Intrinsic And Extrinsic Motivation Research Paper

Motivation is defined as an internal process to act towards a desired goal. It is moving forward and not staying static. It is pushing oneself involving energized behaviour and directions. It is a basic desire shared by needs, cognitions, emotions and external stimuli to optimize well-being, minimize physical pain and maximize pleasure; physical needs like sleeping, eating, resting and sex. Desires and goals are the inherent strength that drives us to move, take action or plan to achieve.
Motivation is to understand what causes behaviour, what starts the behaviour, why a person does something and why the behaviour stops and what are the forces that determine behaviour’s intensity. There are different types of motivation, Intrinsic and Extrinsic.
Intrinsic Motivation is an inner desire involving one’s interest and develops it to one’s capacities and satisfying the psychological needs that is autonomy, competence and relatedness. These are support from one’s relationships and the environment.
Intrinsic Motivations functions are:
1. Persistence: The higher a person’s inner motivation the greater the intensity and persistence on the task.
2. Creativity: Creativity is inspired if the person experiences satisfaction, interest, enjoyment and more challenging the task itself.
3. Conceptual Understanding/High-Quality Learning: It is the active information processing, flexible thinking and learning in a conceptual way and less rigid.
4. Optimal Functioning and Well-Being: Leads to greater self-esteem and higher psychological well-being and higher quality interpersonal relationships. Greater subjective vitality, less anxiety and depression. Pursuing intrinsic life goals is associated with self-actualisation.
Extrinsic Motivati...

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The intended primary effect promotes compliance and the unintended primary effect undermines intrinsic motivation, interferes with the quality and process of learning. It also interferes with the capacity for autonomous self-regulation.
Rewards does not always reduce intrinsic motivation, it depends on the expectancy and tangibility. When there is no intrinsic motivation to be undermined like uninteresting tasks, rewards can make an uninteresting task worth pursuing. Some examples are like improving children’s reading fluency, preventing drunk driving, increasing older adult’s participation in physical activity and participating in recycling.
Learning the real importance of understanding the different types of motivation is in our ability to determine which type of motivation is most inspiring and effective to purse the desired behaviour in ourselves or others.