1. AN INQUIRY INTO MOTIVATION IN HUMAN BEINGS. Motivation is the force that initiates, directs, and sustains individual or group behavior in order to satisfy a need or to attain a goal. This force is unique to each individual human being. There are many forces which drive an individual to struggle to achieve a goal or to fulfill a need. What are some of these? Some individuals born into squalor strive their entire lives to escape their birthright. They often sacrifice their health, their safety, their very existence to succeed. What is it that motivates them? Our nation developed because many individuals risked everything to reach beyond what "was" to what "could be." Settlers in the East cut native timbers in order to expose the earth to the sun above and sowed crops upon the rocky soil of the East. Homesteaders endured great hardships crossing the Great Plains to establish homesteads, ranches, and business in the Wild West. Many died in the process of making a new life for themselves. Their names are unknown to us, and yet in many of us, the same rugged individualism still exists and motivates us to struggle toward similar, contemporary pursuits. Some people are intrinsically motivated to achieve their goals or to satisfy needs. They do what they do just for the joy of doing it. There is no external factors that drive them. You and I have known such individuals and sometimes they can appear to be a mystery to us unless we understand their internal drive to succeed at what they are doing. Opposite of the intrinsically motivated individual is she who is extrinsically motivated to achieve something. Her behaviors are easier to understand. Take for example the woman who, after years of working at a minimum wage job, decides to develop new skills in order to qualify for a better position. She sacrifices time and energy to achieve her goal. She becomes a nurse, a teacher, a business woman, and in her new labor, earns the money she so desired. Some people are personally invested in improving themselves. They possess a value system which forces them to step beyond their status quo and improve their condition in life. The values that drive them may be simple or complex depending upon cultural and other environmental factors. If a person values money above all else, he or she will succeed in amassing the wealth desired. This "American Dream" was certainly active in the 1950's when many millionaires were born, rising out of the ruins like the phoenix from the aftermath of WWII. Personal investment aids the individual in motivating himself to succeed in life. In viewing life from a personal perspective, the individual makes decisions which will foster the kinds of successes he desires. Investing in self was a predominant theme in the late 1970's and 1980's. Many individuals, unlike their predecessors in the 1960's, invested in the bull markets and gathered fame and fortune. This motivating factor is present in all humans to some degree. In some individuals there is a self-determination which motivates stellar performance. The determination to be something other than what one is is the force that motivates this kind of individual to attain success. The self-determined individual is more likely to succeed at what he wants to because within him exists this force which prompts him to continue to struggle regardless of the barriers confronting him. Freud (1939) hypothesized that all individuals possess drives which cause individuals to undertake certain actions to produce desired results. The libido, or instinctual drive, causes a man to want to eat, sleep, and reproduce. Deeper, unconscious drives motivate him to achieve other things. Though many reject the Freudian perspective, his work in this area laid a foundation for many theorists who attempted to determine what motivates the human being to do certain things. The attribution theory holds that some attribute within the individual motivates him to strive toward personal excellence. What is it that prompts the olympic athlete to run, jump, and suffer for years of enduring work outs with the one hope of some day standing upon the podium and bending forward to have a gold medal draped around his neck? What attribute does this individual possess that others do not? Is there an attribute that does exist that motivates this person to forego immediate for deferred pleasure? Recent investigations into conative constructs, or instincts, wishes, drives, or cravings, explore the individual's striving for excellence. Though this is a rather new perspective, it is again another attempt to explain what motivates individuals to change their behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs and become new people altogether. Once, handicapped individuals were pigeonholed into believing they needed to accept their physical limitations. A movement developed to change this. First, handicapped people changed their "label." They no longer considered themselves "handicapped" but "physically challenged." Now, each year, Special Olympics are held around the country so that physically challenged people can gather and compete against one another just like their sound-bodied counterparts. What motivates the paraplegic to "soup up" his wheel chair, don leather gloves, and spin his wheels along the byways of America just so that one day he can ride at breakneck speed around a quarter-mile track in an attempt to set a world wheel-chair record? Maslow (1954) maintained that individuals were motivated to meet human needs, the highest of which was to become self- actualized. Before an individual could reach this state, he would need to meet his survival and security needs. He must then fill the need to be wanted or loved and the need to be recognized by others for who and what he is. No person can be self- actualized at all times, and yet, Maslow maintained that all individuals strive to achieve this state. Is there a personality type or characteristic which possesses more innate motivation than others? What makes a Steven Spielberg or Colonel Sanders achieve the success that others only wish they could? Robbins (1985) maintained that all champions possess seven characteristics which propel them toward realizing their dreams. The first and foremost characteristic is passion. These individuals contain within them a passion to excel. While one made movies that excited eyes and ears, and the other created a famous chicken recipe which pleased the palates of many people world wide, both, Robbins contended, possessed a passion that made them a cut above the rest of mankind. How did this passion surface in these two men? What about others, the rest of us, who also walk the same face of the earth and want to succeed? With similar passion, can we accomplish the same kinds of extraordinary things these two did? What comes first, motivation or competence? Are competent individuals more motivated to succeed than others or does some intrinsic, extrinsic, conative, attributive, or other innate value or drive prompt an individual to strive for excellence? Is there a personality type which possesses more motivational attributes than another? Is there any connection between personality and motivation, motivation and competence, or is motivation only a concept that we discuss in cognitive terms and still don't have any real notion about what it truly is? This study attempts to answer some of these questions? Many theories will be reviewed in order to formulate some general principles regarding what motivates human beings. Some motivational techniques will be studied. If we can understand what motivates some people, there is the possibility of replicating these practices with others who are less motivated. Einstein (1938) wrote that "The formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks the real advance in science." Motivation is the force. But, what causes it; what feeds it; what accelerates it; what destroys it; are all pertinent questions. No amount of scholarly investigation will produce a definitive answer. However, melding science and the arts together can provide the researcher with a new perspective on what motivates human beings. In this process of reading this text, the reader will understand what motivates others, and most importantly, what motivates him or her to respond to the stimuli of the world and produce goods and services, arts and letters, valued by others of the human species.