PSYC 471 Study Guide - Final Guide: Motivation, Attractor, Thermostat

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 471
• Professor: Richard Koestner

Document Summary

We are interested in what propels people to initiate or continue an activity because they enjoy its performance in the present. Theories of motivation explain the reason for action in functional terms, by considering outcomes rather than processes. How a person feels while acting tends to be ignored. If the experience meets a certain criteria and the action is rewarding in itself, we are likely to keep going and we say that we want to do whatever we are doing. Some of our activities are rewarding because they involve sensations that our nervous system has been programmed to seek out. Intrinsically motivated behavior includes emergent rewards, positive sensations arising from the experience of holistic involvement that follows upon concentration and skilled performance: we call this enjoyment. Pleasure and enjoyment and indeed intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are not mutually exclusive, and they can be presented in consciousness at the same time.