According to Schopenhauer, “to be motivated is to be moved into action, or to decide on a change in action” (Deckers, 2014, p. 2). The term “unmotivated,” on the contrary, means the absence of motivation to do something. For instance, some students can be unmotivated to study specific courses that they find useless and, as the result, do not care about their grades. Furthermore, some people are unmotivated to work. You can be even unmotivated to go out with friends one evening preferring to stay at home. However, it is impossible to be completely unmotivated. Let’s consider the situation mentioned above and imagine that you’d like to stay home when your friends invite you to go out. The first idea that comes to mind is “I should find the considerable reasons to reject the invitation.” In other words, you are motivated to another end having a goal of staying. The same works in other situations. Unmotivated to work people make a lot of efforts to escape working, and students do the same with academic challenges.
According to Freud, “people are not fully aware of many causes of their behavior, including ones originating in their own unconscious mind” (Baumeister and Bargh, 2014, p. 36). This lack of awareness is called unconscious motivation. For instance, I am unconsciously motivated when I want to have a snack without being hungry. Unconscious motivation has a significant impact on people’s lives. Once my friend met a guy and felt an unexplainable desire to have sex with him from the first sight. She did not care about his feelings or personality but started to behave actively to reach her goal. When she succeeded, she calmed down but did not start to date with him as her impulse had already been satisfied. Unconscious motivation incidentally makes us manifest and realize our repressed aggressiveness and sexual desires.
References
Baumeister, R. F., & Bargh, J. A. (2014). Conscious and unconscious: toward an integrative understanding of human mental life and action. In J. W. Sherman (Ed.), Dual-Process Theories of the Social Mind (pp. 35-49). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Print.
Deckers, L. (2014). Motivation: biological, physical, and environmental. New York, NY: Pearson. Print.
