HEALTH EDUCATION
Motivation for Health Learning
 Motive – an internal force that compels a person
to behave in a certain way ; the causation of
behavior, the reason for action or inaction.
Two Chief Sources of Motives :
1. Biogenic – activity of a living organism
2. Sociogenic – produced or determined by society or
societal forces
Motives may be :
1. Innate – natural, spontaneous, unlearned
2. Learned – acquired or characterized by learning
It may also be :
1. Conscious – aware of responding to one’s
surroundings
2. Unconscious – not being aware
“Motivation is very personal and can take different
forms.”
Motives may originate as needs or drives or be
environmental. It may be different or the same and elicit
the same or different behavior.
Biogenic Motives
 Related to tissue needs – thirst, hunger, need for
oxygen ; necessary for maintenance of life and
the promotion of biological growth and
development ; essentially innate
 Can influence other more complex forms of
human behavior than merely the satisfaction of
biologic needs
Biological factors or drives manifests themselves as:
1. Visceral – need for food and water
2. Safety – avoidance of harm ; survival of the individual
toward biological, sociological and psychological
activation
3. Sex – reproduce ; physical and emotional fulfillment
4. Sensorimotor – perception and action
 There is a direct relationship between the
satisfaction of biological needs and how they
impact on emotional satisfaction and
disintegration.
 How does satisfaction of the need of food affect
someone’s personality expression?
Sociogenic Motives
 Emanate from the psychological needs
 Acquired in the process of growth and
development, and are influenced, especially in
terms of satisfaction by cultural mores
 Associated with one’s personal wants, desires,
and aspirations that arise from experiences and
individual encounters during maturation.
 Intellectually based – the individual, as a result
of experiences, acquires insights into self and the
world
Sociogenic manifest themselves in the terms of a
person’s need to achieve:
1. Meaning and order in life
2. A sense of adequacy
3. Feelings of security
4. Feeling of belonging, social approval and
acceptance
5. Sense of personal worth and self-esteem
6. Love of self and love from others
Health educators must:
1. Help develop self-image, a sense of personal worth
- individualized learning strategies, group
discussions, values, and clarifications
Human motivation is so complex that motives are rarely
biogenic and sociogenic in the pure form.
Homeostasis as a motivator
 Energy that homeostasis creates direct a person
towards actions necessary for the maintenance
of health and the actualization of individual
potentials.
2 Levels:
 Biological level – ability to resist disease and
maintain body temperature and total
biological chemistry
 Interpretive level – the need to establish
self-worth, to interact socially, and generally
avoid those things that are identified as
painful – in short, to behave in ways that
result in personal satisfaction, growth and
actualization.
Learning is directly related to successful balance
between the biological and interpretive levels since the
actions a person takes can assist in the maintenance and
promotion of health.
Ex.
1. Knowledge of getting vaccinated – body resistance to
diseases
2. Adequate nutrition – improved health and good body
image
The level of learning needed – biological and interpretive
– is associated with homeostasis as a motivational force.
Factors that motivate
 The kinds that act as a motivator at one time may
actually act as demotivators at another time.
1. Intent to learn – stimulated by external forces in the
environment
 Educators
 Audiovisual stimuli
 May be superimposed through aspirations,
wants and desires.
 External stimuli -> incentives
 Internal stimuli -> motivation
For direct learning to take place, the person must WANT
to learn , and learning opportunities must be made
available when READINESS to learn is attained.
 Health educator must help people understand
the importance of new knowledge.
 The individual is able to reproduce the
knowledge for a test, but is not learning to attain
only meaningful change in behavior.
 Know the characteristics of the target
population.
 Sometimes students will actually resist learning
for several personal reasons. Generally
speaking, the stronger the desire to learn, the
more intense the motivation and the greater the
learner’s enthusiasm for becoming involved in
the learning process.
2. Reward and punishments – motivation is much
more intense when an individual experiences
success rather than merely avoids punishment
- When the reward is related to the satisfaction of a
need rather than being artificial, it is more likely to
motivate
- The real reward of learning is the ability to learn and
generate knowledge
Health educators should avoid rewards as the goal of
learning. Rewards should be incidental or
reinforcement, not the sole reason for learning.
Forms of rewards and punishments: Health behavior is the result of two basic interacting
factors:
1. Material things – salary, grades, tokens
1. Human plasticity – ability to change, modify and
2. Abstractions – failure, satisfaction, or
adapt; basis for learning, ability to profit from learning
dissatisfaction
2. Human energetics – the variability or intensity of
response to stimuli; supplies the energy for learning
 Learners learn rapidly when they are aware of
the progress they are making, rather that when
they are evaluated only at termination of a
learning experience. (Psychological Feedback)
 When the learning experience in health is
inconsistent with the learner’s developmental
level and capabilities, the learner may feel the
threat of failure.

3. Incentives – external or environmental forces that

activate motives

- an incentive is something that an individual

looks forward to upon completing an assigned (by self
or others) task

 Positive incentives are more desirable than

negative incentives. The quality of learning
improves as the strength of motivation
increases.
 Strong motivation may create anxiety over
possible failure and thus interfere with learning.
 The building of confidence through success is an
essential part of the health education learning
experience.
 Knowledge that one has learned is frequently
sufficient incentive. When an individual
translates an incentive into the force behind
action, it becomes a motive.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic Motive - internal source ; basic human

needs and desires

Extrinsic Motive – from social or physical

environment; basically an incentive

 Intrinsic and extrinsic motivators can

function together, one acting as a motivator
to the other.

“Healthful behavior is the ultimate achievement of health

education.”
“Internalization is a personal process of making motives
an integral part of self.”
P-I-S-A (Perception – Interest – Significance –
Application)
1. The individual’s RECOGNITION of the presence
of stimuli.
2. The individual’s INTERPETATION of the stimulus.
3. The VALUE the individual places on both the
stimulus and the need to react to it.
4. The individual’s KNOWLEDGE of the
consequences and circumstances.
5. The individual’s CAPABILITIES for dealing with
the urge.
6. Whether or not the individual’s PERCEPTION of
the situation is threatening.
7. The individual’s PAST EXPERIENCES for dealing
with similar urges.
8. The ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS that aid or
hinder the expression of the chosen behavior.
Perception
 A form of understanding, and the individual’s
ability to see the significance and relationship’s
surrounding the health issue.
Interest
 The intensity of the interest is one of the most
powerful forces affecting health learning
Significance
 The value or importance placed on the learning
experience.
Application
 The ultimate outcome of health learning.
Motives & Behavior
 Health behavior is a manifestation of the presit
dence of one or more motives.
 Factors that may influence health behavior:
1. Value or significance
2. Interpretation
3. Social attitudes
4. Consistency
5. Opportunities
6. Personal capabilities
7. Sense of pleasure
Purpose of Motivation
1. To provide energy necessary for the action to occur
and be sustained
2. It determines the direction that the behavior will take
place
Motivation & Learning
1. The quality and quantity of learning is related to the
strength of the motivation.
2. As motivation intensity increases, learning efficiency
improves.
3. Excessive motivation results in anxiety or fear of failure
and can interfere with learning success
4. Knowledge that one is learning can provide sufficient
motivation
5. The use of punishment as a motivator may merely
teach the learner how to avoid punishment rather than
how to achieve the goal.
6. Forgetting, like learning, can be motivated.
Positive vs. Negative Approaches
- Avoid negative approaches
- Do’s and don’ts of health should be learner
discoveries
- Use motivational techniques that arouse
individual’s personal desires to behave more
healthily.
Cue function
- Element of motivation that provides signs
indicating the direction behavior must take
to satisfy the need to achieve the goal
- An environmental stimulus that triggers a
particular form of behavior previously
learned.