Motivation Theories – How is Motivation Hatched?

Monica, Elaine and Koreena became affiliated with the Psychology Society for different reasons. For Monica, it was because it’s what is expected of overachievers like her. As the achiever in her batch, she constantly needs to be on top of grades, as well as extracurricular activities. For Elaine, the Psychology Society has been her whole life—even with all the controversies that surrounded last year’s administration of which she is a part of. And for Koreena, the Psychology Society was the more risk-free and less time-consuming organization.

The three ladies each joined for different motivations. So, how exactly does motivation begin? There are a number of motivation theories which explain how and why a person is motivated. Here are a few of these motivation theories:

• Acquired Needs Theory states that motivation is based on the human nature to seek for power, achievement or affiliation.

• Affect Perseverance, like belief perseverance, explains that motivation continues even if there is invalidation of the original cause of the motivation.

• Attitude-Behavior Consistency tells us that we are motivated when there is parallelism between our attitude and the behavior.

• Attribution Theory explains motivation as the human need to attribute to causes that support our ego.

• Cognitive Dissonance Theory implicates that non-alignment is uncomfortable.

• Cognitive Evaluation Theory tells us that the doability of a task is a factor as to whether we will do the task or not.

• Consistency Theory gives us insight that motivation is grounded on the parallelism of our beliefs and the task.

• Control Theory states that there is an innate need to control the world we move in—and that is motivation for most of our activities.

• Disconfirmation Bias implies that we are motivated when the task supports our beliefs and are unmotivated when they invalidate our beliefs.

• ERG Theory speaks of Clayton Alderfer’s simplified but extended version of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. It says that we are motivated to fulfill the needs of existence, relatedness, and growth.

• Goal Setting Theory says that our motivation depends on our goals. That is why it is important that our goals are clear, challenging and achievable.

• Intrinsic motivation speaks about motivation resulting from value-based rewards.

• Investment Model tells us that motivation is proportional to what or how much is invested.

• Reactance Theory states that man feels discomfort when freedom is threatened. This gives them motivation to perform the threatened behavior to prove that their free will is not compromised.

• Self-discrepancy Theory makes it a point that we need to make our beliefs consistent.

The aforementioned motivation theories and other motivation theories not mentioned all give us a bird’s eye view of how motivation is hatched. These motivation theories may offer varied and even opposite answers to how and why motivation is formed. But one thing all these motivation theories say is that motivation is part and parcel of being a human.

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