MOTIVATION • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Motivation

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/mˌoʊtəvˈeɪʃən/ Listen

Motivation

noun

The psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal; the reason for the action; that which gives purpose and direction to behavior. Synonyms: motive, need. "He acted with the best of motives"

The condition of being motivated.

The act of motivating; providing incentive. Synonym: motivating.

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Etymology of 'Motivation'

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"Motivation" Quotes from Famous Books

... of circumscribed self-interest during an era of political and industrial expansion has been adopted by philosophers as the guide as well as a clue to conduct; it was hailed by them as a sufficient and complete motivation for wealth creation; they used it as a basis of a theory for race progress resting solely on the efforts of men to satisfy their material needs through their ability to capture goods. This motive ...

— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot

... study of characterology or the motivation of conduct is extremely new, and there are many indications of immense values in uncovered fields. Some appreciation of this fact may be gained from the following pages which show the possibility of tracing one form of behavior to ...

— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... assuredly keep all who engage in them from treating themselves too tenderly. They demand such incredible efforts, depth beyond depth of exertion, both in degree and in duration, that the whole scale of motivation alters. Discomfort and annoyance, hunger and wet, pain and cold, squalor and filth, cease to have any deterrent operation whatever. Death turns into a commonplace matter, and its usual power to check our action vanishes. With the annulling of these customary inhibitions, ranges of new energy ...

— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... an easy lesson to learn. In the first place there must be motivation involved in racial preservation. Yet we derived no pleasure out of the things that make the Builders wish to continue to live. We did not sleep; we did not eat, and we were not able to reproduce ourselves. (And, besides, this ...

— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns

... revision. A study of the manuscript shows that she was a careful workman, and that in polishing this bizarre story she strove consistently for greater credibility and realism, more dramatic (if sometimes melodramatic) presentation of events, better motivation, conciseness, and exclusion of purple passages. In the revision and rewriting, many additions were made, so that Mathilda is appreciably longer than The Fields of Fancy. But the additions are usually improvements: a much fuller account of Mathilda's father and mother and of their marriage, ...

— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley