We like to think desire alone can spark action. But as anybody who’s ever set a 6:00 a.m. alarm knows, wanting something rarely tips a person into doing it. Think about the student who cares about her future, knows her exams are important, yet somehow keeps falling down YouTube rabbit holes instead of opening her
An individual keeps visiting the hospital with genuine symptoms, goes through testing, and is clearly desperate for answers. But on some occasions, the disease is actually self-induced or even completely fake. Factitious disorders are more than just “pretending to be sick.” They are rather complicated psychological conditions where an individual tries to appear sick or
Have you ever gone into a room and then completely forgotten the reason why? Or read a whole page in a textbook, then realised you don’t remember much of anything. Each of these examples illustrates a general phenomenon about the human mind: information does not become memory automatically; it must be taken in, selected, processed,
Human conduct is influenced by a dynamic blend of factors as biological, psychological, social and cultural factors, economic situations, environmental settings, and outside stressors. Of these, this paper focuses on motivation, an important psychological factor that has a significant influence on the way people act. Motivation can be defined as the inner urge or will
Questions about what motivates us have fascinated psychologists for decades. Early theories suggested that it is rewards and punishments that drive us to act. Give people money, praise and status, and they’ll work harder. Sounds logical, right? Well, it isn’t necessarily true always. Humans are not programmed to respond only to external forces. Something within us
All of us are familiar with ‘playing house.’ We have played house ourselves as kids or watched others do so. This seemingly childish game performs various developmental functions. When children play house they create stories about their roles, such as “I am the Dad,” “You are the Mom.” etc. They also imitate their parent’s roles