3.1: Introducing Motivation- “What Do I Do, and Why?”

Motivation is a central concept to all human behaviors. Fundamentally, it represents the impetus or urge to move,and is often thought of as a quantifiable entity (Ntoumanis et al., 2018). Definitions of motivation have focused on the direction (i.e., “where do I invest my effort?”), origin (“what caused me to do this?”), intensity (i.e., “how hard do I try?”), and persistence (“when or why will I give up?”) of behaviors. In recent decades, research in this field has shifted focus from quantity to the quality of motivation. Whereas the quantity of motivation refers to how much motivation one has, quality of motivation refers to the reason why an individual is motivated to engage in the target behavior. Understanding the reasons for motivation tells us more about what is regulating the behavior than simply knowing how much there is; hence motivational reasons are sometimes referred to as motivation regulations or behavior regulations. The concept of motivation quality has gained popularity in physical activity research, as a large body of evidence has shown that motivation regulations are critical determinants of cognitive (e.g., attention, reasoning), emotional (e.g., enjoyment, anxiety), and behavioral (e.g., effort, persistence) outcomes. SDT (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000, 2017) is a popular approach that has been the basis of much of this work and will be the focus of this chapter. The phrase physical activity is an umbrella term used to refer to an array of bodily movements that expends energy. Exercise is a sub-type of physical activity that is intentional, structured and repetitive, usually associated with fitness maintenance or improvement goals (Caspersen et al., 1985). SDT-based physical activity research has focused on motivation for intentional, structured or planned behaviors such as that undertaken for the purpose of fitness goals (e.g., exercise classes), and the theory has also been applied to less structured but intentional activity such as leisure walking (Teixeira et al., 2012). For the purposes of this chapter, we will use the term physical activity, unless we are specifically referring to exercise undertaken in an exercise context (e.g., structured exercise classes).