Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological review, 50(4), 370.

A theory of human motivation.

The most fundamental level of Maslow's hierarchy, physiological needs are the basic requirements for human survival. These include the need for food, water, shelter, warmth, and rest.

Physiological Needs

A core principle of Maslow's theory is that lower-level needs take precedence. For instance, an individual struggling to find enough food to satisfy their physiological hunger is unlikely to focus on higher-level social or esteem needs, such as how others perceive them. Their primary motivation and energy will be directed toward meeting the fundamental need for nutrition.

Example of Prioritizing Lower-Level Needs

Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a well-known humanistic theory of motivation which proposes that human beings share certain common needs. These needs are structured hierarchically and must be met in a specific order, typically starting from fundamental lower-level needs before progressing to higher-level needs.

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Key theories and methods related to motivation include:
- Instinct Theory
- Drive Reduction Theory
- Self-Determination Theory (SDT)
- Self-Efficacy
- Social Motives
- Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
- Expectancy-Valence Theories
- Incentive Theory
- Yerkes-Dodson Law
- Temporal Motivation Theory
- Remembered Success Effect
- Procrastination
- Gamification
- Game Based Learning

Theories and Methods of Motivation

Motivation

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) was a pioneering humanist psychologist who focused on the development of healthy individuals. He studied the lives of people he considered exemplary, such as Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt, to identify common traits among healthy, creative, and productive individuals. This research formed the basis for his influential theories, including the hierarchy of human needs.

Abraham Maslow

Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, M. D. (2020, April 22). Psychology (2nd ed.). OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/1-introduction

OpenStax Psychology (2nd ed.) Textbook

A theory of human motivation that posits that the reasons why an individual chooses to participate and exerts effort, are based on self-determined regulations (such as intrinsic motivation). It states there are 3 desires that promote optimal function and growth:
- 1) Autonomy
- 2) Competence
- 3) Relatedness

Self-determination theory (SDT)

People behave based on the value that they perceive doing the behavior has to them. It takes into account expectancy (effort), instrumentality (performance) and valence (value/reward).

Expectancy-Valence Theories

Behavior results from a drive to transform an undesirable state to a desirable one

Drive Reduction Theory

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Behavior is motivated by an organisms's desire for reinforcements and rewards and that this desire is what governs behavior
- Positive incentives: Increase Pleasure
- Negative Incentives: Remove Pain

Incentive Theory

Motivation leads to action. However, the quality of the action can vary depending on arousal. Arousal (stress, anxiety, stimulation) affects task performance. Task performance increases with level of arousal but only up to a point, at which performance decreases.

Yerkes-Dodson Law

Temporal Motivation Theory (TMT) explains the behavior of procrastination by providing a quasi-mathematical framework, by examining the underlying behavioral components that contribute to (or combat) procrastination. The five components are:
- Value: the tangible and intangible rewards that an individual would receive from completing a task.
- Expectancy: the individual's belief and self-confidence in completing said task.
- Delay: the the period of time an individual needs to wait before receiving the reward from completing said task.
- Sensitivity to delay: the willingness of an individual to tolerate longer delays.
- Utility: the likeness for the individual to perform said task.

Temporal Motivation Theory

This effect pertains to how students' memories and evaluation of prior challenging experiences impact their motivation to engage with similar challenging experiences in the future. Research has shown that after taking both a longer and shorter difficult math test, students prefer and will choose to repeat the longer test if it included a number of only moderately difficult problems that students could answer successfully. This pattern of preferences is known as the "remembered success effect".

Remembered Success Effect

Pulling from the Latin roots "*pro*" (meaning forward, forth, in favor of) and "*crastinus*" (of tomorrow), procrastination is an irrational, but voluntary decision to delay an intended behavior or task.
- *Irrationality* is defined as "... choosing course of action[,] despite expecting that it will not maximize your utilities..."
- *Intended* is defined as something that one wants to interact with; the avoidance of random or irrelevant tasks would not be considered procrastination.

Procrastination

- A method of learning where students are motivated to learn while playing a game.
   - I.e., playing a game for learning.

Game Based Learning

Self-efficacy is an individual’s subjective perception of his or her capability to perform in a given setting or to attain desired results, proposed by Albert Bandura as a primary determinant of emotional and motivational states and behavioral change.

Self-Efficacy

Social motives are a category of motivational theories which propose that behavior is driven by social needs, such as the need for affiliation, achievement, and power within a group context.

Social Motives as a Theory of Motivation

From a biological perspective, an instinct is a species-specific, unlearned pattern of behavior. These are complex, innate behaviors often triggered by events like maturation or seasonal changes. Unlike simple reflexes, instincts typically involve the entire organism, such as in migration or mating, and are controlled by higher brain centers.

Instinct (Definition)

A technology company introduces a high-stakes reward system for its programmers to increase their output. Programmers earn significant bonuses for the number of coding tasks completed each week. While the quantity of completed tasks increases, management observes a sharp decline in the creativity and quality of the code, along with a rise in employee-reported stress. Which of the following principles provides the most direct explanation for this decline in performance quality?

Motivational theories can be categorized based on their primary focus. These categories include biologically-oriented theories that address instincts and homeostasis, cognitive approaches such as Bandura's concept of self-efficacy, theories centered on social motives, and hierarchical models like Maslow's hierarchy of needs which organizes various motives.

Classification of Motivational Theories

- Research suggests that online participation including social interaction in collaborative online learning environments, is crucial in motivating students to learn and promote learning satisfaction. There needs to be a balance between group and individual participation for online learning environments to be effective. This study determined two visualization tools to motivate students to participate actively and examine its effects.

- The results show that the visualization tool on online participation can enhance their online participation however, the visualization of individual participation has a greater effect than the visualization of group participation, despite the collaborative learning community. 

Using Visualization to Motivate Student Participation in Collaborative Online Learning Environments 

"Awareness is defined as "understanding of the activities of others, which provides a context for your own activity" (Dourish & Bellotti)

- two types of awareness: group awareness and objective self-awareness.

Awareness Information

Whether or not students decide to engage in learning processes such as desirable difficulties greatly depends on how motivated they are to do so. This motivation can be influenced by a number of factors, including:
- memory of prior experiences
- task outcome expectancy/value
- achievement goal orientation
- affective state
- consequences on grades
- beliefs of competency 
- how the task is framed

Motivation and desirable difficulties: Variables effecting self-regulatory learning processes

Health behaviors (e.g., healthy eating, physical activity, practicing mindfulness) improve overall health (including physical health) and reduce the risk of chronic illnesses. However, in order for people to regularly engage in these behaviors, they need to have the motivation to do so.

Motivation | Connection to Health and Chronic Diseases

Looking at gender, age, SES, use of camera for lecturer and students, belief of neessity of distanced education, belief about effectiveness, and belief of negtive impact of pandemic on motivation, they looked at the cyclical effect of distanced learning motivation and it's impact on frequency of class attendence, mediated by anxiety, stress, depression and Intolerence of Uncertainty (IU).

- Women showed higher attendence than men
- men's motivation was higher than women's
- use of computers showed more attendence than use of smartphones
- use of computers showed higher motivation compared to use of smartphones
- urban students attended class more often
- urban students had lower levels of motivation
- depression negatively impacted attendence, though stress positively predicted attendence
- stress is not significantly associated with distance learning motivation 
- inhibitory IU was positively associated with depression, anxiety and stress, but negatively with motivation.
- IU predicts increase in relationship between anxiety and stress
- Women show higher rates of anxiety, stress, depression and IU during the pandemic
- gender is not related to student satisfaction with learning.

Psycho-demographic variables effects on higher education students during COVID-19 in Turkey

Pande, P., Thit, A., Sørensen, A. E., Mojsoska, B., Moeller, M. E., & Jepsen, P. M. (2021). Long-term effectiveness of immersive VR simulations in undergraduate science learning: Lessons from a media-comparison study. Research in Learning Technology, 29, 24. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezp1.villanova.edu/10.25304/rlt.v29.2482

Long-term effectiveness of immersive VR simulations in undergraduate science learning: Lessons from a media-comparison study

-  Positive reinforcement/ high expectations  
-  Base rewards on job performance 
-  Effective discipline and punishment  
-  Satisfy employees needs 
-  Set work related goals  
-  Restructure jobs
-  Treat people fairly  


Strategies to Improve Employee Motivation


-  Job enlargement
-  Job enrichment 
-  Job rotation

Techniques of Employee Motivation 

-  Human Capital Management 
-  Meet Personal Goals and Help an Employee Stay Motivated 
-  Greater Employee Satisfaction
-  Raising Employee Efficiency
-  A Higher Chance of Meeting the Company’s Goals
-  Better Team Harmony 
-  Workforce Stability




Benefits that Employee Motivation Brings to a Company 


-  Carry out responsibilities to the best of their ability 
-  Persistent
-  Creative
-  Productive
-  Produce high quality work that they willingly pursue. 



Characteristics of Motivated Employees

-  Likely to spend little or no effort on assigned tasks,
-  Avoid the workplace as much as they can,
-  Leave the organization if given the opportunity 
-  Produce poor quality work.


Characteristics of Unmotivated Employees


When the means of participation is to achieve some other goal (status, money, etc.). For example, if I play a sport because I think it will impress someone. Extrinsic motivation involves doing something to receive something form others.

Extrinsic Motivation

Similar to eating, sexual activity is a fundamental motivated behavior essential to many people's lives. While its primary evolutionary purpose is the perpetuation of the species, human sexual behavior is complex and extends far beyond simple reproduction. The psychological study of this domain provides an overview of research on human sexual behavior and motivation, including key topics like sexual orientation and gender identity.

Sexual Behavior, Sexuality, and Gender Identity

Influential figures in researching motivation include:

- William James

Influential Figures in Research on Motivation

When the performance (engagement) of some activity is the end in its own right. For example, I play a sport because I enjoy doing it and may have fond memories of doing it. Intrinsic motivation relates to the personal satisfaction one feels from doing the behavior.

Intrinsic Motivation

Biologically-oriented theories of motivation propose that behavior is driven by innate biological mechanisms. Key examples include theories centered on instincts and the physiological need to maintain the body's internal balance, or homeostasis.

Biologically-Oriented Theories of Motivation

Relates to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and proposes that individuals strive to fulfill each level of need in sequence. Only when lower-level needs are adequately met can higher-level needs become motivating factors. Maslow's theory highlights the importance of understanding these motivational needs in shaping an individual's personality development and behavior.

Maslow's Theory of Personality

As a key part of his humanistic approach, Abraham Maslow focused his research on the qualities of healthy, creative, and productive people to understand how healthy people develop. He analyzed the lives of exemplary figures, including Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and others, to identify the characteristics they share.

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