Incentives and Motivation

Abstract

In very general terms, motivation depends on an amalgam of internal and external factors. Thus, for example, the motivational state known as hunger is clearly influenced by internal conditions related to the number of hours of food deprivation and by external stimuli providing visual and olfactory information about food. It is a meaningless question to ask whether motivational states are more affected by external or by internal factors, since the relative importance of each set of factors can vary within extremely wide limits. In addition, of course, internal and external factors typically interact with each other: the incentive value of a bowl of rice is much greater for a starving peasant in Asia than for a bloated member of Western society.