Human Motivation: A Product of Natural Selection and Reinforcement

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Motivation; the result of human’s evolutionary history or learnt through reinforcement? Motivation is the common desire and willingness a person possesses to effectuate a behavior. It is precisely through motivation that a human being reaches one’s goals and ambitions. The push of a motive, which is an internal character involved in the push of an individual’s drive en route to a desired end, or the pull of an incentive, a valued feature of the environment that pulls an individual toward it, as stated by Deckers (2010), is what persuades a mental or physical action to aid in acquiring a particular incentive or goal. As the demand for both physical and psychological knowledge, competence, and energy is needed to ensue behavior, the emotional aspect of motivation also plays a major role. It is via a person’s emotions that an adaptive process takes place in evaluating an incentive’s overall mental, physical, and the incentive’s physical features that furthermore contribute to motivation. Investigation into the question of motivational origins and learned responses, further ‘pushes’ for the analysis of the sources in control of motivation.

Motivation has two major sources involved in the push and pull the stimulus that include an internal and external quality of mind and character. Internal dispositions encompass two types of variables involved in motivational pep; first, are the biological variables that involve the brain and nervous system and second, is the psychological variable involving an individual’s mental needs. Biological and psychological variables are conceptually linked through reductionism and emergence: reductionism is the principle that concepts from psychology and can be explained by reducing them to a princ...

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...al sequences involved in reaching a motive or goal of choice, the partaking of instrumental behaviors, or motivated activities, are keen to fulfilling objectives. Therefore, as motivation is linked to emotional and biopsychological features of most every human being, the question of history or reinforcement is ultimately history and reinforcement that incites motivation. It is an aspect of life like no other, the inspiration that holds us at the top of the food chain owing to the incomparable drive to survive and succeed.

Works Cited

Deckers, L. (2010). Motivation: Biological, Psychological, and Environmental (3rd Edition ed.). Boston, MA, USA: Allyn & Bacon.

Kotulak, R. (1996). Inside The Brain. Kansas City: Andrews and Mcmeel.

Schopenhauer, A. (1969). The World as Will and Representation. (E. Payne, Trans.) New York, New York: Dover Publications.

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