Motivation: definition, sources, and relationship to behavior

Motivation

The concept of motivation has as many diverse meanings as there are its application and intended purpose for its application. Word Net (2011) gives a psychological angle of the motivation idea. It describes motivation as a psychological element that prompts an organism into deeds focused on a set target or goal. Motivation is said to be the reason driving the action, or that which attaches direction, control and behavior to behavior of an individual.

It is considered the as the aspect that prompts, directs and sustains or maintains the target/goal oriented behavior of human beings. In the study of motor response and receptors, motivation is summarized as what causes an organism to act, be it withdrawing your hand due to pain, or running after an ice cream vendor when craving ice-cream.

Motivation encapsulates the biological, social and the cognitive drives that initiate behavior. In our daily interaction, we describe what makes someone behave or do particular things in the way they do as motivators towards the goal. The reason for an action is the motivation for instance a student may be motivated by the urge to be an engineer hence will spend a lot of time in the engineering laboratory (About.com, 2011)

Components of Motivation; Motivation has been studied to have several components or aspects that initiate it. The components of motivation are classified into three main categories as; Activation, persistence and intensity.

(a). Activation; is the most important component of motivation since it ignites or initiates the behavior without which no exhibition of motivation would occur. A good example of activation is the decision to take register for guitar classes for a prospecting rock artist.

(b). Persistence; is the component that will keep the initiated behavior alive and going. It helps the subject to keep a never dying spirit towards achieving their goal regardless of the obstacles that may stand there of or along the way. Our prospecting rock star will have to persist in his classes even if it means he has to take them after a long day at school, distance, sacrifice of leisure time and so on.

(c). Concentration; this can be defined as the keenness, attention and vigor that one puts into the persistence leading to achievement of these goals. For instance, again, our rock star to be may have to instill into him the discipline of learning complex musical transcripts, buy more books and read on top of the regular school books (Motivation.co.in, 2011).

Sources of motivation

The drive to initiate, persist and concentrate in doing something can be derived from two main sources as studied by behavioral scientists; Intrinsic and Extrinsic motivational sources.

(a). Intrinsic motivators; these are the inbuilt in an individual, they are innate and emanate from each individual in their own different ways. For instance an individual may be motivated to keep learning ballet foot steps just for ego gratification of being better than the rest in the ballet steps.

(b). Extrinsic motivators; are those that will manifest from outside towards the individual and drive him into action. These external motivators may be in form of the "carrot and stick" perspective. This is a circumstance where the punishment or reward that may follow an action, motivates the action by an individual. A god example is if a ballet dancer would ultimately engage in competition, where medals and rewards will be issued, then he will strive to have a flawless and intense dance drill (Huitt, W., 2001).

Relationship between behavior and motivation

The relationship between behavior and motivation is one that is inseparable, especially between groups and individuals. The motivation that a group subjects an individual to is one that more often than not has serious impacts on the behavior of the individual. In group dynamics, the inverse of the former is also true, an individual's motivation can as well impact the behavior of a group. Quite often it evidenced that the sum of an individual's behavior and even that of a group are not mutually exclusive self initiated but the after effects of some type of behavior group.

The perfect example here is the actions of a crowd. It is noted that a crowd will behave as to the dictates of the generally accepted behavior for that particular event. In this case, the behavior of a group is motivated by the majority of the membership of that crowd. For instance a group watching soccer will tend to use large noisy instruments, which is the inverse of Tennis fans who will just clap. It is worth noting that the level of satisfaction in both is the same as these the generally accepted norms. Among the crowds there could be a minority that may not be comfortable with the noise in soccer or sitting down in Tennis but they will be motivated by the majority to behave as the rest.

A crowd behavior can also motivate the behavior of bigger masses. For instance during the world cup soccer tournaments or any other live broadcast soccer games, the way the fans will behave at the live stadium and watched by people at home may motivate the masses out there to behave in the same way. Generally Spontaneous Collective Behaviors will motivate a mass from a crowd or even a group's behavior. Most of the social movements and civil society drives are a result of motivation from an individual into a group, crowd and the masses (Helium, 2011).

How motivation is exhibited in behavior