Intrinsic motivation is when you are motivated by personal satisfaction or enjoyment instead of external factors like reward or punishment. There are ways to make tasks more intrinsically motivating. Intrinsic motivation is the act of doing something without any obvious external rewards. You do it because it’s enjoyable and interesting, rather than because of an outside incentive or pressure to do it, such as a reward or deadline. An example of intrinsic motivation would be reading a book because you enjoy reading and have an interest in the story or subject, rather than reading because you have to write a report on it to pass a class. There have been a number of different proposed theories to explain intrinsic motivation and how it works. Some experts believe that all behavior is driven by external reward, such as money, status, or food. In intrinsically motivated behaviors, the reward is the activity itself. The most recognized theory of intrinsic motivation was first based on people’s needs and drives. Hunger, thirst, and sex are biological needs that we’re driven to pursue in order to live and be healthy. Just like these biological needs, people also have psychological needs that must be satisfied in order to develop and thrive. These include the need for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Along with satisfying these underlying psychological needs, intrinsic motivation also involves seeking out and engaging in activities that we find challenging, interesting, and internally rewarding without the prospect of any external reward. Intrinsic motivation comes from within, while extrinsic motivation arises from outside. When you’re intrinsically motivated, you engage in an activity solely because you enjoy it and get personal satisfaction from it. When you’re extrinsically motivated, you do something in order to gain an external reward. This can mean getting something in return, such as money, or avoiding getting into trouble, such as losing your job. You’ve likely experienced examples of intrinsic motivation throughout your entire life without giving it much thought. Some examples of intrinsic motivation are:
Everyone’s different and that includes what motivates us and our perspectives of rewards. Some people are more intrinsically motivated by a task while another person sees the same activity extrinsically. Both can be effective, but research suggests that extrinsic rewards should be used sparingly because of the overjustification effect. Extrinsic rewards can undermine intrinsic motivation when used in certain situations or used too often. The rewards may lose their value when you reward behavior that was already intrinsically motivating. Some people also perceive extrinsic reinforcement as coercion or bribery. The overjustification effect has inspired an entire field of study that focuses on students and how to help them reach their full potential. Though experts are divided on whether extrinsic rewards have a beneficial or negative effect on intrinsic motivation, a recent study showed that rewards may actually encourage intrinsic motivation when given early in a task. Researchers examined how reward timing influenced intrinsic motivation. They found that giving an immediate bonus for working on a task, rather than waiting until the task was completed, increased interest and enjoyment in it. Getting an earlier bonus increased motivation and persistence in the activity that continued even after the award was removed. Understanding the factors that promote intrinsic motivation can help you see how it works and why it can be beneficial. These factors include:
The following are some things you can do to help you practice better intrinsic motivation:
There are things that you can do to help foster intrinsic motivation in your children. Parents often use external rewards or pressure to try to get their children to perform certain tasks, such as doing homework or cleaning their room. The following are ways that may help foster intrinsic motivation in your child.
Intrinsic motivation can be applied to all aspects of your life and has been shown to be an effective way to improve performance. By changing the focus to the internal rewards of a task, such as satisfaction and enjoyment, you can better motivate yourself and others.
The drive reduction theory of motivation became popular during the 1940s and 1950s as a way to explain behavior, learning, and motivation. The theory was created by behaviorist Clark Hull and further developed by his collaborator Kenneth Spence. According to the theory, the reduction of drives is the primary force behind motivation. While the drive-reduction theory of motivation was once a dominant force in psychology, it is largely ignored today. Despite this, it's worthwhile for students to learn more about Hull’s ideas in order to understand the effect his work had on psychology and to see how other theorists responded by proposing their own theories. Hull was one of the first theorists to attempt to create a grand theory designed to explain all behavior. He started developing his theory shortly after he began working at Yale University, drawing on ideas from a number of other thinkers including Charles Darwin, Ivan Pavlov, John. B. Watson, and Edward L. Thorndike.
Hull based his theory on the concept of homeostasis, the idea that the body actively works to maintain a certain state of balance or equilibrium. For example, your body regulates its temperature in order to ensure that you don't become too hot or too cold. Hull believed that behavior was one of the ways that an organism maintains this balance. Based on this idea, Hull suggested that all motivation arises as a result of these biological needs. In his theory, Hull used the term drive to refer to the state of tension or arousal caused by biological or physiological needs. Thirst, hunger, and the need for warmth are all examples of drives. A drive creates an unpleasant state, a tension that needs to be reduced. In order to reduce this state of tension, humans and animals seek out ways to fulfill these biological needs. We get a drink when we are thirsty. We eat when we are hungry. We turn up the thermostat when we are cold. He suggested that humans and animals will then repeat any behavior that reduces these drives. Hull is considered a neo-behaviorist thinker, but like the other major behaviorists, he believed that human behavior could be explained by conditioning and reinforcement. The reduction of the drive acts as a reinforcement for that behavior. This reinforcement increases the likelihood that the same behavior will occur again in the future when the same need arises. In order to survive in its environment, an organism must behave in ways that meet these survival needs. "When survival is in jeopardy, the organism is in a state of need (when the biological requirements for survival are not being met) so the organism behaves in a fashion to reduce that need," Hull explained. In a stimulus-response (S-R) relationship, when the stimulus and response are followed by a reduction in the need, it increases the likelihood that the same stimulus will elicit the same response again in the future. Hull's goal was to develop a theory of learning that could be expressed mathematically, to create a "formula" to explain and understand human behavior.
sEr = V x D x K x J x sHr - sIr - Ir - sOr - sLr
Hull's approach was viewed by many as overly complex, yet at the same time, critics suggested that the drive-reduction theory failed to fully explain human motivation. His work did, however, have an influence on psychology and future theories of motivation. While Hull's theory was popular during the middle part of the 20th century, it began to fall out of favor for a number of reasons. Because of his emphasis on quantifying his variables in such a narrowly defined way, his theory lacks generalizability. However, his emphasis on rigorous experimental techniques and scientific methods did have an important influence in the field of psychology.
One of the biggest problems with Hull's drive reduction theory is that it does not account for how secondary reinforcers reduce drives. Unlike primary drives such as hunger and thirst, secondary reinforcers do nothing to directly reduce physiological and biological needs. Take money, for example. While money does allow you to purchase primary reinforcers, it does nothing in and of itself to reduce drives. Despite this, money still acts as a powerful source of reinforcement. Another major criticism of the drive reduction theory of learning is that it does not explain why people engage in behaviors that do not reduce drives. For example, people often eat when they’re not hungry or drink when they’re not thirsty. In some cases, people actually participate in activities that increase tension such as sky-diving or bungee jumping. Why would people seek out activities that do nothing to fulfill biological needs and that actually place them in considerable danger? Drive-reduction theory cannot account for such behaviors. While Hull's theory has largely fallen out of favor in psychology, it is still worthwhile to understand the effect it had on other psychologists of the time and how it helped contribute to later research in psychology. In order to fully understand the theories that came after it, it's important for students to grasp the basics of Hull’s theory. For example, many of the motivational theories that emerged during the 1950s and 1960s were either based on Hull's original theory or were focused on providing alternatives to the drive-reduction theory. One great example is Abraham Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs, which emerged as an alternative to Hull's approach. |