The term "Motivation" is fairly recent, having been coined in the '30s by advertisers Ernest Dichter and Louis Cheskin, who disputed its authorship.

For these authors, motivations were the irrational and unconscious factors of human behavior[1]

We're in the world of advertising here, which lends a particular "color" to their studies. But it's not impossible that, even with the passage of time and the many theories that have followed, we continue to associate people's motivation with a "wow" effect almost exclusively linked to the reward circuit.

Before this word appeared, the study of the causes of behavior already had a long history. This can be traced to Plato and Aristotle, who already had the intuition to divide the mind into distinct zones. This tripartite vision can even be traced back to Pythagoras in the previous century.

According to Plato, the soul has three levels and three faculties:

  1. Epithumia, "appetite", the desiring level, the lower desires (hunger, thirst, etc.)
  1. Thumos, "anger," the irascible part, the aggressive level, the passions,
  1. Logistikon, "the reasonable", the rational part, the divine level, thought, which alone is immortal.

Today, "we" accept a symbolic division[2] of the brain into three levels:

  1. The reptilian brain, or primitive brain, or instinctive brain
  1. The limbic brain, or emotional brain
  1. The neocortex, or adaptive brain

The symbolic approach, though unscientific, is interesting and useful for dealing with social applications. So, even if it's not biologically accurate, I continue to use it.

Another formalization has made its mark between these two approaches: that of Descartes. For him, "the body is a mechanical agent, like a machine, which is passive on the motivational level, whereas the will is an immaterial agent, spiritual and active on the motivational level."[3]

[1] Mucchielli Alex, « Introduction », dans : Alex Mucchielli éd., Les motivations. Paris cedex 14, Presses Universitaires de France, « Que sais-je ? », 2011, p. 3-6.

[2] La théorie du cerveau triunique prétendait que notre cerveau s’est développé par couches successives, avec un cerveau reptilien comme origine. Cette théorie est fausse, mais son usage symbolique est resté pour permettre de conceptualiser les fonctions principales du cerveau.

[3] Johnmarshall Reeve — « Psychologie de la motivation et des émotions » p33

La satisfaction