How is behavior motivated

Amotivation may stem from low levels of self-efficacy, outcome expectancies, effort beliefs, and value beliefs Vlachopoulous and Gigoudi, ; Shen et al.

Low self-efficacy relates to low confidence and feelings that the individual lacks the capacity or resources to produce the desired behavior. Low outcome expectancies relate to beliefs that the costs of the behavior outweigh the benefits. A lack of effort beliefs is concerned with the recognition of the required amount of effort or energy needed to change behavior e. Further, low value beliefs relate to not attaching sufficient value to the behavior to make it worthwhile pursuing Wigfield and Eccles, Low outcome expectancies and value beliefs, therefore, serve as demotivating factors.

These sets of beliefs provide clear direction regarding the conditions that lead to the development of amotivation and how they could be addressed. Based on these findings, strategies aiming to reduce amotivation could include confidence-building strategies, targeting decisional balance and also those that focus on changing effort and value beliefs. Given that these types of strategies have been used in counseling approaches to changing behavior, such as motivational interviewing Miller and Rollnick, , it raises the possibility that these may be viable avenues to resolve unmotivated states like amotivation.

Motivational interviewing Miller and Rollnick, is a counseling approach to behavior change. It is well suited to those unmotivated to change as it focused on building motivation for, and reducing resistance to, behavior change Hardcastle et al.

The interpersonal style and behavior of the practitioner are central to motivational interviewing Hagger and Hardcastle, Few approaches are explicit about the importance and impact of the relational style in which interventions are delivered, particularly for those who are not motivated to engage in health behavior. The specific relational motivational interviewing techniques that may be useful when working with those less motivated to change include: reframing, overshooting, coming alongside, shifting focus, and emphasizing autonomy.

The client is also asked about the cons of changing followed by the pros of changing their behavior. The first future is if they continue on the same path without any changes. What about that concerns you the most? How would you feel? How would things be different? Example questions include: what things are most important to you? The values exploration technique does not appear to have been adopted in motivational interviewing interventions outside of the substance abuse field and only one study was located that specifically explored the effectiveness of a values exploration technique in a weight loss intervention e.

Other perspectives on changing behavior in individuals that are unmotivated to engage in health behaviors come from dual-process theories of action. According to this perspective, behavior is driven by two processes: conscious consideration of the pros and cons or expectancies of the value of engaging in the behavior relative to potential costs of doing so, and non-conscious processes that are spontaneous, impulsive, and occur with little deliberative thought e.

Many unhealthy behaviors including unhealthy eating, smoking, and drinking excess alcohol have been conditioned by cues in the environment paired with the concomitant reward-based outcome, usually determined by dopaminergic pathways in the brain which serve as powerful reinforcers of the cued-up behavior Rebar et al. As such, exerting conscious control to override these strong neural relations between cue and action is difficult and requires considerable cognitive resources and motivation Hagger, , ; Loftus et al.

By implication, low resources and motivation to engage in conscious effort to resist the powerful cue-driven urges makes behavior change extremely difficult. This means that individuals that are unmotivated to engage in health-related behaviors are unlikely to change because they are not motivated to invest effort in overriding the highly-automated non-conscious cue-driven processes that drive their behavior.

In such circumstances, researchers have indicated that it may be important to structure individuals' environments so as to make engaging in the undesired behavior much more difficult Sallis et al. Examples of environmental solutions that may change behavior among the unmotivated without engaging in costly persuasive techniques include: bans on smoking in public places and the workplace, employers locating car parks a distance from workplaces so employees walk a given distance to work each day, and limiting the number of alcoholic beverages that can be served in bars.

Such legislation requires considerable will among policymakers and is not necessarily a universal solution. For example, banning smoking in public places and workplaces is unlikely to affect smoking at home. Environmental strategies may form part of a comprehensive package of solutions to changing behavior in the unmotivated.

To conclude, we contend that current theoretical perspectives on behavior change do elaborate sufficiently on how to approach individuals with low motivation to participate in health behavior. We have proposed some possible suggestions for future research on how to potentially engage individuals who are unmotivated to participate in health-promoting behaviors. These strategies outlined include the targeting of self-efficacy, outcome expectancies, effort and value beliefs; motivational interviewing techniques including strategies like running head start, looking forward, and values exploration, and we recommend their use in health behavior interventions that target those unmotivated to change.

We also recognize that environmental interventions have a crucial role to play in promoting health behavior change among the unmotivated. It is important to note that these strategies may assist in increasing motivation among individuals to initiate a health related behavior. Increasing motivation is an important first step among amotivated or precontemplative individuals who do not engage in any health behaviors. Further strategies, however, may be needed to assist in the enactment of the behavior e.

SH took the lead role in conceiving and developing the ideas presented in the article and drafting the article; MH assisted in the conception of the article and took a lead role in editing and drafting the article; JH, AH, CM, and CT assisted in providing ideas for the article and assisted in drafting the article. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The author would like to thank members of the Health Psychology and Behavioural Medicine Research Group, School of Psychology and Speech Pathology at Curtin University for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Centers for Disease Control Prevention. Cigarette smoking among adults- US, MMWR 56, — Chatzisarantis, N. Using the construct of perceived autonomy support to understand social influence within the theory of planned behavior.

Sport Exerc. Influences of perceived autonomy support on physical activity within the theory of planned behavior. Deci, E. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-determination in Human Behavior. New York, NY: Plenum. This video has been medically reviewed by John C. Motivation doesn't just refer to the factors that activate behaviors; it also involves the factors that direct and maintain these goal-directed actions though such motives are rarely directly observable.

As a result, we often have to infer the reasons why people do the things that they do based on observable behaviors. What exactly lies behind the motivations for why we act? Psychologists have proposed different theories of motivation , including drive theory, instinct theory, and humanistic theory such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

The reality is that there are many different forces that guide and direct our motivations. Different types of motivation are frequently described as being either extrinsic or intrinsic:. There are many different uses for motivation. It serves as a guiding force for all human behavior, but understanding how it works and the factors that may impact it can be important in a number of ways. Understanding motivation can:. Anyone who has ever had a goal like wanting to lose 20 pounds or run a marathon probably immediately realizes that simply having the desire to accomplish something is not enough.

Achieving such a goal requires the ability to persist through obstacles and endurance to keep going in spite of difficulties. There are three major components of motivation: activation, persistence, and intensity. The degree of each of these components of motivation can impact whether or not you achieve your goal. Strong activation, for example, means that you are more likely to start pursuing a goal. Persistence and intensity will determine if you keep working toward that goal and how much effort you devote to reaching it.

All people experience fluctuations in their motivation and willpower. Sometimes you might feel fired up and highly driven to reach your goals, while at other times you might feel listless or unsure of what you want or how to achieve it. Even if you're feeling low on motivation, there are steps you can take that will keep you moving forward.

Some things you can do include:. There are a few things you should watch for that might hurt your motivation. These include:.

Talk to your doctor if you are feeling symptoms of apathy and low mood that last longer than two weeks. Sometimes a persistent lack of motivation might be tied to a mental health condition such as depression.

What are the things that actually motivate us to act? Throughout history, psychologists have proposed different theories to explain what motivates human behavior. The following are some of the major theories of motivation. The instinct theory of motivation suggests that behaviors are motivated by instincts, which are fixed and inborn patterns of behavior.

Such instincts might include biological instincts that are important for an organism's survival such as fear, cleanliness, and love. Many of your behaviors such as eating, drinking, and sleeping are motivated by biology. You have a biological need for food, water, and sleep. Figure 7. In some versions of the pyramid, cognitive and aesthetic needs are also included between esteem and self-actualization. Others include another tier at the top of the pyramid for self-transcendence.

At the base of the pyramid are all of the physiological needs that are necessary for survival. These are followed by basic needs for security and safety, the need to be loved and to have a sense of belonging, and the need to have self-worth and confidence. To Maslow and humanistic theorists, self-actualization reflects the humanistic emphasis on positive aspects of human nature. According to Maslow , one must satisfy lower-level needs before addressing those needs that occur higher in the pyramid.

So, for example, if someone is struggling to find enough food to meet his nutritional requirements, it is quite unlikely that he would spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about whether others viewed him as a good person or not. Instead, all of his energies would be geared toward finding something to eat. Other research has more recently addressed that late in life, Maslow proposed a self-transcendence level above self-actualization—to represent striving for meaning and purpose beyond the concerns of oneself Koltko-Rivera, For example, people sometimes make self-sacrifices in order to make a political statement or in an attempt to improve the conditions of others.

Mohandas K. Gandhi, a world-renowned advocate for independence through nonviolent protest, on several occasions went on hunger strikes to protest a particular situation. People may starve themselves or otherwise put themselves in danger displaying higher-level motives beyond their own needs. Imagine that you are a parent and your child has just brought home a report card from 4th grade that is really good.

You look it over and feel proud of your son or daughter. With a wide grin on your face, you turn to your child and say:. Between the other two options, which one would you be more likely to blurt out?

Carol Dweck, who is now a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, has been studying factors that promote or interfere with achievement since the s.

These self-theories affect decisions we make about what is possible or sensible or reasonable to do in order to achieve our goals. Try to answer based on your real ways of thinking. The questions are a bit repetitive, but answer each one without regard to your previous answers. Take the 8-question Mindset Quiz here or here. Those with a growth mindset are optimistic about how the environment, experiences, and attitudes can influence intelligence.

Dweck and her colleagues have used questions like the ones you just answered to sort people into groups based on their beliefs about intelligence and other abilities and skills. She has found that people tend to adopt one of two general set of beliefs about intelligence. According to people with this belief, intelligence does not change much regardless of what we do or what we experience. Some people are strongly committed to one or the other end of the fixed vs. If Prof. Dweck is right, our mindset has a big impact on how well we achieve our potential—in school and in many other areas of our lives for example, in sports, music, and business.

But where do these different mindsets come from? There can be many reasons that a person comes to believe that intelligence is fixed or changeable, but one obvious influence on our way of thinking about ourselves is the messages we hear from adults as we grow up.

Dweck and her then-graduate student Claudia Mueller wanted to see if they could influence the mindset of children, if only for a brief period of time, by giving different kinds of praise to the children. Their starting point was the unsurprising and well-established idea that praise is motivating.

When we do something and receive praise, we are more likely to want to do that same thing again. But Mueller and Dweck wondered if all praise is equal. The researchers recruited fifth graders 70 girls and 58 boys ranging in age from 10 to 12 to participate in their study. Before we go into the details of the first experiment, please get a feel for the task that the children had to perform. You will have one minute to solve as many of the problems below as you can.

Each matrix has one item missing, and your task is to figure out what the missing item is based on the changing patterns in the rows, columns, and diagonals. Before we start, here is one practice item. Figure out which one of the eight patterns on the bottom, labeled 1 to 8, is the missing pattern.

If we gave you some more problems, would you prefer some more like the easier practice problem or some more like the hardest test problem you tried? Most people find the test to be challenging, requiring close attention to detail and careful logical thinking. Mueller and Dweck chose this task because it could be adapted to be relatively easy or extremely difficult by changing the complexity of the patterns required for solution.

The experiment had three stages, each based around a different set of matrix problems like the ones you worked on. Each child was tested one-on-one in an otherwise empty classroom by a research assistant.

The children were given instructions and 10 problems of that were fairly easy to solve. At the end of 4 minutes, they were stopped and the research assistant scored their answers. On average, the children attempted to answer 7. When you do something to manipulate an independent variable, that something you do administer a pill, tell the participant something that might affect performance, etc.

This treatment involved a bit of deception, because children received randomly assigned feedback. In other words, regardless of real performance, the children heard one of three statements depending on random assignment to a treatment condition. After receiving feedback and, for children in two of the conditions, additional praise, the children were asked a series of questions.

The experimenters wanted to know if the success the children experienced in the first set of problems, along with the type of praise, influenced their choice of additional problems. They were told that they might get some more problems to solve and they were asked to choose the difficulty of those problems.

There were several options, but the choice came down to this:. The children were then told that there might be some time at the end of the session to work on these problems they had chosen, but that the next problems they would work on had been determined before the experiment started.

The results showed that the children were genuinely influenced by the praise they had received. The figure below shows the percentage of children choosing EASY problems, broken down by treatment condition.

The children who were praised for how smart they were ability were far more likely to choose easy problems than were the children praise for working hard effort. The control condition, children who were told they did well, but received no additional praise, were in the middle. The type of praise given influenced the types of problems students wanted to tackle. This graph shows the number of students choosing easy problems after given praise. Next, the children tried to solve a new set of 10 matrix problems and again they had 4 minutes.

On the surface, these problems looked about the same as the first set, but they were considerably more difficult. In fact, this feedback was accurate. The results showed that the children found the problems difficult. On average, they attempted 5.

There was no significant difference in number of problems solved for the three groups ability feedback, effort feedback, and no-feedback control. Statistical note: the Ability group was significantly lower than the other two. There was no significant difference between the Control and Effort groups.

Tye type of praise given had a small, but noticeable, impact on how much students enjoyed the problems. Statistical note: all three groups were significantly different from each other. When asked how much of their failure was due to low effort, those who were praised for ability did not blame their effort, rather their ability.

For the last stage of the experiment, the children were given a new set of problems that was similar in difficulty to the first set. The problems were moderately difficult, and the children had 4 minutes to solve as many as possible.