Final Project.

Winston Churchill once said, “When going through hell, keep going.” But as humans in nature, motivation drives us to proceed the behaviors and ideas we have. Our motivation is what will change our behavior to act upon or do. Motivation over history has changed its content but not the way it works. People may act the way they do depending on their environment, culture, genetics and many other things. As humans though we have universal motives that we all share such as sex, food, and hydration. We are all motivated to do things whether it be intrinsic or extrinsic.

            Motivation helps us understand addictions and disorders such as eating disorders. Many things motivate us such as incentives, which can play a large part in our lives. Different things drive us to do different things whether or not the drives consists inside of us or are present in our environment around us. Understanding motivation and how it works can be very powerful. For example Hitler was able to influence and motivate an entire country to try and exterminate thousands of people. He created drives and goals for Germany that made people do unspeakable things. Motivation is very powerful and forms who we are and what we want to be in life.

            Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation was my favorite chapter discussed in this course. There are many different things that motivate us and it generally falls under two categories; intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is drives within ourselves, for example, teach myself to cope with death better. An extrinsic motivation is a drive that is outside ourselves in our environment. For example I want to study more to get a better grade on my test. Intrinsic motivation is something only I can feel inside me. An extrinsic motivation is something that is found in our surroundings it could be for example money, or rewards.

            I did a lot of thinking of a good example of either an intrinsic motivation or an extrinsic motivation. I decided to use a clip from one of my favorite movies. The 1995 movie Billy Madison starring Adam Sandler is the story many know of an immature male who is very wealthy from his father’s business. But his father is retiring and there is a dispute between the son and the ceo of the company of who is going to run the company. They decide that if Billy Madison who is played by Adam Sandler can beat the ceo in a questionnaire of high school material. Of course at the end Billy Madison wins but he passes on the job to the guy who helps him the whole time who Billy thinks should really win it.

            It is very obvious that there is an extrinsic motivation for the more he studies, the better chance he will get the company. But there are also specific scenes from the movie that show the more he studies he also gets quicker and sooner awards. These quicker and sooner awards will also make him work even harder.

            Along his journey he falls in love with one of his teacher’s who is a good looking blonde woman named Veronica Vaughn. In this one specific scene Billy gets to study then when he is done she gives him an assessment to see how much Billy has learned. There is an immediate reward to every question Billy gets right, Veronica Vaughn removes one piece of her clothing for every question Billy gets right. So the extrinsic motivation to study would be a better chance for Billy to see more of Veronica Vaughn. At the end of this scene one of my favorite scenes is that Billy replaces Veronica Vaughn with the famous Chris Farley also removing a piece of clothing for every question Billy gets right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF3x3Bad2Wk