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What exactly is motivation?
In psychology, motivation is the driving force (desire) behind all actions of human beings, animals, and lower organisms.
Many textbooks define it as an internal state or condition that activates behavior and gives it direction, desire or want that energizes and directs goal-oriented behavior, or an influence of needs and desires on the intensity and direction of behavior.
Motivation is often based on emotions, specifically, on the search for positive emotional experiences and the avoidance of negative ones, where positive and negative are defined by the individual brain state, not by social norms: a person may be driven to self-injury or violence because his or her brain is conditioned to create a positive response to these actions. Motivation is important because it is involved in the performance of all learned responses.
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