Understanding the Psychology of Motivation: What Drives Human Behavior?

Those with a Graduate Diploma Psychology and other psych qualifications should be experts on human motivation and the psychological factors that influence motivation and drive human behaviour. For the rest of us, it’s a touch more mysterious. 

What drives us? What makes people act the way they do and behave in a certain way? This article will explain the psychology of motivation. It will break down different types of motivation, the underlying theories, and how they affect decision-making, performance, and wellbeing. So, if you’re interested in this topic, continue reading to learn more.

What is Motivation?

Motivation describes the reasons why a person does certain things; it is the driving force behind human behaviour. Motivation is the psychological process that initiates, guides and maintains goal-oriented behaviours. For instance, it’s what helps you exercise or lose weight, quit smoking or drinking or pushes you to get that promotion at work or a high grade in study. In simple terms, motivation causes us to act in a way that gets us closer to our goals and where we want to be in life.

Motivation includes the cognitive, emotional, social and biological forces that activate human behaviour and cause us to do and say everything we do in life. It also involves different factors that direct and maintain goal-directed actions, such as the examples we’ve given above. However, such motives are rarely directly observable and may be hidden in our psyches. As a result, psychologists and those with an interest in motivation must often infer the reasons why we do the things we do based on observable behaviours that we demonstrate.

Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation

Let’s spend some time discussing these different types of motivation. 

Intrinsic motivation is solely internal and arises from within us. For instance, solving a puzzle, playing a video game for fun or engaging in a hobby is internal to us and is done purely for gratification or leisure pursuits.

Extrinsic motivation arises from outside us and often involves social and external rewards such as money, social recognition, praise and trophies. An example of this is an athlete competing in a sport for praise and global recognition.

Key Psychological Theories About Motivation

There are a few famous psychological theories that help us to understand human motivation and the behaviours associated with it. Let’s explain some of them now to give you a better understanding of the topic.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow, one of the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century, proposed the theory of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – a key psychological, motivational theory that comprises a five-tier pyramid model of human needs. At the bottom is physiological, then safety, moving up to love and belonging, and then self-actualisation. 

The theory states that lower-level, basic human needs like food, water, shelter and safety must first be met in order for people to have their higher needs fulfilled. At a base level, humans are motivated to seek these things to be safe, comfortable and able to engage in other, different behaviours. 

While few people are believed to have reached the level of self-actualisation, we can all have peak experiences, such as through meditation or religious engagement. 

It is worth mentioning that the order of the levels is not fixed, and different people will fluctuate between the levels. For instance, for some people esteem outweighs love, while others may reach self-actualisation despite poverty or hardship. In this theory, human behaviour is often motivated by multiple needs at the same time. 

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has been applied in various settings, such as workplace motivational psychology, education, counselling and nursing. 

Self-Determination Theory

This term has traditionally been used within a political and diplomatic context to refer to the process a country or group of people undergoes to assert independence. However, self-determination indeed has a more personal and psychology-relevant meaning these days, which is the ability or process of making your own choices and controlling your own life.

See Also

Self-determination theory is a vital piece of psychological well-being theory because, as you may expect, people like to feel in control of their own lives and like the idea that they have free will and choice.

This psychological theory links things such as personality, human motivation, and optimal functioning. It suggests that there are two main types of motivation—intrinsic and extrinsic—and that both are powerful forces in shaping who we are and how we behave. We’ve covered these two types of motivation above. 

How to Enhance and Sustain Motivation

The final section of this article will provide some practical tips for enhancing and sustaining motivation through goal-setting and personal meaning.

One way you can generate and sustain motivation is to set a goal for your life. This will vary for each person, but we all have something we can usually work on. Some people might want to work more or work less. Others may want to lose weight, quit smoking or cut back on their alcohol consumption. By setting a goal and working towards it, you’re improving your life and creating an outcome that means something to you.

The motivation behind your goal may be intrinsic, extrinsic or a mixture of both. For instance, you might choose a new hobby that both brings you pleasure and increases your connection to other people and sees you praised by the hobby community.

As you achieve a goal, you feel better about yourself, often due to the outcome of the goal. For instance, if you lose weight, you’ll feel better about yourself, and your self-image will improve.

Finding Your Drive

This informative article has covered the psychology of motivation, and what drives human behaviour. We’ve covered two key psychological theories about motivation and also shared some advice on how to enhance and sustain motivation. 

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