functions in order to understand behavior. This is the approach taken in behavioral neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, and Neuropsychology. Neuropsychology is the branch of psychology that aims to understand how the structure and function of the brain relate to specific psychological processes. Often neuropsychologists are employed as scientists to advance scientific or medical knowledge. Neuropsychology is particularly concerned with the understanding of brain injury in an attempt to work out normal psychological function.
The approach of cognitive neuroscience to studying the link between brain and behavior is to use brain imaging tools, such as fMRI, to observe which areas of the brain are active during a particular task.
Information processing: the mind
Main articles: Cognitive psychology, Cognitive science
The nature of thought is another core interest in psychology. Cognitive psychology studies cognition, the mental processes underlying behavior. It uses information processing as a framework for understanding the mind. Perception, learning, problem solving, memory, attention, language and emotion are all well researched areas. Cognitive psychology is associated with a school of thought known as cognitivism, whose adherents argue for an information processing model of mental function, informed by positivism and experimental psychology. Techniques and models from cognitive psychology are widely applied and form the mainstay of psychological theories in many areas of both research and applied psychology.
Cognitive science is very closely related to cognitive psychology, but differs in some of the research methods used, and has a slightly greater emphasis on explaining mental phenomena in terms of both behavior and neural processing.
Both areas use computational models to simulate phenomena of interest. Because mental events cannot directly be observed, computational models provide a tool for studying the functional organization of the mind. Such models give cognitive psychologists a way to study the "software" of mental processes independent of the "hardware" it runs on, be it the brain or a computer.
Change over time: development
Main articles: Developmental psychology, Educational psychology
Largely focusing on the development of the human mind through the life span, developmental psychology seeks to understand how people come to perceive, understand, and act within the world and how these processes change as they age. This may focus on intellectual, cognitive, neural, social, or moral development. Researchers who study children use a number of unique research methods to make observations in natural settings or to engage them in experimental tasks. Such tasks often resemble specially designed games and activities that are both enjoyable for the child and scientifically useful, and researchers have even devised clever methods to study the mental processes of small infants. In addition to studying children, developmental psychologists also study processes throughout the life span, especially at other times of rapid change (such as adolescence and old age). Urie Bronfenbrenner's theory of development in context (The Ecology of Human Development - ISBN 0-674-22456-6) is influential in this field, as are those mentioned in "Educational psychology" immediately below, as well as many others. Developmental psychologists draw on the full range of theorists in scientific psychology to inform their research.
Educational psychology largely seeks to apply much of this knowledge to understanding how learning can best take place in educational situations. Because of this, the work of child psychologists such as Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner has been influential in creating teaching methods and educational practices.
Interaction with others
Main articles: Social psychology, Community psychology, Personality psychology
Social psychology is the study of the nature and causes of human social behavior, with an emphasis on how people think towards each other and how they relate to each other. Social Psychology aims to understand how we make sense of social situations. For example, this could involve the influence of others on an individual's behavior (e.g., conformity or persuasion), the perception and understanding of social cues, or the formation of attitudes or stereotypes about other people. Social cognition is a common approach and involves a mostly cognitive and scientific approach to understanding social behavior.
A related area is Community psychology, which examines psychological and mental health issues on the level of the community rather than only on the level of the individual. "Sense of community" has become its conceptual center (Sarason, 1986; Chavis & Pretty, 1999).
Personality psychology includes theories of career development.
Study of animals in psychology
Psychology as a science is primarily concerned with humans, although the behavior and mental processes of animals is also an important part of psychological research, either as a subject in its own right (e.g., animal cognition and ethology), or somewhat more controversially, as a way of gaining an insight into human psychology by means of comparison (including comparative psychology) or via animal models of emotional and behavior systems as seen in neuroscience of psychology ( e.g., affective neuroscience and social neuroscience).
Mental health
Main articles: Clinical psychology, Health psychology
Clinical psychology is the application of psychology to the understanding, treatment, and assessment of psychopathology, behavioral or mental health issues. It has traditionally been associated with counselling and psychotherapy, although modern clinical psychology may take an eclectic approach, including a number of therapeutic approaches. Typically, although working with many of the same clients as psychiatrists, clinical psychologists do not prescribe psychiatric drugs. Some clinical psychologists may focus on the clinical management of patients with brain injury. This area is known as clinical neuropsychology.
In recent years and particularly in the United States, a major split has been developing between academic research psychologists in universities and some branches of clinical psychology. Many academic psychologists believe that these clinicians use therapies based on discredited theories and unsupported by empirical evidence of their effectiveness. From the other side, these clinicians believe that the academics are ignoring their experience in dealing with actual patients. The disagreement has resulted in the formation of the American Psychological Society by the research psychologists as a new body distinct from the American Psychological Association.
Whereas clinical psychology focuses on mental health and neurological illness, health psychology is concerned with the psychology of a much wider range of health-related behavior including healthy eating, the doctor-patient relationship, a patient's understanding of health information, and beliefs about illness. Health psychologists may be involved in public health campaigns, examining the impact of illness or health policy on quality of life or in research into the psychological impact of health and social care.
Applied psychology
Main articles: Applied psychology, Industrial and organizational psychology, Forensic psychology, Human factors, Traffic psychology
The basic premise of applied psychology is the use of psychological principles and theories to overcome practical problems in other fields, such as business management, product design, ergonomics, nutrition, and clinical medicine. Applied psychology includes the areas of industrial/organizational psychology, human factors, forensic psychology, as well as many other areas.
Industrial and organizational
Industrial and organizational psychology focuses to varying degrees on the psychology of the workforce, customer, and consumer, including issues such as the psychology of recruitment, selecting employees from an applicant pool which overall includes training, performance appraisal, job satisfaction, work behavior, stress at work and management.
Forensic psychology
Forensic psychology is the area concerned with the application of psychological methods and principles to legal questions and issues. Most typically, this involves a clinical analysis of a particular individual and an assessment of some specific psycho-legal question. Forensic psychology refers to any application of psychological principles, methods or understanding to legal questions or issues. In addition to the applied practices, it also includes academic or empirical research on topics involving the relationship of law to human mental processes and behavior.
Human factors
Human factors is the study of how cognitive and psychological processes affect our interaction with tools and objects in the environment. The goal of research in human factors is to better design objects by taking into account the limitations and biases of human mental processes and behavior.
Research methods
Psychology is conducted both scientifically and non-scientifically, but is to a large extent wholly rigorous. Mainstream psychology is based largely on positivism, using quantitative studies and the scientific method to test and disprove hypotheses, often in an experimental context. Psychology tends to be eclectic, drawing on scientific knowledge from other fields to help explain and understand behavior. However, not all psychological research methods strictly follow the empirical positivism philosophy. Qualitative research utilizes interpretive techniques and is descriptive in nature, enabling the gathering of rich clinical information unattainable by classical experimentation. Some psychologists, particularly adherents to humanistic psychology, may go as far as completely rejecting a scientific approach, viewing psychology more as an art rather than a rigid science. However, mainstream psychology has a bias towards the scientific method; the dominant school of cognitivism and other scientific approaches are thus the guiding theoretical framework used by most psychologists to understand thought and behavior.
The testing of different aspects of psychological function is a significant area of contemporary psychology. Psychometric and statistical methods predominate, including various well-known standardised tests as well as those created ad hoc as the situation or experiment requires.
Academic psychologists may focus purely on research and psychological theory, aiming to further psychological understanding in a particular area, while other psychologists may work in applied psychology to deploy such knowledge for immediate and practical benefit. However, these approaches are not mutually exclusive and most psychologists will be involved in both researching and applying psychology at some point during their work. Clinical psychology, among many of the various discipline of psychology, aims at developing in practicing psychologists knowledge of and experience with research and experimental methods which they will continue to build up as well as employ as they treat individual with psychological issues or use psychology to help others.
Where an area of interest is considered to need specific training and specialist knowledge (especially in applied areas), psychological associations will typically set up a governing body to manage training requirements. Similarly, requirements may be laid down for university degrees in psychology, so that students acquire an adequate knowledge in a number of areas. Additionally, areas of practical psychology, where psychologists offer treatment to others, may require that psychologists be licensed by government regulatory bodies as well.
Controlled experiments
Main article: Experimental psychology
The majority of psychological research is conducted in the laboratory under controlled conditons. This method of research relies completely on the scientific method to determine the basis of behavor. Common measurements of behavior include reaction time and various psychometric measurements. Experiments are conducted to test a particular hypothesis.
As an example of a psychological experiment, one may want to test people's perception of different tones. Specifically, one could ask the following question: is it easier for people to discriminate one pair of tones from another depending upon their frequency? To answer this, one would want to disprove the hypothesis that all tones are equally discriminable, regardless of their frequency. (See hypothesis testing for an explanation of why one would disprove a hypothesis rather than attempt to prove one.) A task to test this hypothesis would have a participant seated in a room listening to a series of tones. If the participant would make one indication (by pressing a button, for example) if they thought the tones were two different sounds, and another indication if they thought they were the same sound. The proportion of correct responses would be the measurement used to describe whether or not all the tones were equally discriminable. The result of this particular experiment would probably indicate better discrimination of certain tones based on the human threshold of hearing.
Correlational studies
A correlational study uses statistics to determine if one variable is likely to co-occur with another variable. For example, one might be interested in whether or not a person's smoking is correlated with that individual's chance of getting lung cancer. One way to answer this would simply be to take a group of people who smoke and measure the proportion of those who get lung cancer within a certain time. In this particular case, one would probably find a high correlation. (Tobacco is already known to have a deleterious effect on the lungs). Based on this correlation alone, however, we cannot know for certain that smoking is the cause of lung cancer. It could be that those more prone to cancer are also more likely to take up smoking. A third alternative is that some other variable caused both conditons. This is a major limitation of correlational studies, exemplified by the fact that correlation does not imply causation.
Longitudinal studies
A longitudinal study is a research method which observes a particular population over time. For example, one might wish to study specific language impairment (SLI) by observing a group of individuals with the condition over a period of time. This method has the advantage of seeing how a condition can affect individuals over long time scales. However, since individual differences between members of the group are not controlled, it may be difficult to draw conclusions about the populations.
Neuropsychological methods
Neuropsychology involves the study of both healthy individuals and patients, typically who have suffered either brain injury or mental illness.
Cognitive neuropsychology and cognitive neuropsychiatry study neurological or mental impairment in an attempt to infer theories of normal mind and brain function. This typically involves looking for differences in patterns of remaining ability (known as 'functional dissociations') which can give clues as to whether abilities are comprised of smaller functions, or are controlled by a single cognitive mechanism.
In addition, experimental techniques are often used which also apply to studying the neuropsychology of healthy indviduals. These include behavioural experiments, brain-scanning or functional neuroimaging - used to examine the activity of the brain during task performance, and techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, which can safely alter the function of small brain areas to investigate their importance in mental operations.
Computational modeling
Computational modeling is a tool often used in cognitive psychology to simulate a particular behavior using a computer. This method has several advantages. Since modern computers are extremely fast, many simulations can be run in a short time, allowing for a great deal of statistical power. Modeling also allows psychologists to visualise hypotheses about the functional organization of mental events that couldn't be directly observed in a human.
Several different types of modeling are used to study behavior. Connectionism uses neural nets to simulate the brain. Another method is symbolic modeling, which represents different mental objects using variables and rules. Other types of modeling include dynamic systems and stochastic modeling.
Criticisms of psychology
Although modern mainstream psychology largely endeavors to be a scientific endeavor, the field has a history of controversy. Some criticisms of psychology have been made on ethical and philosophical grounds. Some have argued that by subjecting the human mind to experimentation and statistical study, psychologists objectify persons; because it treats human beings as things, as objects that can be examined by experiment, psychology is sometimes portrayed as dehumanizing, ignoring or downplaying what is most essential about being human.
Another common criticism of psychology concerns its fuzziness as a science. Since some areas of psychological research rely on "soft" methods such as surveys and questionnaires, some have said, psychology is not as scientific as it claims to be, although many would argue this is an outdated criticism based on misconceptions. Many believe that the mind is not amenable to quantitative scientific research, and as support for their criticism cite the vast theoretical diversity of psychology, a discipline which agrees on very little about how the mind works. Some point out that astronomy's claim to being a science is also open to argument because its theories are largely untestable, being based in part on events that cannot be directly observed (philosophically, a scientific theory must be falsifiable: testable and open to the possibility of being proven false).
One approach calling itself critical psychology takes almost an opposite approach. Rather than scientific validity being the standard against which psychology research should be judged, critical psychology uses Marxism to criticize mainstream psychology, claiming among other things that it serves as a bulwark of an unjust or unsatisfying status quo when it should, instead, use its methods and knowledge base to critique and change societal norms.
References
- Aristotle, Joe Sachs (translator). (350 BCE / 2001) On Memory and Recollection (De Memoria et Reminiscentia). Santa Fe, NM : Green Lion Press. ISBN 1888009179
- Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-22456-6
- Chavis, D.M., and Pretty, G. (1999). Sense of community: Advances in measurement and application. Journal of Community Psychology, 27(6), 635-642.
- Sarason, S.B. (1986). Commentary: The emergence of a conceptual center. Journal of Community Psychology, 14, 405-407.
See also
For a comprehensive list of psychological topics on wikipedia, please see the list of psychological topics. See List of psychologists for a full list of famous and influential psychologists. See List of publications in psychology for important publications in psychology.
Areas related to psychology:
- Artificial consciousness (see also simulated consciousness)
- Cognitive science
- Complex systems
- Computer science
- Counseling
- Discourse analysis
- Economics and marketing
- Education
- Ethology
- Game theory
- Hypnotherapy
- Linguistics and especially psycholinguistics
- Neuroscience
- Philosophy of mind
- Philosophy of psychology
- Psychology of religion
- Sociology
- Systems theory
External links
Psychology Resources
- AmoebaWeb Psychology Resources
- A Century of Psychology (APA)
- Classics in the History of Psychology
- Dictionary of Psychology
- Encyclopedia of Psychology
- Psychology Articles
- Psychology Essays
- Pictures of famous psychologists
- Psychology Conferences
- Psychology Congresses (mostly European)
- ScienceDaily Mind and Brain news
- PsychCentral
- Psychology Resources (including some unique material on Community Psychology and also on Cumulative Risk and Resilience)
- Psychology Career Ladders (criticism)
Psychology Societies
- American Psychological Association
- American Psychological Society
- Australian Psychological Society
- Belgian Psychological Association
- British Psychological Society
- Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic Association
- Canadian Psychological Association
- Finnish Psychological Society
- German Psychological Association
- Norwegian society for Master in Psychology
- Singapore Psychological Society
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Wikipedia-Article "Motivation"
In psychology, motivation is the driving force (desire) behind all actions of human beings, animals, and lower organisms.
Many textbooks define it as an internal state or condition that activates behavior and gives it direction, desire or want that energizes and directs goal-oriented behavior, or an influence of needs and desires on the intensity and direction of behavior.
Motivation is often based on emotions, specifically, on the search for positive emotional experiences and the avoidance of negative ones, where positive and negative are defined by the individual brain state, not by social norms: a person may be driven to self-injury or violence because his or her brain is conditioned to create a positive response to these actions. Motivation is important because it is involved in the performance of all learned responses.
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Types of motivation
Some would argue that the two best types of motivation are fear and desire. Motivation can be viewed as either extrinsic or intrinsic.
Physiological needs
The easiest kinds of motivation to analyse, at least superficially, are those based upon obvious physiological needs. These include hunger, thirst, and escape from pain. The analysis of the processes underlying such motivations can make use of research on animals, in ethology, comparative psychology, and physiological psychology, and the hormonal and brain processes involved in them seem to have much in common at least across all mammals and probably across all vertebrates. However, in humans, even these basic fundamental motivations are modified and mediated through social and cultural influences of various kinds: for example no analysis of hunger in humans could ignore the issues of eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and obesity, for which the parallels in other animals are unclear. Even in animals, it is clear that the earlier homeostatic "depletion-repletion" models of such motivations are no longer adequate, since many animals feed on a precautionary rather than a reactive basis, most obviously when preparing for hibernation.
Other biological motivations
At the next level are motivations that have an obvious biological basis but are not required for the immediate survival of the organism. These include the powerful motivations for sex, parenting and aggression: again, the physiological bases of these are similar in humans and other animals, but the social complexities are greater in humans (or perhaps we just understand them better in our own species). In these areas insights from behavioral ecology and sociobiology have offered new analyses of both animal and human behaviour in the last decades of the twentieth century, though the extension of sociobiological analyses to humans remains highly controversial. Perhaps similar, but perhaps at a rather different level, is the motivation for new stimulation - variously called exploration, curiosity, or arousal-seeking. A crucial issue in the analysis of such motivations is whether they have a homeostatic component, so that they build up over time if not discharged; this idea was a key component of early twentieth century analyses of sex and aggression by, for example, Freud and Konrad Lorenz, and is a feature of much popular psychology of motivation. The biological analyses of recent decades, however, imply that such motivations are situational, arising when they are (or seem to be) needed to ensure an animal's fitness, and subsiding without consequences when the occasion for them passes.
Secondary goals
These important biological needs tend to generate more powerful emotions and thus more powerful motivation than secondary goals. This is described in models like Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. A distinction can also be made between direct and indirect motivation: In direct motivation, the action satisfies the need, in indirect motivation, the action satisfies an intermediate goal, which can in turn lead to the satisfaction of a need. In work environments, money is typically viewed as a powerful indirect motivation, whereas job satisfaction and a pleasant social environment are more direct motivations. However, this example highlights well that an indirect motivational factor (money) towards an important goal (having food, clothes etc.) may well be more powerful than the direct motivation provided by an enjoyable workplace. Motivation, as Stephen Robbins (2000) says, is included one component of performance, that is performance is ability times motivation.
Coercion
The most obvious form of motivation is coercion, where the avoidance of pain or other negative consequences has an immediate effect. When such coercion is permanent, it is considered slavery. While coercion is considered morally reprehensible in many philosophies, it is widely practiced on prisoners, students in mandatory schooling, and in the form of conscription. Critics of modern capitalism charge that without social safety networks, wage slavery is inevitable. Successful coercion sometimes can take priority over other types of motivation.
Self control
The self-control of motivation is increasingly understood as a subset of emotional intelligence; a person may be highly intelligent according to a more conservative definition (as measured by many intelligence tests), yet unmotivated to dedicate this intelligence to certain tasks. Victor Vroom's "expectancy theory" provides an account of when people will decide whether to exert self control to pursue a particular goal. Self control is often contrasted with automatic processes of stimulus-response, as in the behaviorist's paradigm of B.F. Skinner.
Controlling motivation
The control of motivation is only understood to a limited extent. There are many different approaches of motivation training, but many of these are considered pseudoscientific by critics. To understand how to control motivation it is first necessary to understand why many people lack motivation.
In recent years, non-work related activities like Internet surfing have become an increasing concern for employers in industrialized nations. Some companies have used prohibitive tactics to counter this perceived threat, others try to define certain limits, and many merely take action in extreme cases. Even for home users, Internet addiction is increasingly perceived as a risk. Similar concerns accompany the use of video games, television, and Wikipedia. It is true that for many people, these activities have reached the point of psychological addiction.
This can be explained with a positive feedback loop. The aforementioned activities can generate quick, positive emotional responses of different types -- the humor of sitcoms, the ersatz family of soap operas, the endorphin release from action movies and video games, or the curiosity satisfied, the loneliness mitigated and the boredom supposedly quenched by visiting "important" news websites. It is known that connections in the human brain's neural network are intensified by repeated activity, which means that it is often easier to continue to do what one is doing than to do something else. This is how a daily habit can, over time, turn into a psychological addiction that is hard to break.
The key question for motivation is then: Which activities generate a positive emotional response, and which ones do not? The answers to this question are increasingly explored by neuropsychology. It is known that, for most people, activities that involve powerful audiovisual input have a stronger emotional effect. Purely text-based information, on the other hand, is usually not very motivating. This seems intuitive given the fact that reading is a trained higher cortical skill, whereas large brain areas are congenitally devoted to processing audiovisual input. For this class of information, there are simply more connections from the processing areas of the brain's cortex to the lower emotional centers of the limbic system. It therefore seems logical to assume that motivation can be created more easily through multimedia input.
Since humans are social animals, it also appears natural that social connections play a crucial role in motivation. Not much is known about the way the human brain deals with social relationships, but for the sake of the argument, it can be assumed that social connections are merely very powerful, emotionally encoded memories connected to others. An idea which is connected to these memories thus triggers the emotions. It follows logically, then, that negative social relationships are likely to decrease motivation, and that intrinsic desire to act has to be substituted within these relationships with coercion. For teachers and managers alike, it then seems desirable to maintain such positive relationships in order to provide a motivating atmosphere -- however, personal reasons may stand in the way of this goal. This is why many motivation control programs try to teach managers to find outlets for their personal feelings other than their employees.
Early programming
Modern imaging has provided solid empirical support for the psychological theory that emotional programming is largely defined in childhood. Harold Chugani, Medical Director of the PET Clinic at the Children's Hospital of Michigan and professor of pediatrics, neurology and radiology at Wayne State University School of Medicine, has found that children's brains are much more capable of consuming new information (linked to emotions) than those of adults. Brain activity in cortical regions is about twice as high in children as in adults from the third to the ninth year of life. After that period, it declines constantly to the low levels of adulthood. Brain volume, on the other hand, is already at about 95% of adult levels in the ninth year of life.
Data by Harold Chugani on brain activity, 1996 (click image for source details). The red dots show activity in the frontal cortex, the "youngest" region in the human brain from an evolutionary perspective. It is important for analysis and creativity. The blue curve, copied from another diagram of the same source, shows the development of brain volume through childhood. As can be seen from the data, brain activity in children is much higher than in adults, making early influences critical for motivation in later life.
This is crucial to the understanding of motivation as well. Different people can generate positive emotional responses from different actions. Mathematicians may be able to enjoy dealing with complex formulas, programmers feel the same way about computer code, musicians may feel "in tune with themselves" when composing or playing, and so forth. Given the above knowledge about the early programming of the human brain, and given that memories are encoded together with emotions, it must be concluded that at least part of these different emotional responses are generated during childhood. A child who grows up watching television but not reading any books may find it difficult in later life to be motivated by purely textual information; a child neglected by its parents may be unable to make motivating social connections later.
A more controversial conclusion is that exposing children to too much simplistic, emotionally driven entertainment will "dull" their brains and make them incapable of acting far outside the narrow boundaries of indirect motivation to satisfy primary needs (money to survive) and quick positive emotional response (TV, games etc.). If this view is correct, it would be very difficult to fix these problems in adult life.
The education systems of most countries do take little of the above discussion into account, to the disdain of many scientists who study them. Learning is frequently equated with memorizing, and negative conditioning (in some countries to the point of corporal punishment) is common. Positive experiences, on the other hand, are often deliberately prohibited. Many schools (especially in the United States) have bans against public displays of affection, such as hugging and kissing, and teenage sexuality is frequently considered highly problematic, countered with severe punishment and sexual abstinence campaigns. While these actions are taken out of the belief that they are necessary to prevent negative consequences such as teenage pregnancies, groups like the Coalition for Positive Sexuality argue that this kind of social control harms teenagers while failing to accomplish any useful goal. Whether physical experiences are counted as part of a positive environment or not, it is quite probable that such an environment is necessary for a positive learning atmosphere.
Organization
Besides the very direct approaches to motivation, beginning in early life, there are solutions which are more abstract but perhaps nevertheless more practical for self-motivation. Virtually every motivation guidebook includes at least one chapter about the proper organization of one's tasks and goals. It is usually suggested that it is critical to maintain a list of tasks, with a distinction between those which are completed and those which are not, thereby moving some of the required motivation for their completion from the tasks themselves into a "meta-task", namely the processing of the tasks in the task list, which can become a routine. The viewing of the list of completed tasks may also be considered motivating, as it can create a satisfying sense of accomplishment.
Most electronic to-do lists have this basic functionality, although the distinction between completed and non-completed tasks is not always clear (completed tasks are sometimes simply deleted, instead of kept in a separate list).
Other forms of information organization may also be motivational, such as the use of mindmaps to organize one's ideas, and thereby "train" the neural network that is the human brain to focus on the given task. More simpler forms of idea notation such as simple bullet-point style lists may also be sufficient, or even more useful to less visually oriented persons.
One interesting aspect that has been somewhat neglected by sociology is the addictive nature of role playing games, which work with a system of experience points and "levels" to motivate the player to keep going; when he has gained enough points, he can advance to the next level, thereby getting new abilities and a higher status in the community, if any. While many electronic motivation systems have a basic concept of priorities, few explore the possibility of using actual scores as a motivational factor. However, some online communities that have nothing to do with gaming use similar systems; notably, the Everything2 collaborative writing community employs a complex voting/experience system. Perhaps such systems can also be used on a smaller scale.
Drugs
Some authors, especially in the transhumanist movement, have suggested the use of "smart drugs", also known as nootropics, as "motivation-enhancers". The effects of many of these drugs on the brain are not well understood, and their legal status often makes open experimentation difficult. It is a fact that some of history's most productive artists have also been drug users, although it is not clear whether this correlation is also of a causative nature.
In Education
Motivation can have several effects on how students learn and their behavior towards subject matter. It can:
- Direct behavior toward particular goals
- Lead to increased effort and energy
- Increase initiation of, and persistence in, activities
- Enhance cognitive processing
- Determine what consequences are reinforcing
- Lead to improved performance.
This is a theory from Jeanne Ormrod in "Educational Psychology: Developing Learners".
Is Money a Motivator?
Yes, at lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, such as Physiological needs, money is a motivator, however it tends to have a motivating effect on staff that lasts only for a short period (in accordance with Herzberg's two-factor model of motivation). At higher levels of the hierarchy, praise, respect, recognition, empowerment and a sense of belonging are far more powerful motivators than money, as both Abraham Maslow and Douglas McGregor's Theory X and theory Y have demonstrated vividly.
Maslow has money at the lowest level of the hierarchy and shows other needs are better motivators to staff. McGregor places money in his Theory X category and feels it is a poor motivator. Praise and recognition are placed in the Theory Y category and are considered stronger motivators than money.
See also
- Abraham Maslow
- Behavior
- Desire
- Douglas McGregor
- Enneagram
- Equity theory
- Frederick Herzberg
- Human behavior
- Myers-Briggs
- Personality
- Preference
- Victor Vroom
Reference
- Ormond, Jeanne Ellis. "Educational Psychology: Developing Learners" Fourth Edition. Merrill Prentice Hall, 2003.
- Spevak, P. A., Ph.D. & Karinch. "Empowering Underachievers" First Edition. New Horizon Press, 2000.