Motivation, clarified
Motivation is an important indicator of behavior. We do not perform a behavior when we aren’t motivated.
Psych 101 students might remember two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic.
We experience intrinsic motivation when we perform an activity for its own sake.
In contrast, we experience extrinsic motivation when we perform an activity to achieve some outcome.
Self-directed motivation can still be extrinsic; for example, if I practice the piano every day because I want to get better at it, that’s an example of self-directed extrinsic behavior.
Significantly, intrinsic motivation is not sustained in the same way as extrinsic motivation. Deadlines, pressure, and competition are all effective at maintaining extrinsic motivation, but not intrinsic motivation.
In fact, any kind of controlling factor — even rewards — undermine intrinsic motivation. Instead, the best indicators for sustained intrinsic motivation are a sense of competence and autonomy.
Extrinsic motivation can itself be split into subcategories, organized by a spectrum of autonomy:
Examples might be helpful here.
- Amotivation: I have no desire to go the gym and I don’t go.
- External regulation: I go to the gym because I save money on health insurance by doing so.
- Introjection: I go to the gym because the girl I liked called me skinny-fat.
- Identification: I go to the gym because it’s good for me.
- Integration: I go to the gym because I want to be a gym-going person; I wouldn’t feel whole if I didn’t.
- Intrinsic motivation: I go to the gym because I like the feeling of lifting weights.
Studies show that these different types of motivations lie along a continuum of autonomy, and that externally regulated motivation can evolve into integrated motivation, resulting in sustained behavior. Likewise, integrated motivation can devolve into externally regulated motivation, resulting in the abandonment of a behavior.
For product designers, seeing motivation as a continuum is more valuable than making the distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. A reward system that is effective at initiating a behavior will not be effective at continuing it. A special offer delivered via push notification may actually discourage a particular group of users.
The key idea is that the way to sustain any behavior is to instill in the actor a sense of competence and autonomy.
I’m building l8r, a todo app for people who hate todo apps. This is the l8r log, a place to explore the ideas underpinning this project. If you’d like to learn more about l8r, give me a shout at nsbarr@gmail.com.
