Sunday, June 12, 2011

Final Post- Motivation and Incentive

Before taking this class, it was unclear to me that there were so many parts of a persons being that will drive them or motivate them. From an infant and its natural instincts for survival and seeking food when the side of its cheek is touched, all the way through the ways that people desire reaching goals. Without goals there would not be much motivation for people to work towards something.

A very interesting portion of motivation lies in preference reversal. People are motivated towards the furture. Meaning that they can be motivated to graduate college, taking classes that are required to do so. The problem with this however, is that with with delay the motivation decreases. The idea that we are pushed to work towards a goal that offers an incentive, and are pushed more towards a goal that offers a large and/or immediate incentive over a short term or small incentive is called preference reversal. This is interesting to me because an individual can be motivated to graduate from college but with delay and set backs such as finanaical problems or lack of success in classes they will begin to lose their motivation for graduating. With that said, it took me 6 years and I'm glad I was able to get through it! After tomorrow, when I take this final, I will be done!!

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