On One Role of Motivation

A person may know very well what s/he should do and may also know how to do it reasonably well, and yet still not do it. As one example, this chapter has tried to focus your attention on the great importance of verbal fluency. The ramification, of course, is that you should devote a substantial amount of time and effort in trying to improve all aspects of your verbal skills. But something else is needed actually to get you to study and to practice. That something else is motivation. Motivation refers to one's need or desire for something. Hunger and thirst are very primitive sources of motivation, but people in our society are more often motivated by fear of social disapproval or desire for wealth and status. Although I believe that people are motivated to learn just for the sake of learning, most students are also motivated to receive grades that lead to a degree and perhaps admission to graduate or professional school. Whatever its source, including pressure from parents and peers, motivation is the impetus that converts good intentions into action. We can depict this view of motivation in an equation

Performance (R) = Habit (H) x Motivation (M) (4.1)

where "habit" is one's knowledge of "know-how." When Thomas Edison was asked why he was successful in inventing so many things, he said that "Invention is 1 part inspiration and 99 parts perspiration." I think that Edison understated the importance of good habits, but a good compromise formula for success would be

R = HM₁0 (4.2)

This formula says that both habit and motivation are necessary; you may be motivated to improve your verbal skills, but you can't do it if you don't know what to do. And, of course, the better that you know how to do something, the less time and effort, and hence the less motivation that may be required to accomplish the same goal. However, a little bit of knowledge can go a long way if you have enough motivation. In principle, I could motivate you to practice verbal skills. I might attach a couple of wires to your body so that I could give you an electric shock any time you said, "Y'know." With that set-up, I am sure you would work on your vocabulary so that you could express yourself better. But in our society, you have to motivate yourself. The chances are that your parents have tried to bribe you from time to time in an effort to motivate you to do your best, but in the last analysis, you have to shock yourself into trying hard.