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.
