Misplaced motivation? Depressed drive? Endurance stuck on idle?
Motivation is behaviour and in this episode we will briefly look at something that has always fascinated me, where our motivation comes from. Is it something that is driven from our youth, can it be nurtured, or is it just a mindset adjustment that is needed?
Motivation affects our choices and it is a case of joint responsibility. The responsibility of the individual and the responsibility of the situation (or others involved in the situation). Therefore, could the real question be do we allow ourselves to be governed by negative experiences, or is a lack of motivation and/or determination to change be down to unreasonable tasks we set ourselves?
These were questions I included in my educational psychology doctorate when I researched motivation in children shaping the choices we make as adults and much of the content of this post is from my research.
Where many concepts from operant conditioning can be understood in motivational terms, another example is the concept of extinction. This is not in the sense of a species, but where learned behaviours become less likely when reinforcement no longer occurs. This is a sort of ‘unlearning’, or at least a decrease in performance of previously learned.
ABC of Me podcast has a supplemental episode to this podcast. Please click the button below to play the episode.
Further reading: The Emerging Neuroscience of Intrinsic Motivation: A New Fronti
