Intrinsic Motivation Paper

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a civil rights organization whose mission is “ "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.” ( NAACP about, n.d., para 3). The NAACP’s mission is very relevant to the field of psychology, which is the study of science behavior and mental processes. The goal of psychology is to describe and to explain human and animal’s behavior as well their mental processes so that we are able to gain a better understanding of why people or animals behave and think in certain ways. The psychology field also aims to predict the behaviors and mental processes of animals and humans. And finally, psychologists …show more content…
Intrinsic motivation is a type of motivation that is defined as “ motivation for a task or activity based on internal, personal satisfaction” (Huffman & Dowell, 2014, p. 393). NAACP’s motivation to defend minority race groups can be explained through the intrinsic motivation because they do not do their work based on external rewards. Psychologist Abraham Maslow discovered the hierarchy of needs and ranked them into five hierarchies. The five hierarchy of needs are, physiological needs, safety needs, belonging and love needs, esteem needs and finally self-actualization. He believed that each need needs to be attained before you can move up to a higher level of needs. The NAACP’s mission is to help minority race groups achieve their hierarchy of needs. Their goal is to eliminate barriers such race-based discrimination that is preventing the people of color from reaching their needs. In their mission statement, economic equality is one of the goals they aim to achieve. Having economic equality helps the people color meet their first hierarchy of needs which is physiological needs, they are able to provide themselves with food, water, shelter, clothings and other basic needs. The