Name: モチベーションの力。クラッシュコース心理学 #17 (The Power of Motivation: Crash Course Psychology #17)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T05:11:49.000Z
Duration: 11 min 20 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

Aron Ralston was out climbing in Utah's Bluejohn Canyon when a giant rock shifted under his

feet, and he fell, pinning his right arm to the canyon wall. He was stuck, and worse,

he hadn't told anyone where we was going.

For the next five days, Ralston tried to move and chip away at the rock. He ate his remaining

food, drank the last of his water. Eventually he drank his own urine, and started videotaping

But then something happened. Ralston had a dream. He saw himself as a father, picking

up his son, and with that vision, an overpowering will to survive kicked in. He broke his arm

bones, sawed through his flesh with a dull pocket knife, and freed himself.

Ralston harnessed some of our most powerful psychological forces -- hunger, thirst, desire

to be part of a family, need to return to the human community -- they ignited his tenacity,

which allowed him to do an incredible thing.

In its most basic sense, motivation is the need or desire to do something. Whether that

need is biological, social, or emotional, and whether that something is making dinner,

going to college, or cutting off your arm, motivation is what gets you moving.

But the big question is, why? Why do we do anything? I mean, why ever bother changing

Psychologists often view motivation in one of four ways. On their own, none of these

theories is perfect, but taken together, they help us understand what drives us. Let's start

with the first theory: an evolutionary perspective.

For a while in the early 20th century, it was popular to think of all behaviors as instincts,

or innate drives to act a certain way. But this so-called Instinct Theory was misguided,

in part because the presence of a tendency doesn't always mean it's supposed to be there.

Like, we can imagine why a bunch of people might start rioting at a heated soccer match,

but to say that they're supposed to -- a little short-sighted.

Evolution is a far more complex, chaotic, and interesting process than that. Plenty

of behaviors could just be accidents of evolution -- late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould called

these accidents "spandrels," or traits that rather than being "adaptive" just stuck around

Today we define instincts as complex, unlearned behaviors that have a fixed pattern throughout

a species. For example, dogs instinctively shake their fur when wet, salmon return to

the stream in which they hatched, and human babies know how to suckle just minutes after

These are true, genetically-predisposed instincts that do not require learning.

But today we understand that while certain tendencies may be genetic, individual experience

plays a major role in behavior and motivation, as well.

So another theory of motivation suggests that a physiological need, or drive, simply compels

us to reduce that need. This is called the drive-reduction theory. This can be as simple

as hearing my stomach growl, and looking for a burrito. My need is food, my drive is hunger,

Drive reduction is all about maintaining your body's homeostasis -- the physiological balance

As much as we're pushed to reduce our drives, we're also pulled along by incentives — the

positive or negative stimuli that either entice or repel us. The mouth-watering smell of that

burrito pulls me toward it, just as much as my hunger pushes me there.

However, we're also clearly more complicated than our homeostatic systems, and drive-reduction

theory may over-simplify a lot of our behavior. For example, a person may fast for days, ignoring

their body's hunger to honor some spiritual or political cause; and I know I'm not the

only one who sometimes eats when I'm not actually hungry.

So a third theory -- the theory of optimal arousal -- attempts to fill in some of those

gaps. It suggests rather than just reducing a drive or tension, like hunger, we're motivated

to maintain a balance between stimulation and relaxation.

Say you're holed up in your house all weekend studying. You're bored and lonely and gettin'

weird, so you call up some friends to go mountain biking or to a karaoke bar or whatever you

The idea here is that you want to hit the right level of arousal -- which, take note,

psychologists often use in a non-sexual sense -- without getting overstimulated and stressed.

So if you nearly break your face on that bike ride, or if the Journey covers at karaoke

start getting too intense, you may need to back off and take a nap.

Of course everyone has a different level of optimal arousal, and I'm guessing Aron Ralston's

was fairly high. Adrenaline junkies may jump out of planes to hit their ideal level, whereas

others might be satiated by an engaging book, or new knitting pattern. No matter which,

the optimal arousal theory suggests that we're motivated to avoid both boredom and stress.

And obviously not all needs are created equally. If I'm suffocating and can't catch a breath,

I'm not going to be thinking about eating that burrito. And if I'm about to be ravaged

by lions, I'm not going to worrying about my paycheck.

American psychologist Abraham Maslow illustrated this shuffling of priorities in the mid-1900's

Down at the bottom of the pyramid you'll find our most basic physiological needs for food,

The next rung up speaks to our need for safety, then comes love and belonging, followed by

esteem or respect, and finally, once all those needs have been met, we have the relative

luxury of being motivated by self-actualization and spiritual growth, and yoga retreats and

Of course there are problems with Maslow's vision. Empirical research hasn't really supported

his hierarchy. We tend to skip around on that pyramid all the time, and the importance of

those higher-level needs may vary depending on our culture and finances and personalities.

But still, everyone is restricted by the lowest levels of the pyramid. So, regardless of the

theories about why we have them, most schools of psychological thought agree that we are

driven by at least three big motivators: sex, hunger, and the need to belong.

We'll do a whole lesson later about all sorts of sex-related stuff, including how it motivates

us. There's a lot there. For now, let's just say that sexual motivation is how we promote

the survival of our species through recreation and/or procreation - both of which help human

communities bond and expand. Without it, none of us would be here today, thinking about

burritos and severed arms and sex and stuff.

Internally, we are biologically driven to knock boots by our sex hormones. We're also

motivated by psychological and sociocultural influences - ranging from suggestive external

stimuli plastered all over billboards, magazines, and TVs in the form of, you know, scantily-clad

bodies sprawled out on beaches to more genteel desires like love, family, or adherence to

Sex is a big motivator, but it isn't precisely a need, no matter what anyone has told you.

After air and water, food is our body's greatest need, and thus obtaining food is one of our

Hunger may seem pretty simple. Eat food, stay alive. But physiologically and psychologically,