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What's Motivation?
Motivation is a driving factor for actions, willingness, and goals. Motivation is derived from the word motive, or a need that requires satisfaction. These needs, wants or desires may be acquired through influence of culture, society, lifestyle, or may be generally innate. An individual's motivation may be inspired by outside forces (extrinsic motivation)[1] or by themselves (intrinsic motivation).[1] The difference between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation depends on the actions behind it. Intrinsic motivation has to do with having an internal desire to perform a task and extrinsic motivation has to do with performing a task in order to receive some kind of reward.[2] According to research, intrinsic motivation has more beneficial outcomes than extrinsic motivation.[3] Motivation has been considered one of the most important reasons to move forward.[4] Motivation results from the interaction of both conscious and unconscious factors. Mastering motivation to allow sustained and deliberate practice is central to high levels of achievement, e.g. in elite sport, medicine, or music.[5] Motivation governs choices among alternative forms of voluntary activity.[6]
Two parts usually define motivation as a desire to act: the directional (such as directed towards a positive stimulus or away from a negative one) and the activated "seeking phase" and consummatory "liking phase". This type of motivation has neurobiological roots in the basal ganglia and mesolimbic (dopaminergic) pathways. Activated "seeking" behaviour, such as locomotor activity, is influenced by dopaminergic drugs, and microdialysis experiments reveal that dopamine is released during the anticipation of a reward.[7] The "wanting behaviour" associated with a rewarding stimulus can be increased by microinjections of dopamine and dopaminergic drugs in the dorsorostral nucleus accumbens and posterior ventral palladum. Opioid injections in this area produce pleasure; however, outside of these hedonic hotspots, they create an increased desire.[8] Furthermore, depletion or inhibition of dopamine in neurons of the nucleus accumbens decreases appetitive but not consummatory behaviour. Dopamine, further implicated in motivation as administration of amphetamine, increases the breakpoint in a progressive ratio self-reinforcement schedule; subjects will be willing to go to greater lengths (e.g. press a lever more times) to obtain a reward.[9]
A drive or desire can be described as an urge that activates behavior that is aimed at a goal or an incentive.[45] These drives are thought to originate within the individual and may not require external stimuli to encourage the behavior. Basic drives could be sparked by urges such as hunger, which motivates a person to seek food whereas more subtle drives might be the desire for praise and approval, which motivates a person to behave in a manner pleasing to others.
Another basic drive is the sexual drive which like food motivates us because it is essential to our survival.[46] The desire for sex is wired deep into the brain of all human beings as glands secrete hormones that travel through the blood to the brain and stimulates the onset of sexual desire.[46] The hormone involved in the initial onset of sexual desire is called Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA).[46] The hormonal basis of both men and women's sex drives is testosterone.[46][need quotation to verify] Men naturally have more testosterone than women do and so are more likely than women to think about sex.[46][need quotation to verify]
Testosterone is associated with status-seeking behaviors such as competition, which may depend on whether one wins or loses status, but also on the stability of one's status. We examined (1) to what extent testosterone administration affects competition behavior in repeated social contests in men with high or low rank, and (2), whether this relationship is moderated by hierarchy stability, as predicted by the status instability hypothesis. Using a real effort-based design in healthy male participants (N = 173 males), we first found that testosterone (vs. placebo) increased motivation to compete for status, but only in individuals with an unstable low status. A second part of the experiment, tailored to directly compare stable with unstable hierarchies, indicated that exogenous testosterone again increased competitive motivation in individuals with a low unstable status, but decreased competition behavior in men with low stable status. Additionally, exogenous testosterone increased motivation in those with a stable high status. Further analysis suggested that these effects were moderated by individuals' trait dominance, and genetic differences assessed by the androgen receptor (CAG-repeat) and dopamine transporter (DAT1) polymorphisms. Our study provides evidence that testosterone specifically boosts status-related motivation when there is an opportunity to improve one's social status. The findings contribute to our understanding of testosterone's causal role in status-seeking motivation in competition behavior, and indicate that testosterone adaptively increases our drive for high status in a context-dependent manner. We discuss potential neurobiological pathways through which testosterone may attain these effects on behavior.
The main goal of data analysis was to assess enhancement users' perceptions of the motivational effects of stimulant medications. Analyses therefore focused on ratings of the medications' effects on non-cognitive, motivation-related functions. In particular, we assessed: (1) whether users reported positive effects on motivation-related functions; (2) whether this overall perception of motivational enhancement was greater than, less than, or equivalent to the overall perception of cognitive enhancement in the narrow sense, assessed by the cognition-related ratings; and (3) which particular functions within each category were believed to be significantly enhanced by these users.
Participants found that stimulants were, overall, enhancing of both motivation-related and cognition-related functions. Linear composite ratings in each category, with all individual constituent functions equally weighed, indicated helpfulness (i.e., ratings exceeded “no effect” by one sample t-tests): t(39) = 11.17, p < 0.01 and t(39) = 8.56, p < 0.01, respectively, two-tailed3.
In a comparison between the enhancing effects of stimulants on linear composites of motivation and cognition, participants perceived greater enhancement of functions in the motivational category, paired-samples t(39) = 2.19, p = 0.04, two-tailed. In sum, for the sample of functions used in this project, enhancement users of stimulants found that the pills enhanced motivation, and indeed reported that the pills enhanced motivation significantly more than cognitive ability.
Turning to the individual functions rated, Table Table11 shows the means of the perceived stimulant effects on each function within the two categories. A cognitive function (attention) was rated numerically most strongly enhanced by stimulants, but it was not rated significantly higher than the next three in descending order: energy, alertness, and motivation, by paired-samples t-tests: [t(39) = 0.82, p = 0.42; t(39) = 0.77, p = 0.45; and t(39) = 0.85, p = 0.40, respectively]. Equivalence testing, with differences <0.5 points on the 7-point scale stipulated to be equivalent, suggested that the standard 90% confidence interval (Walker and Nowacki, 2011) of the difference between the variables ([−0.13, 0.38], for the attention-energy contrast; [−0.18; 0.48], for the attention-alertness contrast; [−0.15, 0.45], for the attention-motivation contrast) fell within the equivalence interval of [−0.50; 0.50]. Taken together, null-hypothesis and equivalence tests converged to suggest that attention ratings were comparable to the ratings on the three highest rated motivation-related functions.
Drugs That Increase Motivation:
Medically speaking, these drugs are most commonly prescribed to treat ADHD, as well as sleep-related disorders, such as narcolepsy [1].
One of the main mechanisms of amphetamines is to stimulate the release of dopamine in several important regions of the brain. They can also further increase dopamine activity by inhibiting the “reuptake” of dopamine back into neurons, which increases the length and intensity of neural stimulation by dopamine [2, 3].
These dopamine-related mechanisms are most likely where these drugs get their “stimulating” effects from — which includes some effects directly related to motivation.
Due to the effects of stimulant drugs on motivation, they are sometimes used by doctors to treat other neurological and psychiatric diseases that feature motivation-related symptoms, such as apathy [4]. However, these are “unofficial,” or “off-label,” uses of these medications.
Nonetheless, even though they are widely used by doctors to treat a number of common health conditions, amphetamines are not without their dangers. For example, amphetamines can be highly addictive and potentially neurotoxic — especially when they are abused illegally, or used in any way other than prescribed and directed by a qualified medical professional. This is one of the main reasons why amphetamines should never be taken without the ongoing supervision from a doctor [5].
Additionally, many people who abuse amphetamines illegally do so due to the widespread — but mistaken — belief that they can “enhance cognition” (i.e. that they are “nootropic” compounds).
For example, healthy university students who have reported abusing Adderall commonly reported effects such as [6]:
Like amphetamines, Modafinil is also widely abused by otherwise-healthy people who believe it acts as a “nootropic,” or “cognitive-enhancing” drug [4].
In fairness, some evidence does exist to suggest that Modafinil could possibly affect cognition in healthy human users. For example, a few early studies have associated Modafinil with potentially enhanced cognitive performance, creative thinking, and increased motivation (increased “task enjoyment”) in healthy individuals, compared to inactive placebo treatments [9, 10, 11].
However, other studies have reported that Modafinil — like amphetamines — may not actually enhance cognition per se. Rather, the general “stimulating” effects of Modafinil may simply cause people to over-estimate their true cognitive ability, in turn causing them to believe that their cognition has been enhanced even when it is not [11].
Potential Mechanisms of Modafinil
Although the exact mechanisms of modafinil are not known for certain, some researchers have proposed that Modafinil may weakly inhibit dopamine reuptake transporters, thereby leading to increased amounts of active dopamine throughout the brain. However, this theory is controversial, and has not yet been fully proven or validated [12, 13].
Some other researchers have suggested that Modafinil may act primarily by increasing the levels of other neurotransmitters, such as norepinephrine, serotonin, and the histamine neuropeptide orexin [12].
All in all, more research will be needed to fully understand the exact mechanisms behind Modafinil’s effects in animals and humans.
Motivation is a driving factor for actions, willingness, and goals. Motivation is derived from the word motive, or a need that requires satisfaction. These needs, wants or desires may be acquired through influence of culture, society, lifestyle, or may be generally innate. An individual's motivation may be inspired by outside forces (extrinsic motivation)[1] or by themselves (intrinsic motivation).[1] The difference between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation depends on the actions behind it. Intrinsic motivation has to do with having an internal desire to perform a task and extrinsic motivation has to do with performing a task in order to receive some kind of reward.[2] According to research, intrinsic motivation has more beneficial outcomes than extrinsic motivation.[3] Motivation has been considered one of the most important reasons to move forward.[4] Motivation results from the interaction of both conscious and unconscious factors. Mastering motivation to allow sustained and deliberate practice is central to high levels of achievement, e.g. in elite sport, medicine, or music.[5] Motivation governs choices among alternative forms of voluntary activity.[6]
Two parts usually define motivation as a desire to act: the directional (such as directed towards a positive stimulus or away from a negative one) and the activated "seeking phase" and consummatory "liking phase". This type of motivation has neurobiological roots in the basal ganglia and mesolimbic (dopaminergic) pathways. Activated "seeking" behaviour, such as locomotor activity, is influenced by dopaminergic drugs, and microdialysis experiments reveal that dopamine is released during the anticipation of a reward.[7] The "wanting behaviour" associated with a rewarding stimulus can be increased by microinjections of dopamine and dopaminergic drugs in the dorsorostral nucleus accumbens and posterior ventral palladum. Opioid injections in this area produce pleasure; however, outside of these hedonic hotspots, they create an increased desire.[8] Furthermore, depletion or inhibition of dopamine in neurons of the nucleus accumbens decreases appetitive but not consummatory behaviour. Dopamine, further implicated in motivation as administration of amphetamine, increases the breakpoint in a progressive ratio self-reinforcement schedule; subjects will be willing to go to greater lengths (e.g. press a lever more times) to obtain a reward.[9]
A drive or desire can be described as an urge that activates behavior that is aimed at a goal or an incentive.[45] These drives are thought to originate within the individual and may not require external stimuli to encourage the behavior. Basic drives could be sparked by urges such as hunger, which motivates a person to seek food whereas more subtle drives might be the desire for praise and approval, which motivates a person to behave in a manner pleasing to others.
Another basic drive is the sexual drive which like food motivates us because it is essential to our survival.[46] The desire for sex is wired deep into the brain of all human beings as glands secrete hormones that travel through the blood to the brain and stimulates the onset of sexual desire.[46] The hormone involved in the initial onset of sexual desire is called Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA).[46] The hormonal basis of both men and women's sex drives is testosterone.[46][need quotation to verify] Men naturally have more testosterone than women do and so are more likely than women to think about sex.[46][need quotation to verify]
Exogenous testosterone increases status-seeking motivation in men with unstable low social status
Testosterone is associated with status-seeking behaviors such as competition, which may depend on whether one wins or loses status, but also on the stability of one's status. We examined (1) to what extent testosterone administration affects competition behavior in repeated social contests in men with high or low rank, and (2), whether this relationship is moderated by hierarchy stability, as predicted by the status instability hypothesis. Using a real effort-based design in healthy male participants (N = 173 males), we first found that testosterone (vs. placebo) increased motivation to compete for status, but only in individuals with an unstable low status. A second part of the experiment, tailored to directly compare stable with unstable hierarchies, indicated that exogenous testosterone again increased competitive motivation in individuals with a low unstable status, but decreased competition behavior in men with low stable status. Additionally, exogenous testosterone increased motivation in those with a stable high status. Further analysis suggested that these effects were moderated by individuals' trait dominance, and genetic differences assessed by the androgen receptor (CAG-repeat) and dopamine transporter (DAT1) polymorphisms. Our study provides evidence that testosterone specifically boosts status-related motivation when there is an opportunity to improve one's social status. The findings contribute to our understanding of testosterone's causal role in status-seeking motivation in competition behavior, and indicate that testosterone adaptively increases our drive for high status in a context-dependent manner. We discuss potential neurobiological pathways through which testosterone may attain these effects on behavior.
Enhancement stimulants: perceived motivational and cognitive advantages
Psychostimulants like Adderall and Ritalin are widely used for cognitive enhancement by people without ADHD, although the empirical literature has shown little conclusive evidence for effectiveness in this population. This paper explores one potential explanation of this discrepancy: the possibility that the benefit from enhancement stimulants is at least in part motivational, rather than purely cognitive. We review relevant laboratory, survey, and interview research and present the results of a new survey of enhancement users with the goal of comparing perceived cognitive and motivational effects. These users perceived stimulant effects on motivationally-related factors, especially “energy” and “motivation,” and reported motivational effects to be at least as pronounced as cognitive effects, including the effects on “attention.”The main goal of data analysis was to assess enhancement users' perceptions of the motivational effects of stimulant medications. Analyses therefore focused on ratings of the medications' effects on non-cognitive, motivation-related functions. In particular, we assessed: (1) whether users reported positive effects on motivation-related functions; (2) whether this overall perception of motivational enhancement was greater than, less than, or equivalent to the overall perception of cognitive enhancement in the narrow sense, assessed by the cognition-related ratings; and (3) which particular functions within each category were believed to be significantly enhanced by these users.
Participants found that stimulants were, overall, enhancing of both motivation-related and cognition-related functions. Linear composite ratings in each category, with all individual constituent functions equally weighed, indicated helpfulness (i.e., ratings exceeded “no effect” by one sample t-tests): t(39) = 11.17, p < 0.01 and t(39) = 8.56, p < 0.01, respectively, two-tailed3.
In a comparison between the enhancing effects of stimulants on linear composites of motivation and cognition, participants perceived greater enhancement of functions in the motivational category, paired-samples t(39) = 2.19, p = 0.04, two-tailed. In sum, for the sample of functions used in this project, enhancement users of stimulants found that the pills enhanced motivation, and indeed reported that the pills enhanced motivation significantly more than cognitive ability.
Turning to the individual functions rated, Table Table11 shows the means of the perceived stimulant effects on each function within the two categories. A cognitive function (attention) was rated numerically most strongly enhanced by stimulants, but it was not rated significantly higher than the next three in descending order: energy, alertness, and motivation, by paired-samples t-tests: [t(39) = 0.82, p = 0.42; t(39) = 0.77, p = 0.45; and t(39) = 0.85, p = 0.40, respectively]. Equivalence testing, with differences <0.5 points on the 7-point scale stipulated to be equivalent, suggested that the standard 90% confidence interval (Walker and Nowacki, 2011) of the difference between the variables ([−0.13, 0.38], for the attention-energy contrast; [−0.18; 0.48], for the attention-alertness contrast; [−0.15, 0.45], for the attention-motivation contrast) fell within the equivalence interval of [−0.50; 0.50]. Taken together, null-hypothesis and equivalence tests converged to suggest that attention ratings were comparable to the ratings on the three highest rated motivation-related functions.
Drugs That Increase Motivation:
1) Amphetamines
Amphetamines are a specific family of drugs that share a common molecular structure, which also gives them similar effects.Medically speaking, these drugs are most commonly prescribed to treat ADHD, as well as sleep-related disorders, such as narcolepsy [1].
One of the main mechanisms of amphetamines is to stimulate the release of dopamine in several important regions of the brain. They can also further increase dopamine activity by inhibiting the “reuptake” of dopamine back into neurons, which increases the length and intensity of neural stimulation by dopamine [2, 3].
These dopamine-related mechanisms are most likely where these drugs get their “stimulating” effects from — which includes some effects directly related to motivation.
Due to the effects of stimulant drugs on motivation, they are sometimes used by doctors to treat other neurological and psychiatric diseases that feature motivation-related symptoms, such as apathy [4]. However, these are “unofficial,” or “off-label,” uses of these medications.
Nonetheless, even though they are widely used by doctors to treat a number of common health conditions, amphetamines are not without their dangers. For example, amphetamines can be highly addictive and potentially neurotoxic — especially when they are abused illegally, or used in any way other than prescribed and directed by a qualified medical professional. This is one of the main reasons why amphetamines should never be taken without the ongoing supervision from a doctor [5].
Additionally, many people who abuse amphetamines illegally do so due to the widespread — but mistaken — belief that they can “enhance cognition” (i.e. that they are “nootropic” compounds).
For example, healthy university students who have reported abusing Adderall commonly reported effects such as [6]:
- Increased “energy” (both physical and mental)
- Enhanced mood or overall sense of well-being
- Increased “drive” to complete a task or achieve a goal
- Increased interest and emotional investment in their work
2) Other Stimulants
Modafinil
Modafinil is a wakefulness-promoting, non-amphetamine stimulant drug that is most commonly used for treating excessive sleepiness and other fatigue-related health conditions.Like amphetamines, Modafinil is also widely abused by otherwise-healthy people who believe it acts as a “nootropic,” or “cognitive-enhancing” drug [4].
In fairness, some evidence does exist to suggest that Modafinil could possibly affect cognition in healthy human users. For example, a few early studies have associated Modafinil with potentially enhanced cognitive performance, creative thinking, and increased motivation (increased “task enjoyment”) in healthy individuals, compared to inactive placebo treatments [9, 10, 11].
However, other studies have reported that Modafinil — like amphetamines — may not actually enhance cognition per se. Rather, the general “stimulating” effects of Modafinil may simply cause people to over-estimate their true cognitive ability, in turn causing them to believe that their cognition has been enhanced even when it is not [11].
Potential Mechanisms of Modafinil
Although the exact mechanisms of modafinil are not known for certain, some researchers have proposed that Modafinil may weakly inhibit dopamine reuptake transporters, thereby leading to increased amounts of active dopamine throughout the brain. However, this theory is controversial, and has not yet been fully proven or validated [12, 13].
Some other researchers have suggested that Modafinil may act primarily by increasing the levels of other neurotransmitters, such as norepinephrine, serotonin, and the histamine neuropeptide orexin [12].
All in all, more research will be needed to fully understand the exact mechanisms behind Modafinil’s effects in animals and humans.
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