Introduction

Why does a student put in ten or twelve hours of study a day to crack a tough entrance exam? Why does someone train for months to join a mountaineering expedition despite a physical disability? Why does a young person carefully save money just to buy a parent a gift? Each of these very different behaviours is powered by an underlying motive — a force that moves a person toward a goal and keeps the behaviour going until the goal is reached or given up. This is the core idea behind motivation: it explains why behaviour is purposeful and goal-directed, and it also lets us predict how a person is likely to act in a given situation. But motives are only half the story of why we act and feel the way we do. Every human experience is also coloured by emotion — the elation of success, the disappointment of failure, the anger that follows an unfair setback, or the jealousy that can arise when someone close to us succeeds and we do not. This chapter looks at both of these closely linked areas of psychology. It explains what motivation is and how psychologists classify different kinds of motives (biological and psychosocial); describes Abraham Maslow's influential model of how human needs are organised into a hierarchy; examines what emotions are, their biological basis, and how they are expressed and interpreted differently across cultures; and finally looks at practical, evidence-based ways of managing negative emotions and building positive ones in everyday life.