The Surprising Science Of Motivation Summary

The article “The Secret of Effective Motivation” by Amy Wrzesniewski and Barry Schwartz, appeared in Sunday Review on July 4, 2014. The article introduces different types of motives and examines their effectiveness with the help of real life social experiments. The differences between two main types of motives: internal and instrumental, are introduced in the first part of the article. Although, many people think that both internal and instrumental motives are good in engaging some kind of activity, authors argue that instrumental motives are not so useful and sometimes can be counterproductive for success. Authors develop their argument by analyzing the results

In chapter one of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Author Daniel Pink introduces two types of motivators that he refers to as, “Human operating systems”. Times have changed, and business models are changing as well. Just like we need to upgrade our computer software when it begins to fail. We also need to upgrade our human operating systems, when our current method is not keeping up with the ever-changing business world. The concept of reward and punishment to encourage employees to be more productive is an outdated way of managing people. In order to create a better work environment and increase productivity, we need to upgrade our idea of motivation to include autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

“Motivation is the process whereby goal-orientated activity is instigated and sustained” (Schunk, Pintrich & Meece, 2008. As cited in Eggen & Kauchak, 2010, p.284). Motivation comes in many forms and can be divided into two broad categories - extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivators are external

As you may have heard, Mr. Swift has made a very modest proposal about what to do with the situation of starvation among adults. Mr. Swift has proposed that after a year of a child's birth, they be eaten if the family wishes. I, being a mother of a baby, currently, could not approve of this proposal more. Me and my husband together, concur, this will allow us to not go hungry, but also fulfill our wish to have another baby. We've always wanted more kids, but we only desire a baby. We don't want them after they have grown older. We already have an older son. Now, with this proposal, we won't go hungry and we can stay full for months on end and all I must do is push out a baby. No big deal.

Human motivation is a physiological drive that we all have inside ourselves. There is no way to completely avoid it. Some drives we have are for basic necessities of survival, like the feelings of thirst and hunger. Obviously we must give into the drive that our body is signaling to us we must have because food and water are essential for us to live. When our behavior is directed by means of survival this is something known as homeostasis. “According to drive theory, the body maintains a condition of homeostasis, in which any particular system is in balance or equilibrium (C.L. Hull, 1951). Any departure from homeostasis, such as depletion of nutrients or a drop in temperature, produces an aroused condition, or drive, which impels the individual to engage in appropriate action such as eating, drinking, or seeking warmth. As the body’s need is met, the drive and associated arousal subside.” (Garrett, pg. 161)

Motivation is a key driving force in most human beings and lies hidden to be discovered

The MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) has given me insightful information over 4 different dichotomies: 1)Where I focus my attention 2) How I take in information 3) How I make decisions based on the information and 4) How I deal with the world. After completing the assessment, I was dubbed ‘INTJ’. This being 9% Introvert, 38% iNtuitive, 3% Thinking, and 31% Judging. To my surprise, after reading the detailed report, I found most of the information presented, to be ‘spot on’. According to the Center for Confidence and Well-Being, “Of all the personality types, INTJs are most motivated by “vision”. They have a great need to come up with a unifying idea of a future, improved state, which is then their job to realize. This inner vision can be so strong for INTJs and so individual that they are often reckoned to be the most independent-minded of all the types” (Craig, C., 2014). This provided me with great validation that I have been lucky enough to find myself in the right career. Currently, I am the interim Director of Quality at an acute care hospital in San Diego. Daily, myself and my team are looking for ways to improve hospital processes, systems, and relationships. Always striving for a future vision or ‘ideal state’ of how we would like to see our organization functioning to better serve our community. Many people have told me that they could ‘not do what I do’ simply because of the data collecting, analyzing, reporting, and

Pink provides a well laid out case highlighting the gap between what science knows and what organizations do. Showcasing the mid-century work of Harry Harlow and Edward Deci , Pink explains how human motivation seems to run counter to what most scientists and citizens believe. For decades, we have believed that we know what motivates people: rewards. Rewards are supposed to intensify interest and enhance performance. But Harlow and Deci found different results. Deci wrote, “When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity.” Like a shot of espresso, rewards can give you a jolt of energy, but the boost wears out, moreover, it can erode a person’s longer-term motivation to engage in the task. As we continue to incentivize our staff and students,

It’s shown that most of us are more motivated and fulfilled by having autonomy as Pink puts it, “the desire to direct our own lives” and mastery, “the desire to become better and better at something that matters.” Most importantly we are motivated by purpose, which is as the book says, “yearning to do what we want to do in the service of something that is bigger than we are” in our working lives. Our biological drives are made up of eating, drinking and sexual behaviors. This is what Pink describes as “Motivation 1.0”. These drives come from within ourselves, meaning there must also be that external drive such as the rewards and punishments the environment has delivered for behaving in certain ways.

The standard way of thinking about motivation has it that the only way to get people to be driven is to reward them extrinsically. In other words, the way we generally try to motivate people is by dangling a carrot in front of their face, or pushing them with a poke to the ribs with stick. Many people assume that if you want someone to do something, you incentivize them with external compensation. For example, if you want a student to work harder in class, offer them extra credits. If you want your basketball team to be better, make them run more suicides as punishment. However, in this book, Drive: ’’The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us’’ by Daniel Pink challenges this conventional, preconceived notion of motivation of carrot and stick mentality. Pink divided motivation into three categories that evolved over time: motivation 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0.

“The Mystery of Motivation” appeared in the January-February 2017 article written by Gary Drevitch, who is a senior editor for Psychology Today. Drevitch a Yale graduate, currently resides in New York City with his wife and three kids. His previous work includes senior editor at PBS, Time Inc., Scholastic and Parade Publications, and is the former editor-in-chief of Grandparents.com and an AOL blogger on weight loss and nutrition.

Neuroscience and psychology seem to have been working together to try to understand how and why certain behaviors transpire in a person’s personality, and what makes or motivates a person to do the things they do. One of the most analyzed wonders that mark motivation, the thought developments, and the social interaction, is the analysis of drug obsession. Through advance forms of scanning the brain with imaging equipment like positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have advanced the knowledge of drug addiction and how the brain is affected (Volkow, Fowler, & Wang, 2003,para 2). This paper will examine the brain structures and functions, the influence of

Motivation and theories -------------------------- 2.1. Definition and theory framework ------------------------------------ Motivation can be described as the driving force of individual behaviour to fulfill needs or achieve goals. Mitchell defines motivation as 'the degree to which an individual wants and chooses to engage in certain specified behaviours' (Mullins 2002:418). In terms of this definition, various theories have been developed around.

In chapter one of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, author Daniel Pink introduces two types of motivators that he refers to as, “Human operating systems”. Times have changed, and business models are changing as well. Just like we need to upgrade our computer software when it begins to fail. We also need to upgrade our human operating systems, when our current method has not kept up with the ever-changing business world. The concept of reward and punishment to encourage employees to be more productive is an outdated way of managing people. In order to create a better work environment and increase productivity, we need to upgrade our idea of motivation to include autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

In the book “DRIVE - the surprising truth about what motivates us”, Daniel Pink says that people will not do a better job if they’re offered a reward. They will do a better job if given the opportunity to work on their own time, be creative and do good. He states, “The secret to high performance and satisfaction is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, learn and create new things and to do better by ourselves and our world”. He speaks about a whole new way that companies should look at human motivation. The book discusses three main components of motivation- autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy describes how people want to be