Continuing the series…
Trying to understand human motivation and behaviour, a few years ago I finally came across this article: Motivation Reconsidered: The Concept of Competence, by Robert White (1959).
According to the current APA abstract:
Theories of motivation built upon primary drives cannot account for playful and exploratory behavior. The new motivational concept of “competence” is introduced indicating the biological significance of such behavior. It furthers the learning process of effective interaction with the environment. While the purpose is not known to animal or child, an intrinsic need to deal with the environment seems to exist and satisfaction (“the feeling of efficacy”) is derived from it.
White’s appreciation of the continuity of experience is what I found especially compelling:
Dealing with the environment means carrying on a continuing transaction which gradually changes one’s relation to the environment. Because there is no consummatory climax, satisfaction has to be seen as lying in a considerable series of transactions, in a trend of behavior rather than a goal that is achieved. It is difficult to make the word “satisfaction” have this connotation, and we shall do well to replace it by “feeling of efficacy” when attempting to indicate the subjective and affective side of effectance [motivation].
A number of theories have extended that insight. Probably the most widely known is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s idea of flow (1990), which means to become fully absorbed in a challenging-yet-doable activity that requires concentration and skill but seems effortless, involves goals, and generates constant feedback and growth.
Complementing flow is the notion of intrinsic motivation, specifically self-determination theory described by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (1985).
As with the ideas of White and Csikszentmihalyi, the need for competence is key to self-determination theory. Deci and Ryan also emphasized the importance of personal autonomy — i.e. to recognize that outcomes result from personal decisions, not from external interference.
Deci and Ryan also include the need for relatedness, or “organismic integration” — a process of assimilating environmental elements inwards and accommodating oneself back outwards to the environment.
Of course, it almost goes without saying. Any theory of development (i.e. usually focused on childhood) involves a process of interacting with the environment and vice versa — and there is no shortage of variations on theories of cognitive/ego/identity/moral development in which the individual and the environment affect each other — but these theories seem underutilized outside of professional psychology and education.
Look at economics and political theory — or simply day-to-day politics — and the conversations about the “future of media.” A lot of our conversations about motivation are still framed in Freudian and Jungian vocabularies. It might be wanting too much by me to hope to change “folk psychology,” but as the world gets more sophisticated and influence becomes more distributed, I think we could stand to use some more robust insight from this corner.
The trick to fully understanding these concepts (in a way that’s forward-compatible to future challenges) is to overcome the habit of looking for something objective and specific — whether it’s an object that’s supposedly pulling from outside or something pushing from within. As Richard deCharms (whose work influenced Deci & Ryan) argued in Personal Causation (1963):
The notions of motivation and motive are left over from the philosophic notions of will and volition which psychology has banned… There simply is no objective phenomenal reality that can be identified as a motive. You cannot point to a physical object and say that is a motive…
While concrete objects might frame motivation, I don’t think they are motives — at least not in any ultimate or absolute way. A trophy, a cheque, or a bottle of beer might seem to motivate, but only temporarily (i.e. not once you have it); things’ motivational qualities are not stable or sustained.
To really understand motivation we must appreciate that our existence is complex and emergent — something Csikszentmihalyi elaborated on in The Evolving Self, describing flow as an “autotelic” process analogous to biological evolution.
Because flow “fosters the expansion of an individual’s set of enjoyed pursuits,” it’s dynamic and unstable. It’s difficult to define from one moment to the next precisely how compelling an experience will be [quote is from "The Construction of Meaning Through Vital Engagement," Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, in Flourishing, 2002].
Something that’s too easy or too difficult one instant might become interesting enough to engage with a moment later (say, if someone else comes along and starts doing it — it becomes social), then the person might learn to like it enough to do it independently, it might become a regular activity, which might lead to others, etc…
This basic and thorough instability is why I proposed and elaborated a heuristic “uncertainty principle.” We have to navigate a middle way by balancing the two extremes.
On hand there’s a risk that by making accounts too concrete, they’ll be wrong.
On the other hand there’s a risk that by making accounts too ambiguous, we won’t be able to say anything that wasn’t already said thousands of years ago; we’d simply be reiterating what Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism have said for ages, in deliberately vague and often contradictory ways — for exactly this reason: it’s too hard to say anything on the matter with more than a partial degree of certainty.
Which brings us back to philosophy…
Note: this isn’t anything like an adequately general account of motivation; my aim for now is to make a case for understanding the temporal aspect better — I can always come back later for the hedonic treadmill, etc.
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I hate to admit this, but I just started playing World of Warcraft again. In addition to the fun of it, I find it fascinating that the game captures and distills many of these principles of motivation. Autonomy, flow, exploration, striving for material (digital) goods, relatedness, competence, they're all represented, often in explicit numerical form. And they interact in a complex, emergent way that even the game developers can't anticipate.
See also: Twitter.
On an unrelated note, as the personality psychology guy, I have to point out (though this doesn't undermine anything you or the people you cite say) that there are large individual differences in motivation. Some people may be very motivated by competence (and these are the people that we, and most academics, have regular interaction with), while others may be the opposite, motivated to avoid any situations that would test or extend their competence.
Ok, I'm off to have some orgasmic integration.
(oops did I misread that?)
(This is not the website for orgasms…)
Both of those points are in directions I'm going next.
It's been cool to watch the web demonstrate these ideas (though I haven't exactly figured out how to translate understanding to execution) and I have a whole post-worth of discussion on this.
I've worked out the personality question to my own satisfaction, but I think in a more philosophical than psychological way (I've never managed to separate the two) — though probably equally offensive to either profession.
I find this post to be spot on in relation to my interests in theories of learning. Schools presently attempt to “motivate” students with statements about the benefits of performing well on standardized tests accompanied by threats about the consequences of failure. Students have come to understand that the tests they are forced to take have little to do with their adequacy in the future. I'm linking to this excellent post from my blog. Thanks for a wonderful contribution to the conversation on motivation. http://johnmcgeough.wordpress.com
Thanks John. Reminds me of Carol Dweck's distinction between “learning mindset” (good) vs “performance mindset” (causes problems).
Motivation is changing drastically in my world. And I've noticted a huge shift recently as I started voicing my issues and concerns around co-workers. Higher pay, bonus, gift certificate/monetary rewards are doing nothing for motivation. Performance mindset is what a call centre is all about. Which causes problems overtime. In my case it's been very detrimental to my being. Other co-workers agreed they would move back down to lower job titles and less pay for more time to pursue their own interests, passions, family, and the world.
At first I was confused about offshore workers, but honestly the jobs being taken up by the likes of India are the performance type jobs – these jobs are so robotic and lead ourselves to more meaningful and purpose driven work.
What motivates me these days is autonomy. I just picked up Daniel H Pinks book called “DRIVE” and I haven't read anything yet. But I recall his talk on TED a while ago. I think he gets into motivation 3.0. I might be in over my head though!
I just thought of something. We would do a 'get to know you' type survey of new hires at work and ask them what motivates them. I am thinking back to the responses and I remember things like: coffee, money, rewards, beer, food. It's like we've been conditioned to think that's all there is. Every really busy day – and people are getting destroyed, work will order pizza as if it's some amazing gift to motivate people through the day. People only get fatter and less motivated.
LOL I know exactly what you're saying. Eventually I learned to laugh at stuff and go along with it. I'll bet a lot of managers know the incentives are bullshit too but just don't know what else to do, or would rather save their social/political capital to ask for a raise.
I'd recommend, if you're going to speak openly about motivation, frame your thoughts in business terms — i.e. dollars and cents (or call time, or whatever). Ideas don't travel through organizations intact unless they're saved as an Excel file, or at least PowerPoint to start.
Money might not be the most important factor in motivation but it's still the only thing that matters when making managerial decisions — or entrepreneurial decisions, for that matter… ;)
I saw Pink's TED talk and I'm looking forward to 'Drive' getting around and making these ideas more mainstream. It's stuff that most experts know but it's another thing to actually apply it to organizations.
Exactly! I actually prepared a word document on a possible way to cut down on the amount of useless email and create something of more value for everyone. I spend time thinking it up, noticing problems, planning steps, mentioning benefits for everyone. I was trying to merge the culture with what was happening outside it.
I passed it along to my manager and nothing happened…
So, this is where motivation comes into play. I could use my energy and efforts to work on that idea more, trying hard to create excel docs/power point presentations, and it's cost-benefit analysis but…and a big but – where is the motivation? I could gather peoples opinions and try and get help too – or I could take whatever bothers me about the large corporation and pack up and do my own thing.
I think this is where the business may need to start to look at motivation. We are at a point that johnny employee could start blogging about his love for widgets and provide the customer service and caring that he saw missing in his old job. I believe this is how a lot of entrepreneurs get motivated to leave the cubicle-farm. It's just easier to start up and break free now.
Applying motivation to organizations is going to be more important than ever as people have the ability to easily leave and try their own thing now.
Exactly! I actually prepared a word document on a possible way to cut down on the amount of useless email and create something of more value for everyone. I spend time thinking it up, noticing problems, planning steps, mentioning benefits for everyone. I was trying to merge the culture with what was happening outside it.
I passed it along to my manager and nothing happened…
So, this is where motivation comes into play. I could use my energy and efforts to work on that idea more, trying hard to create excel docs/power point presentations, and it's cost-benefit analysis but…and a big but – where is the motivation? I could gather peoples opinions and try and get help too – or I could take whatever bothers me about the large corporation and pack up and do my own thing.
I think this is where the business may need to start to look at motivation. We are at a point that johnny employee could start blogging about his love for widgets and provide the customer service and caring that he saw missing in his old job. I believe this is how a lot of entrepreneurs get motivated to leave the cubicle-farm. It's just easier to start up and break free now.
Applying motivation to organizations is going to be more important than ever as people have the ability to easily leave and try their own thing now.
When Henry Mintzberg wrote “Strategy Safari” he classified several “schools of strategy” and in doing so provided a framework to look at strategy as a “whole” by receiving a map of the parts (or at least once one has framework in mind, it is easier to see where a particular strategist is coming from).
I don't really know whether there is someone who has done a similar mapping of the schools of motivation (if not behaviour as a larger encompassing class), but generally I am finding some classifying schools of motivation as two. In a thesis written by Peter John Hosie, he classifies three schools – content, process & reinforcement
Peter John Hosie Thesis 2003
http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2005.000...
I came here principally to discover more about Edward Deci's work simply because I had read the Shirky and Pink article in Wired about the “cognitive surplus”. I am simply noting the URL below for Deci for my future reference:
Edward Deci – Self-Determination Theory
http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/
With Mintzberg, his map of strategy schools helps one figure out where different perspectives are grounded but when I think of motivation, the first place I look is at myself. If a theory of motivation helps me explain my own behavior that to me is the starting point for motivation research (not the ending point).
If we are all own guinea pigs in figuring out “applied motivation” then the collective findings are experience based. Here I would say that I have personally found Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's “Flow” theory personally useful.
The motivational context of the modern age is captured well in the arguments that Nick Carr raises, as well as Clay Shirky and Daniel Pink. Even if one goes back in time to see what Eastern philosophies had to say on the human condition, the human condition in the virtual information space is a new environment.
I don't know if the future purpose of motivation theory is to take stock of human behavior (thus viewing mass response) or whether it should have greater impact in terms of getting individuals in touch with life as it is today.
That is why I find the idea of challenge and capability so dynamic because an individual can map it to their own life, whereas theories created for an industrial age are pertinent to the mechanical universe which all of continue to exist in. It is this new environment which is emergent which may benefit if we happen to make it up as we go.
The emergent is obviously the ambiguous and the theoretical basis becomes a parallel – an “AND” relationship rather than “OR” one. When I look at motivation this way, I become the lab rat of my own imagination. We live in a culture where technology is raising privacy issues but is also capturing our behaviors.
There are going to be some bitter fights about individual rights and the capacity to learn from aggregated data, but as that storm brews, I want to find a quiet dry place to figure out at a personal level, what motivation theory personally means to me – if I can use it better my life, then that I would consider as a great way of using behavioral theory.
I see what Carr is saying, I appreciate what Clay Shirky in particular is saying and then when we add people like Edward Deci into the picture, that represents a promising form of awareness, and framed like that, it is truly motivating :-)
[Em]
Awesome! As I was reading this I literally paused to consider whether I might have actually written this myself. Your second last paragraph especially represents my attitude.
I like the analogy with Mintzberg's “safari” approach (it's been a couple of years since I read it). There are a lot of incomplete theories that are all kind of right in their own way. Our job as individuals is to learn which combinations to select to make sense of different events — and, I'd add, learn how to make those selections explicitly communicable.
Maybe you stumbled on it already — if it interests you, I elaborated on this (and touched on a few other theories) in the book I just published, specifically in the Will to Relevance chapter.
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