Motivation
Introduction
The science of psychology deals with the mind and the study of behavior in relation to the physical and social environment. Psychology has drawn attention to the importance of behavior as a clue to mind, but inferences from behavior about consciousness were part of expected interpretations of experimental studies. In the context of organizations, a prospective personnel manager needs psychology to understand the problems in personnel selection, placement, morale, motivation, grievances, accidents, tardiness, absenteeism, training, counseling, and other operative functions of personnel management and labor relations. Psychology has contributed much to the science of leadership within the field of organizations.
Psychosocial development is characterized by an individual’s increasing awareness of self. It is a transition from the reflexive and reactive state to that of an organized and active state. This development is not independent but interacts with biological and cognitive development (1997). At any given time, the learner will have to cope with meeting the challenges that these development presents, making every phase of the learner’s development meaningful. Psychosocial development of a child needs the guidance of other people like the parents or the teachers. When a child goes to school to learn, his or her learning and how the teacher handles it can affect the overall psychosocial development of the child.
The word “motivation” is derived from the word “motivate” which means to move, impel, or induce to act to satisfy a need or want (1999). Any consideration, idea or object prompting or exciting the individual to act or move him to do what his leader wants to be accomplished is what motivation is. Motivation may therefore be defined as a willingness to exert effort to achieve a goal or objective for rewards, whether intrinsic or extrinsic. Motivation implies a promise or expectation of reward as a result of an individual’s action. Without motivation or the will to do, not much by way of accomplishment can be made.
Several research studies on motivation have been undertaken by industrial psychologists and behavioral scientists. As a result, some theories about motivation and human behavior have been developed by researchers like
Physiological Make-up of Motivation
The thalamus is located deep in the interior of the brain, roughly at its center. It is considered as the busy traffic officer of the brain. As sensory messages from the senses come into the brain, the thalamus directs them to higher centers. It relays impulses from higher centers to the spinal cord, and of incoming sensory information to other brain centers. The only sense that completely bypasses the thalamus is the sense of smell. It has been claimed that damage in some thalamic areas can lead specifically to retrograde amnesia (inability to recall memories from the past).
Beneath the thalamus sits a structure called the hypothalamus. In addition to their roles in behavioral control, these areas control many internal conditions of the body, such as body temperature, amorality of the body fluids, and the drive to eat and drink and control body weight (Guyton & Hall, 2000, p. 681). The hypothalamus is extremely small located in the middle portion of the entire limbic system. From a physiologic pint of view it is one of the central elements of the limbic system.
Stimulation of certain areas of the hypothalamus causes the anterior pituitary gland to secrete its endocrine hormones. The anterior pituitary gland receives its blood supply mainly from blood that flows first through the anterior pituitary vascular sinuses. A number of areas of the hypothalamus control specific vegetative and endocrine functions (Guyton & Hall, 2000, p. 684). In addition to the vegetative and endocrine functions of the hypothalamus, stimulation of or lesions in the hypothalamus often have profound effects on the emotional behavior of human beings. Stimulation or lesions in other regions of the limbic system, especially in the amygdale, the sepal area, and areas in the me encephalon, often cause effects similar to those elicited from the hypothalamus.
Located in the body are 8 major endocrine glands that secrete chemical substances called hormones, which make up the third class of chemical messengers. These hormones are released directly into the bloodstream, which carries them to organs and cells that may be far from their point of origin. This hormonal system regulates mainly the metabolic functions of the body.
The structures in the limbic system play an important role in memory and emotion. The term limbic system has been expanded to mean the entire neuronal circuitry that controls emotional behavior and motivational drives (Guyton and Hall, 2000, p. 681).
The amygdale is a complex of multiple small nuclei located immediately beneath the cortex of the medial anterior pole of each temporal lobe. The amygdale appears to be responsible for evaluating sensory information, quickly determining its emotional importance, and contributing to the initial decision to approach or withdraw from a person or situation. It is believed to help pattern the person’s behavioral response so that it is appropriate for each occasion. The amygdale also plays an important role in mediating anxiety and depression. Kluver-Bucy syndrome is a condition involving destruction of the amygdale and is very rare in humans.
The hippocampus is the most medial portion of the temporal lobe cortex where it folds first medially underneath the brain and then upward into the lower, inside surface of the lateral ventricle. The hippocampus compares sensory information with what the brain has learned to expect about the world. The hippocampus also enables us to form spatial memories so that we can accurately navigate through our environment. After removal or damage to the hippocampus, people have virtually no capability thereafter for storing verbal and symbolic types of memories in long-term memory, or even in intermediate memory lasting longer than a few minutes – a condition known as intergraded amnesia ( 2000, p. 675).
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
The best form of motivation is self-motivation with proper attitudes toward his or her work, co-workers and the management because this comes from within the individual. An individual’s own motivators and rewards are his or her own personal drives to achieve his ambition and goals. An individual could reward himself or herself with a vacation for a job well done as an intrinsic motivator. The company may provide the necessary motivations such as good pay, excellent benefits, and good environment but if he or she lacks personal drive, or the will to forge ahead, no amount of motivation will make him strive to great achievement. The employee needs personal initiative and motivation to achieve superior performance. Management should develop in the employees good work attitudes and proper behavior through seminars, conferences, workshops, and consultations.
There are many positive factors in motivating people, among them is the utilization of extrinsic rewards. Extrinsic rewards can come in many forms like monetary incentives, job security, praise and recognition, sense of belonging, employee participation, and competition among many others (Cameron & Pierce, 2002). It is up to the management to carefully balance their application because overdoing the use of any can also bring bad results.
The most commonly used incentive to stimulate the worker to greater production and efficiency is monetary remuneration. Money is unquestionably the single most powerful extrinsic motivator for most people (Dorgan, 1992). Unions usually ask for increased pay as a part of their bargaining demand knowing this is what the employees want. While money is important for providing what people need in everyday life, its effect upon work does not last long.
Several research studies showed that workers do not work harder just for the purpose of making more money alone, but are motivated also by intrinsic rewards such as the desire for accomplishment and success in their job. In other studies, majority of workers feel that they will be most motivated to do their best by monetary rewards.
Another extrinsic reward as motivator is praise and recognition. Whenever an employee accomplishes a good job, it is good that management recognizes such accomplishment by praising or rewarding the employee so that he or she would be motivated to always do a good job.
If an employee feels that he or she does not belong to the group, he or she will get dissatisfied and disappointed instead of being motivated. Thus the importance of the sense of belonging within an organization so as an employee will feel motivated. The induction or orientation of a new employee in an organization will make the new employee welcome and make him feel that he is part of the group and that the group accepts him as a member of the team. Any employee who works in an environment where he or she doesn’t feel welcomed will definitely not have the motivation to do their job.
Making employees participate in meetings, conferences, and work in committees are forms of employee development and can be a string motivator. Participation in decision making stimulates the interest of the employee for greater production, provides job satisfaction, and creates in him or her the feeling of importance.
Competition, although it sounds like a monster, is also a good extrinsic motivator. When done properly, competition can be a good motivator for the employees because it encourages them to use creativity, initiative, better performance, and improved production. With the use of records and charts, management can encourage their employees to work harder to beat their previous records of performance.
Behavioral Psychology
Behavioral Psychology deals with the argument that all things that all organisms do, is a form of behavior. They maintain that whatever humans do, externally observable behavior and internal behavior are related and are forms of behavior. For example, emotions can be pertained to as behavior. Emotion is any strong feeling about somebody or something. Everybody feels an emotion. The enigmatic nature of emotion may be one reason science has long neglected it. But there are other reasons as well. The way we normally know emotions is through feelings, which are elusive, capricious, and probably changed by the very act of observing them. Above all, they are observable only in the mind’s eye of the emote. Feelings, therefore, elude science, which aspires for an objective database in which observers can agree on raw data accessible to many observers. Accordingly, some have argued that the subjective nature of feelings excludes them from the realm of science.
A person’s degree of stress, depression, or fear, for example, can influence health beliefs and practices. The manner in which a person handles stress throughout each phase of life will influence the way the person reacts to illness. A person who is generally very calm may have little emotional response during illness, whereas an individual unable to cope emotionally with the threat of illness may either overreact to illness and assume it is life threatening or deny the presence of symptoms and not take any therapeutic action.
Humanistic Psychology
Humanistic psychology slightly touches the field of Social Psychology. It considers how people verbally and nonverbally communicate at the individual, societal, and cultural levels. It delves into interpersonal communication and how people symbolically or non-symbolically relay messages to other people and how the other person interprets the message.
It weighs much on persuasion. And just what is persuasion? Persuasion is the method by which a message is relayed in a way where it induces a change in beliefs, attitudes or behaviors. “Speech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound ends in a deed.” (1961). Persuasion is a very powerful tool. It can literally move mountains. But persuasive messages have lots to go through before it sticks into the mind of the audience. (1986;1999 )(1993, 1998) theorized that persuasion took either one of the two routes: Central route and Peripheral route. Central route occurs when the audience is much interested in the arguments and the gist of the message and are likely to give auspicious thought on the argument. Peripheral route occurs when the audience is much more interested in incidental cues, say, superficial things, like attractiveness or jolliness of the speaker. But since the central route involves the person’s better judgement, it is more likely to affect and influence behavior. The key elements of persuasion are: the communicator, the message, how the message is communicated, and the audience. The communicator is the person who conveys the message to the audience. Whether the person conveys the message symbolically or non-symbolically, the person is still regarded as communicator. The message is the element of persuasion that contains the gist of the whole process. Without the message, the whole process is practically useless. How the message is conveyed is also a vital part of the whole process. The media is a powerful tool In the persuasion process. And lastly, the audience. The audience is the whole point of persuasion. You persuade because you need to capture the attention of the audience in order to change or alter their belief on something. You persuade to make the other person think the same as you do. You try to convince them so that you will have the same opinion about something. Let’s say cigarettes. There are a number of ads for cigarettes around the globe. One very successful cigarette ad is for Marlboro cigarettes. There have been lots of Marlboro commercials but none as famous as the ones with the Marlboro man. There you can see him riding his horse to gather his cattle. Then he lights a cigar and you then can hear a background voice saying all sorts of things about Marlboro and the Marlboro country. There you have it. It’s not even a very complicated commercial. Only a guy on a horse with a lasso crossing a river and herding his cattle. But the message was clearly stated. If you want to be a tough guy like the Marlboro guy, you’ve got to smoke Marlboro cigarettes. That simple. Yet that simple message and that simple commercial contributed so much to the worldwide success of this cigarette brand. No fancy talk was even made in the commercial. Bands like Disney after Dark and Blink182 even made songs as tribute to the Marlboro guy. That is the power of persuasion plus Media.
Another example is an Ad for Coca-Cola. It’s called the “Coca-Cola Happiness Factory”. There’s just a guy who drops a coin to a vending machine for a cold can of Coke. He doesn’t realize what’s going on inside the vending machine, but as seen in the commercial, lots of happy and fun loving creatures are preparing your cold can of Coke. Again there you have a simple but very attention catching commercial from a very successful brand of soda. You see, simple commercials like these reach out to many people. People can identify with these advertisements because the play on the needs and wants of common folk. Again, that’s a part of the whole psychological process. You see people interact with one another and oftentimes, they are under the pressure to be accepted into a group. People don’t want to be alone in most cases. So in order to be accepted, the person has to conform on what the majority favors. For example, if the majority favors smoking or if the majority thinks smoking is “cool”, the person is most likely to conform to the rule of the majority. And the power of media can play on the desperation of the person to be counted in the “IN” group. So, as an instant ticket to acceptance, the person gladly takes a light and joins the club, so contributing to the worldwide success of cigarettes. It is a normal human behavior to feel the need to belong.
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