Motivation and Desire: A New Way to Think About Why We do Everything and its Basis in Neuroscience

Desire, motivation, drive, reward, reinforcement, pleasure, enjoyment—each of these terms has a slightly different meaning, but all refer to the same process: when we do something that produces a positive outcome, we want to do it again. This is so fundamental to our existence that we rarely think about how it works; it just happens.

There are myriad experiments in rats and pigeons (and people too, of course) that have examined the parameters of motivation, as well as the brain circuitry that is involved. Various theories of motivation have been proposed and discussed since the beginnings of psychology. “Drive” is another term that has been used to describe motivating factors, especially in animals, and survives in everyday language as the term “sexdrive.”

We can also find many studies of motivation in education, business, or other walks of life related to, for example, the best ways of motivating students to learn. In the context of education, motivation is often divided into “intrinsic” vs. “extrinsic” motivation. In its simplest form, intrinsic motivation refers to an internaldesire to learn or to do something for its own sake, whereas extrinsic motivation refers to tangible rewards, such as money, status, prizes, or gold stars for children.

Intrinsic motivation applies to activities that are, in themselves, enjoyable. Extrinsic motivation is operative when unrelated rewards are superimposed on an activity. Ryan and Deci (2000) provide a particularly appealing perspective on intrinsic motivation as related to psychological needs and socialdevelopment.