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IB DP Psychology — Motivation | SL & HL | Paper 1 & Paper 2
🎯 Learning Intentions By the end of this note, you will be able to:
- Define motivation, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and self-determination using IB-aligned terminology.
- Explain Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and how unmet lower-order needs can prevent health-promoting behaviour.
- Describe Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and the three basic psychological needs it proposes.
- Explain the Health Belief Model (HBM) and how perceived susceptibility, severity, benefits, and barriers shape health decisions.
- Evaluate research evidence for motivational theories in health using supporting and opposing studies in ACAS format.
- Apply motivational theories to a real-world case study from biological, cognitive, and sociocultural perspectives.
- Discuss the extent to which motivational theories provide a complete explanation of health behaviour.
- Analyse motivational theories in health using relevant concept areas: Bias, Causality, Change, Perspective, and Responsibility.
Introduction & Context
Think about the last time you decided to eat a salad instead of chips, or chose to go for a run when you could have stayed on the sofa. What made you do it? Was it because you genuinely wanted to feel healthy and energised, or because a doctor warned you about your cholesterol, or perhaps because your friends were all signing up for a 5K? The fact that the same behaviour — choosing to exercise — can arise from completely different inner states is one of the most fascinating puzzles in health psychology.
Psychologists have long recognised that understanding why people adopt or abandon health behaviours requires more than simply knowing what is good for them. People frequently know that smoking causes cancer, that exercise reduces heart disease risk, and that sleep is essential — and yet they continue to smoke, remain sedentary, and stay up too late. This gap between knowledge and action is precisely where motivational theories become essential. They attempt to explain the internal and external forces that energise, direct, and sustain behaviour — particularly behaviour that affects physical and psychological well-being.
Three major frameworks dominate this area: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which situates health motivation within a broader structure of human needs; Self-Determination Theory (SDT), which distinguishes between autonomous and controlled forms of motivation; and the Health Belief Model (HBM), which focuses on cognitive appraisals of risk and benefit. Together, these theories offer a rich, multi-layered account of why people make the health choices they do.
🔍 Analogy — The Petrol Tank Imagine motivation as the fuel in a car's petrol tank. Without fuel, the car does not move — no matter how well-designed the engine is. But the type of fuel matters too: some fuels burn cleanly and efficiently (intrinsic motivation — doing something because it genuinely matters to you), while others produce more exhaust and run out faster (extrinsic motivation — doing something for a reward or to avoid punishment). And before you can even think about the quality of fuel, the tank needs to exist and be structurally sound — just as Maslow argued that basic survival needs must be met before higher-order health goals can even be considered.
Core Concepts
Before examining specific theories, it is worth establishing what psychologists mean when they use the word "motivation" in the context of health. The term is often used loosely in everyday language — we say someone is "motivated" to lose weight or "lacks motivation" to exercise. But in psychology, motivation refers to something more precise: the internal processes that initiate, direct, and sustain goal-directed behaviour. Understanding this distinction is the starting point for all three theories examined in this note.
📖 Key Definition — Motivation