Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation and Goal Setting

This week we discussed intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and goal setting.  Intrinsic motivation is the being motivated to behave or complete a task because one finds it interesting or rewarding to do so, not because of external pressures to do so. This relates to the psychological and social needs we discussed last week in that people are more likely to be intrinsically motivated if a task or behaviour satisfies these needs. Intrinsic motivation is more likely to produce better quality of work and motivate more persistence in the behaviour however, for many behaviours or tasks it is hard to be intrinsically motivated. Nevertheless these tasks still need to be completed and external motivation may be required. It is interesting to consider if extrinsic motivation could lead to intrinsic motivation. For example in our Learning unit we are required to design a behaviour modification programme to reduce problem drinking. It is hoped that by rewarding non-drinking behaviour and abstinence that individuals will see the health benefits of not drinking and will then be intrinsically motivated to continue abstinence once the extrinsic motivation (rewards) are removed. It may be that for some behaviour, such as stopping drinking, one cannot perceive the intrinsic motivation to engage in this behaviour until a reward is present to motivate them in their first attempt at the behaviour or task.

It was interesting to think about my own motivation especially in regards to university studies. In most of my units I find the material really interesting and am probably both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated to do assessment items and learn the material presented. In trying to get into forth year for psychology I find I have extra external motivation to do well in psychology units over elective units. I have found that this extra motivation does effect my effort and performance and for some particular elective units I put little effort in. As a consequence I do not think I learnt much from these units and the quality of my work was very poor. However, with other elective units I am certainty intrinsically motivated to do well, although I know that the grades for these units are probably not as important as my psych units I still feel highly motivated because the material interests me not because I “need” to get a good grade in those units. In these units I engage with the material we learn and actively seek out more information and have a deeper understanding of the concepts being taught.

I think the material on goal setting was also interesting to consider. The idea that goals must be challenging to energise and specific to direct behaviour really resonated with me. I find in completing tasks for uni that specific and small goals are more likely to be reached and the positive reinforcement from achieving these small goals motivates me to keep going at the task and reach the long term goal of completing the task. This is where feedback is also very important because if you feel like your “getting nowhere” you loose motivation very quickly. But if you can achieve short-term goals and feel like you have done a good job, whether via personal positive feedback or feedback form others, you gain more motivation.

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Psychological and Social Needs

This week we learnt about psychological needs and social needs and how they influence individual’s motivation.  According to Reeve (2009) psychological needs are those which are innate within us and social needs are those that arise from socialisation and the external environment. Reeve lists autonomy, competence and relatedness as psychological needs while achievement, affiliation and power are considered to be social needs. Although upon learning about these needs I did agree that they are certainty important in terms of my own motivation, I thought it was interesting that Reeve doesn’t have any discussion on why these particular needs were emphasised over other possible needs, why these needs were considered core?

On reading the chapter I wasn’t convinced that autonomy needs were as prominent as Reeve suggested they were in motivation of behaviour. However after listening to the lecture and hearing of examples that I could relate to my own life I began to realise how feelings of autonomy could motivate behaviour.  For example James gave an example of inforced choice in writing essays, as students we are forced to choose between 3 or 4 topics, all of which they may not be interested in and forced to spend a considerable amount of time reseaching and gaining an understadning of this topic. I have found that when given more choice in the past, the assessment task was much more enjoyable and encouraged more intrinsic motivation to complete the task. More so than in high school, students at universities are there because they want to learn about their chosen subject, not due to extrinsic forces such as their parents or the law. For this reason there is much more motivation to study for knowledge’s sake than their might be in high school. When tasks are set so that more choice is available, for example the text book chapter in which any topic of interest in relation to motivational and emotion  can be chosen, it is much more likely students will be intrinsically motivated to research their topic and complete the task well.

I also very much agreed with the idea of explaining why a process is necessary, to encourage motivation to complete a task. Personally, I find tasks where I don’t know why or how it might benefit me or someone else to be pointless and I have very little motivation to do them. If, for example in a work situation, I can see how my actions effect the company, I am much more likely to comply with tasks set out for me or follow policies set in place.

I could certainly relate to the discussion of competence effecting motivation. I personally do not feel very competent at “reflection” and find the task of writing this journal difficult. In this case I don’t really feel intrinsically motivated to do it, but rather see it as merely an assessment task that has to be done, thus see it in terms of a performance based task not a mastery task. I can also relate this to the approach verses avoidance motivation because I often find myself procrastinating in doing this journal, which is because of a fear of failure, or not doing a very good job. Becoming more aware of the motivational reasons why I might procrastinate on this task however will hopefully help me to overcome some of these avoidance tendencies. This in contrast to some of my other assessment pieces at university, which I often view more as mastery tasks, particularly tasks which involve research which I feel I’m quit competent at. Whilst completing tasks I feel competent at I often experience flow, which is a strong motivational force for me to complete the tasks because I enjoy doing so and feel a sense of achievement in doing a good job.

I also agree that relatedness is a strong motivational force and that it effects one’s behaviour greatly. It is linked to the socialised needs of affiliation and intimacy. I thought that exchange relationships linked with affiliation needs in that affiliation needs are deficiency based and I think more of an extrinsic type motivator. I thought intimacy needs however lead to more communal type relationships where one is motivated by the relationship itself, not by getting things off the other person or weighing up how much they deserve from the relationship.

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Brain and Physiological Needs

One motivated brain

This weeks material made me think about how hard it is to separate biological processes from environmental factors and visa versa. As Reeve (2009) suggests, specific brain structures generate motivational states after input from bio-chemical agents. However, the production of these biochemical agents are also influenced by environmental factors, i.e. one’s behaviour and events occurring in their environment. Therefore, although we consider some drives or motivational forces to be biological, they are still being influenced by environmental and psychological factors. For example people’s appetite drives are affected by their emotional state such ias in depression and anxiety, one may have increased or decreased desires to eat.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggests that physiological needs must be satisfied to be able to move on to higher psychological and social needs. Reeve also suggests there is a lack of cortical or conscious control of physiological motivations. This seems to be particularly evident when discussing dieting and trying to ignore hunger signals. However, in the case of anorexia, as mentioned in the first lecture, an individual has such strong psychological and social forces compelling them not to eat that they do mange to override the physiological motivators which are telling them to eat. Over eating is also interesting to consider, as eating far beyond what the body requires also involves overriding physiological drives to cease eating. Despite these examples, for most of us most of the time, our physiological drives do have the power to occupy all of our attention despite our efforts to ignore them in favour of other motivational forces.

The drive of thirst is seemingly quiet simple, but I found the experimental methods used to discover where in the body one perceives dehydration and sends signals to the hypothalamus to create the perception of thirst, was clever. It makes sense that the sensory system for dehydration to be mainly confined to intra-cellular senses but I thought it was interesting to have that confirmed through experiments.

Sexual drives and motivations were also interesting to learn about, particularly considering the differences in men and women’s sexual motivation. Again it is hard to separate biological differences and social cultural differences between gender. I was reminded at this time of a talk we had last year from Dr. Cordelia Fine in the physiological psychology unit. In it she discussed her book Delusions of Gender in which she discusses the over exaggeration in published literature of physiological differences between male and female brains. She suggested that slight but statistically significant differences in neuro-physiological studies between genders are often published while the many studies that find non-significant differences are either not published or ignored. I found this might need to be considered when talking about evolutionary reasons why women might prefer one partner with the ability to provide for her long term while males want lots of young healthy women to be able to “sow their seed”. Although these gender differences are partly physiological, they are also highly influenced by culture, gender stereotypes and other social and psychological factors.

Testosterone levels are one major difference between females and males which effects sexual motivation. I remember reading in the past that testosterone levels relate to whether one is likely to be married or in a committed relationship with men higher in testosterone being more likely to be single or to cheat on their partners (McInyre et al., 2006). This might explain why females, with lower testosterone levels, are more likely to want more intimate long-term sexual relationship than males. In males, testosterone peaks in their 20s and slowly declines with age, thus as males get older they may be more likely to want a committed relationship as they have less and less testosterone circulating in their bodies and thus they may be more motivated to gain intimacy.

I personally find physiological aspects of motivation and emotion fascinating and am excited to research further the physiological aspects of emotion for my book chapter assignment.

References

Fine, C. (2010) Delusions of Gender. W W Norton & Co.

McIntyre, M., Gangestad, S. W., Gray, P. B., Chapman, J. F., Burnham, T. C., O'Rourke, M. T., et al. (2006). Romantic involvement often reduces men's testosterone levels--but not always: The moderating role of extrapair sexual interest. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(4), 642-651. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.91.4.642

Reeve, J. (2009). Understanding motivation and emotion (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.