MOTIVAZIONE

[Autom. eng. transl.] The main objective of those who study motivation is to discover goals, desires, goals - in short - what moves the behavior, directs it and makes it possible. Motivation theories try to explain the "why" of a behavior, and investigate the processes that push individuals to act in certain ways rather than others. We will deepen the different theories that define the motivation in the first part of the chapter. We will observe how the complex relationship between factors internal to the organism and external factors contribute to the determination of behavior and how the latter is subordinated both to biologically rooted processes (for example instincts) and to cognitive processes (for example the evaluation of the situation or the 'anticipation of the goal). In the second part of the chapter, according to a classic distinction of motivation psychology, elementary, biologically grounded and universal motivations within the animal kingdom, such as hunger and sex, will be taken into consideration. Reasons that are specific to the human being, such as the need for success and affirmation, will then be analyzed. The mechanisms underlying the first type of motivation (called primary motivation) are essentially biological, while the mechanisms that regulate the second type of motivation (called secondary motivation) are placed at a psychological and cognitive level. In the chapter some types of motivation will be exemplified with the intention of problematizing this distinction: on the one hand there is no biological motivation that is not at the same time modeled by experience and regulated by the intervention of cognitive and psychological, as well as cultural and social processes ; on the other hand it is possible to hypothesize the influence of biological factors also in the case of so-called secondary motivations. Think, for example, of hunger: surely the physiological need to feed us drives man to search for food, but it is difficult to separate the need for food from the need for contact-relationship with those who procure it (the mother-child interaction in the feeding time). Just as it is difficult to disregard the cultural and social values that food can take so much as to modify our own food needs (tastes) and the perception of our body (too thin or too fat compared to parameters established by the culture of belonging)