Issues in the Psychology of Motivation

In psychology, motivation refers to the initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of behaviour. Motivation is a temporal and dynamic state that should not be confused with personality or emotion. Motivation is having the desire and willingness to do something. A motivated person can be reaching for a long-term goal such as becoming a professional writer or a more short-term goal like learning how to spell a particular word. Personality invariably refers to more or less permanent characteristics of an individual's state of being (eg: shy, extrovert, conscientious). As opposed to motivation, emotion refers to temporal states that do not immediately link to behaviour (eg: anger, grief, happiness). This book gathers new and important research in the field.