IB Psychology HLTopic 7 — MotivationHL extensionCore idea~9 min read
What Drives Behaviour: Theories of Motivation
Why does one person train at 6am every day while another cannot get off the sofa? Motivation is the answer psychologists give, but there are two very different ways of explaining it. One says your body pushes you. The other says you choose. You need both to answer HL questions well.
📘 What you need to know
Motivation is whatever gets a behaviour started and keeps it going.
Mechanistic theories say motivation comes from biological drives working automatically, below awareness.
Self-determination theory says motivation works at a conscious level: you know what you want and you choose.
Intrinsic motivation comes from inside the person — you do it because the activity itself is worth doing.
Extrinsic motivation comes from outside — money, grades, medals, praise, avoiding trouble.
Locus of control is how much you believe your own actions decide what happens to you.
Motivation is multi-layered: the same behaviour can have an intrinsic and an extrinsic reason at the same time.
What motivation actually means
Motivation is not a feeling. It is the reason a behaviour happens. If you can answer “why did they do that, and why did they keep doing it?”, you have described motivation.
The tricky part for psychologists is that the same visible behaviour can come from completely different reasons. Two students both revise for four hours. One does it because the subject fascinates her. One does it because her father has promised her a phone. Same behaviour, different motivation — and, as you will see later in this topic, very different long-term results.
Examiners love this point. Behaviour is what you can see; motivation is what you have to infer. Anything you have to infer is hard to measure, and that gives you evaluation for free.
Mechanistic motivation: the body pushes you
Mechanistic theories treat a human like a system that keeps itself in balance. Something goes out of balance (you have not eaten), that creates a drive (hunger), the drive pushes you into action (you find food), and the action removes the drive. You did not sit down and decide any of it.
Freud argued that two deep drives, aggression and sex, sit under most behaviour, and that we are not aware of them.
Hull built a more testable version: behaviour is driven by biological needs such as hunger, thirst, sex and avoiding pain. Reducing the need is what reinforces the behaviour.
Behaviourists extended it to learning: a reward reduces a drive, so the behaviour that earned the reward gets repeated.
The strength of this approach is that it explains behaviour we share with other animals, and it does not need us to trust what people say about themselves. The weakness is obvious as soon as you look at real life. Nobody starves themselves for a hunger strike, climbs a mountain, or revises for an IB exam because of drive reduction.
A good HL answer uses both columns: name the level each theory works at, then say which behaviour it explains best.
Self-determination theory: you choose
Self-determination theory starts from the opposite place. It assumes people are usually aware of what motivates them, and that motivation is about choice, awareness and control. Instead of asking “what pushed this person?”, it asks “did this feel like their own decision?”.
That question turns out to matter a lot. When behaviour feels chosen, people keep it up. When it feels controlled by somebody else, it stops the moment the pressure is removed. Two ideas inside the theory do most of the work in IB questions: intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, and locus of control.
Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivation means the reward is built into the activity. You play the guitar because playing the guitar is good. There is nothing to collect at the end.
Extrinsic motivation means the reward is bolted on from outside: a certificate, a grade, money, a medal, or somebody’s approval. Take the reward away and the reason to act disappears with it.
The test for intrinsic motivation is simple: remove the prize. If the behaviour survives, the motivation was intrinsic.
Careful: intrinsic and extrinsic are not opposites in the way “hot and cold” are. Most real behaviour has some of each. A footballer can love the game and want the wages. What matters is which one the person would still act on if the other disappeared.
Locus of control
Locus of control (LOC), measured with a scale designed by Rotter in 1966, is about where you think the cause of events sits.
The core question
Do my own actions decide what happens to me — or do other people, luck and circumstances decide?
People with a high internal LOC tend to hold to their own standards, which is why LOC keeps appearing in questions on conformity and obedience.
Feature
High internal LOC
High external LOC
Who is in charge?
I am
People and events around me
After failure
Looks at own effort
Looks at outside causes
Under social pressure
More likely to resist
More likely to go along
Typical description
Confident, achievement-focused
Wants approval, feels less secure
Usual motivation type
More often intrinsic
More often extrinsic
One caution worth a mark in an ERQ: high internal LOC is treated as the “good” one in a lot of Western research. In cultures that value fitting in with the group, taking all responsibility onto yourself is not automatically admired. That is a culture bias point sitting right there in the theory.
Worked examples
WORKED EXAMPLE
Outline one theory of motivation. [3 marks]
A short-answer question. Three marks means one clear theory, defined and illustrated — not a tour of everything you know.
Name it and define it
Self-determination theory says motivation works consciously: people are aware of what they want and act through choice and control.
Give the key distinction
It separates intrinsic motivation, where the satisfaction is in the activity, from extrinsic motivation, where the reward comes from outside.
Apply it
A student who revises because the subject interests her is intrinsically motivated; one who revises only for a promised reward is extrinsically motivated.
3 marks: named, defined, appliedDo not add a second theory here. Extra theories earn nothing and cost you time.
WORKED EXAMPLE
Explain one limitation of mechanistic theories of motivation. [3 marks]
State the limitation
Mechanistic theories explain behaviour as drive reduction, so they struggle with behaviour that has no biological payoff.
Show why that is a problemPeople go hungry on purpose, climb mountains and study for years — none of that reduces a drive, and some of it increases discomfort.
Link back
So the theory is incomplete for human motivation and needs a conscious-level account such as self-determination theory alongside it.
Limitation + evidence + consequence“Explain” needs the third step. A limitation with no consequence usually caps at 2.
💡 Exam tip
Learn one example for every term. Definitions with no example rarely get full marks.
When a question says “motivation”, check which level it wants: unconscious drives, or conscious choice.
Intrinsic and extrinsic is the highest-value pair in this whole topic. It comes back in every context.
Keep Rotter (1966) for LOC and Deci and Ryan for self-determination theory. Two names, correctly used, look far better than six names sprinkled about.
In an ERQ, the fact that motivation cannot be seen directly is a ready-made evaluation point. Use it once, properly, not five times.
⚠ Common mix-up
“Intrinsic means it works better.” Not automatically. Extrinsic rewards are very effective in the short term; the problem is what happens afterwards.
Treating LOC as a personality type. It is a tendency on a scale, and it moves depending on the situation.
Calling mechanistic theories “old and wrong”. They still explain hunger, thirst and pain avoidance perfectly well. They are limited, not useless.
Mixing up extrinsic motivation with any reward at all. Enjoyment is a reward too — it is just built into the activity.
Writing that Freud and Hull said the same thing. Freud’s drives are unconscious conflicts; Hull’s are measurable bodily needs.
Up next: Do Fear Appeals Make People Quit Smoking? — we take these theories into the Health and Wellbeing context and see what happens when health campaigns try to scare people into changing.
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