Motivation and Emotion Final Thoughts

Motivation and Emotion Final Thoughts

By Brian Lynn Bentley

Colorado technical University

Motivation and Emotion

What is the driving factor that gets us off the couch each morning? What is the Emotion that makes us want to off to work. Where do we want to be at the end of the day or the middle of this year. Or better yet what types of emotions will motivate us down the road in our careers? What is Motivation and which emotion drives us and why do they drive us. Turns us Emotion and motivation without these two things we would likely be bumps on a log.

Emotion

Emotion is something that exerts a strong desire or force on us that can make us take actions we may not normally do in the realms of psychology it is the complex interaction of physical and psychological changes resulting in our temperament which ties into our moods and motivations.(Myers, D. G. 2004)

The Biology of Motivation

Motivation involves a lot of mechanics such as Biological, emotional social and even cognitive which how we think and how we apply these mechanics to mobilize us or motivate us from here to there. Sometimes it is used to fill a Maslow’s need such as hunger or career advancements and sometimes it’s something we do because we desire it. In other words Motivation is something that directs us towards a goal driven action. We can even break these parts down further to 3 more components of motivation such as Activation which means the original cognitive thought to trigger the decision to initiate a behavior. For example; going back to university after 20 years of thinking about it, I finally did it. This is followed by Persistence which is how long we keep at something do we let obstacles stop us or do we plow right through it and knock down road blocks, for example your house burns down but we find a way to make to class even if we are slightly late or have to borrow other people’s stuff to do it even if we slow down or miss an entire semester when you have the tools and resources you get right back on regardless what happened. How willing we are to spend our time and resources on our goals. And lastly Intensity how hard are we concentrating on chasing down the dream apologies to Futuristic - Chasing down a Dream ft. Devvon . We have the drives and needs internal and external from instincts to arousal. Instincts are things that our built in and we are born with which are applicable to the lower rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Many others are driven by biological needs such as food or sleep and we need to fulfil these needs to be healthy and adjusted. Then there is arousal those things that motivate us to engage in things that are of interests to us personally such as hobby or a good book or even hanging out and going to movies with friends. And we can break it down into outside forces and inside forces which we call extrinsic and intrinsic motivations, extrinsic means things outside ourselves and intrinsic means things that come from within is. For examples desiring praise is something that comes from outside us when we seek that promotion that good grade or respect from others these are all motivations that come from with outside ourselves. Things that come from inside us are things such as being satisfies that you did the spring cleaning that you have been procrastinating for the last two years, or eventually after getting that degree that feeling you feel with inside yourself is known as the intrinsic part.(Cherry, K. 2015)

Psychology of Motivation

Overall there are also several types of motivation for example incentive theory which is the theory that we need an incentive to do something or we need a target to be motivated which is something that we want so bad such as a reward or even acceptance which sort of ties into Operant conditional psychology where we are reinforce by the reward centers of our brain by wanting to experience a feeling we experienced before and we do these things because we want a certain outcome and we expect a certain emotion when we do reach the goal. Drive theory is what we do to reduce our internal stress and perhaps relax primarily relying on our basic biological needs and here is where Maslow pops up again such as health sex hunger a fulfilment to meet unmet internal needs.(Maslow, A. 1943) Then there is arousal theory where it is based on emotion psychology states of being and feelings of self-gratifications, and this means we are always trying and keep a healthy balance when we do not have enough activity we will seek out an activity and when we have too many things going on at once we will try to reduce our activities the through of balances what interests us without becoming obsesses with it. Humanistic theory of motivations the behavioral logical rational thinking of what we are motivated it by cognitive thinking on why we perform and various tasks which can also fall in with in Maslow’s pyramid which we need to fulfill basic quality of life issues in the most logical and rational manner to become or maximize our own potential which would lead us to self-awareness, self-actualizing on Maslow’s pyramid..(Maslow, A. 1943) And finally we come down with Expectancy theory which is the theory of constantly thinking and trying to predict the future and in our heads trying to come up with different potential outcomes of our desires. It relies on three methods to work first what is the potential outcome? What do I need to obtain to reach this goal. And last when I have A B or C met what will happen. It also helps us determine if the goal is even possible to accomplish.(Santrock, J. W. 2005).

Setting Goals

Setting Goals Now I have laid out a tool kit so to speak for all of us to use in how to plan out goals and how to motivate for these goals for example on my attempt to master time management has led me to get a lot more things done over my career here at University. Though I have had some incident that I could not predict that slowed me down and got me behind on a few occasions but thanks to time management it did not take me long to catch back up. It also helps me set realistic targets and goals for myself which means I rarely take a bite of more than I can chew and even if I do I tend to break them down in chunks. And then I reward myself with each mini goal I accomplish such as reward driven behavior I wanted to get done with say 50% of this essay by a certain day and certain time. And I had accomplished that as well as got to my mini target before by stated goal so my emotional reward increased I got what I said would be done before my stated goal. Which that small tiny goal targeted motivation drives me to do it again and again. I know where I want to be in another year I also know where I want to be in another months or another six months and that is because I am emotionally driven by both intrinsic reward of satisfaction and extrinsic motivation of a good grade and progressing myself closer towards my degree.

How does knowledge of emotions and motivations help us understand others.

How does the knowledge we know of emotions and motivations help us deal and understand others, because we have a bench mark to compare it too. What motivates us out emotions and knowing how they work and the mechanic behind all of it. Works in our favor now we can see through the others point of view, we can guess what drives them by what they say and do. We can even tell what level of intensity or how serious they are about going forward with a target goal. And we will be able to sense perhaps their strengths and weaknesses and we can focus on using their strengths and reducing their weakness.

Applying it the work place

For instance someone wants a new car and they are motivated and desire to work extra hours. Or you see someone is bucking for a promotion and is willing to do things outside three sphere of influence and they have certain talents you can key in on. But you will be also able to use these tools even detect when someone is not working to their full capacity and knowing how emotions work and both kinds of motivations we can fix these situations or at least minimize them to a point where they aren’t a distraction. we can set goals for the employees so we can get more out of them because they want to do these things and not because they have to do these things Though when we offer rewards and incentives to motivate the work force we do have to keep a variety of incentives or people will get bored and the incentives will back fire. Important Observations About Incentive Theory incentives can be used to get people do things as well as not do things the incentive drive only works on how important that the individual values the reward or they will not be motivated if the reward is too hard to get or too easy to get or if there is no variety in the reward all employee of the month reward is limited if you get it every month you will no longer desire it so keep it fresh

References

Cherry, K. (2004, December 16). Incentive Theory of Motivation. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/motivation/a/incentive-theory-of-motivation.htm

Cherry, K. (2015, December 17). What Is Motivation? The Psychology of What Motivates Us. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/mindex/g/motivation-definition.htm

Heffner, C. L. (n.d.). Chapter 7: Section 2: Motivation | AllPsych. Retrieved from http://allpsych.com/psychology101/motivation/

Maslow, A. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Retrieved from psychclassics.asu.edu/Maslow/motivation.htm

Motivation and Emotion. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://highered.mheducation.com/sites/0072937769/student_view0/chapter11/index.html

Santrock, J. W. (2005). Psychology. Boston: McGraw-Hill.