Motivation :-
The concept of motivation focus on reasons of acting and behaving in a particular way. Our behaviour is governed by our motives that are the general states that enable us to make prediction about beahviour in may different situation. In other world, motivation is one of the determinants of behaviour. Instincts drives, needs, goals and incentives come under the broad cluster of motivation.

The Motivation cycle :-
Psychologists use the concept of need to describe the motivational properties of behaviour. A need is lack or deficit of some necessity. The condition of need leads to drive. A drive is a state of tension produced by a need. It energies random activity when one of the random activities leads to a goal. It reduces the drive and the organism stop being active and the organism returns to a balanced state.

Types of Motives :-

1.Biological motives:
Biological motives are directly related to individual’s physiological needs. These are also called primary drives, which are deeply rooted in human being, satisfaction of these drives is necessary. Some of our most powerful biological motives e.g. hunger, thirst, sex, sleep etc.

2.Psychosocial Motives :-
Psychosocial motives are mostly learned or acquired. Social groups and such as family, neighborhood, friends’ relatives and experiences of life do contribute a lot in acquiring social motives. These are complex form of motives mainly resulting from the individuals interaction with his/her social environment. Such as need for affiliation,need for power, need for achievement, curiosity and exploration etc.

Therefore, motivation is the force that initiates, guides and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. It is what causes us to take action, whether to grab food to reduce hunger or enroll in college to earn a degree. The forces that lie beneath motivation can be biological, social, emotional or cognitive in nature. Researchers have developed a number of different theories to explain motivation. Some of the theories can be understand as:

Instinct Theory of Motivation

According to instinct theories, people are motivated to behave in certain ways because they are evolutionarily programmed to do so. An example of this in the animal world is seasonal migration. These animals do not learn to do this; it is instead an inborn pattern of behavior. William James created a list of human instincts that included such things as attachment, play, shame, anger, fear, shyness, modesty and love. The main problem with this theory is that it did not really explain behavior, it just described it. By the 1920s, instinct theories were pushed aside in favor of other motivational theories, but contemporary evolutionary psychologists still study the influence of genetics and heredity on human behavior.

Incentive Theory of Motivation
The incentive theory suggests that people are motivated to do things because of external rewards. For example, one might be motivated to go to work each day for the monetary reward of being paid. Behavioral learning concepts such as association and reinforcement play an important role in this theory of motivation.

Drive Theory of Motivation
According to the drive theory of motivation, people are motivated to take certain actions in order to reduce the internal tension that is caused by unmet needs. For example, one might be motivated to drink a glass of water in order to reduce the internal state of thirst. This theory is useful in explaining behaviors that have a strong biological component, such as hunger or thirst. The problem with the drive theory of motivation is that these behaviors are not always motivated purely by physiological needs. For example, people often eat even when they are not really hungry.

Arousal Theory of Motivation
The arousal theory of motivation suggests that people take certain actions to either decrease or increase levels of arousal. According to this theory, we are motivated to maintain an optimal level of arousal, although this level can vary based on the individual or the situation.

Humanistic Theory of Motivation: Maslows hierarchy of needs

Humanistic theories of motivation are based on the idea that people also have strong cognitive reasons to perform various actions. This is famously illustrated in Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which presents different motivations at different levels. First, people are motivated to fulfill basic biological needs for food and shelter, as well as those of safety, love and esteem. Once the lower level needs have been met, the primary motivator becomes the need for self-actualization, or the desire to fulfill one’s individual potential.

Abrahm Maslow an America psychologist wanted to understand what motivates people. He believd that individual possess a set of motivation system unrelated to rewards or unconscious desires. Maslow (1943) stated that people are motivated to achieve curtain need. When one need is fulfilled a person seeks to fulfill the next one and so on.

Maslows model can be conceptualized as a pyramid in which the bottom of this hierarchy represents basic physiological or biological needs which are basic to survival such as hunger, thrust etc. Only when these needs are met, the need to be free from threatened danger arises. This refers to the safety needs of physical and psychological nature. The next is the needs to love and to be loved. After these needs are fulfilled the individual strives for esteem i.e. need to develop a sense of worth, dignity and respect. The last higher need according to Maslow is individual motives towards the full development of potential i.e. self actualization. A self actualization person is self aware, socially responsive, and creative, open to novelty and challenges.