My sister recently shared with me a paper entitled Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being. I am pretty sympathetic to the perspective of the article, but I think there is something missing. So ultimately, I am not satisfied with the model. Let me explain and provide an alternative.
Different Motivation Types
Here’s a pretty good synopsis from the paper:
By definition, intrinsically motivated behaviors, the prototype of self-determined actions, stem from the self. They are unalienated and authentic in the fullest sense of those terms. But, as already noted, SDT recognizes that extrinsically motivated actions can also become self-determined as individuals identify with and fully assimilate their regulation. Thus, it is through internalization and integration that individuals can be extrinsically motivated and still be committed and authentic. Accumulated research now
suggests that the commitment and authenticity reflected in intrinsic motivation and integrated extrinsic motivation are most likely to be evident when individuals experience supports for competence, autonomy, and relatedness.
The paper asserts that there is like a motivation continuum that includes something like this (simplified) model:
- Intrinsic motivation = most productive
- Integrated external motivation = productive
- External motivation = less productive
- Non-motivation = least productive
So how do we get people to be more productive? Well, simple, we just have to get them to be intrinsically motivated!
This model seems to make sense from the perspective of say, a teacher. Teachers have a curriculum they want their students to learn. When I was a teacher I spent a lot of time trying to motivate kids to think the subject matter was worth learning. Trust me, it’s hard to do. And then, every once in a while, there would be these moments where the students seemed to find some zone where they got really interested in something. In those moments the teaching, and the learning, was easy.
So if you want to teach someone something, why not try to find that zone and do it the easy way?
The Contradiction
Part of the reason teaching isn’t easy is that there is an inherent contradiction in the idea of trying to get students intrinsically motivated to learn the curriculum that you want them to learn.
In the paper I cited above, they state that in order to feel intrinsically motivated, you need three things:
- autonomy
- competence, and
- relatedness.
There are difficult challenges involved in getting students to feel a sense of relatedness and competence, but the real problem is the first thing. If the whole purpose is to get students to learn or behave in the way we want them to, how are they ever going to be (or feel) autonomous?
In a (hypothetical) state of nature, you don’t really need to teach children anything. They learn on their own by observing, mimicking, and exploring. This is largely the case when people learn to walk and talk.
But school typically involves trying to teach students very particular things that they don’t particularly want to learn. And as soon as you try to direct students to learn what you want (i.e., the curriculum) you have to ditch the autonomy, which then makes intrinsic motivation impossible. So, teachers naturally revert to various types of extrinsic motivation.
A Different Paradigm
To be honest, I am not in love with the whole intrinsic and extrinsic motivation paradigm. So let me present an alternative framework.
The book The Master and His Emissary presents a model of cognition based on two different ways of thinking, which are (loosely?) aligned with the different brain hemispheres. I don’t want to get too deep into the debate about how much these different types of thinking are really associated with the right and left hemisphere. But the right/left model is a handy way to label the different thought systems:
Right brain = holistic thinking, emotional, more attuned to the subconscious, the real decision maker (i.e., the “Master”)
Left brain = detail oriented thinking, rational, focused, more conscious/verbal, the narrative maker (i.e., the “Emissary”)
One of the interesting ideas here is that the holistic part (i.e., right brain) is the part of us that is actually making decisions, while the detail oriented part (i.e., left brain) is the part that comes up with the explanation for why we do things. So, if you ask someone why they are doing something the response will be part of a narrative made up by the left brain, and may not really correspond to the real purpose of the decision, which is embedded deep within the right brain.
Instead of thinking about intrinsic motivation, I prefer to talk in terms of an emotional state that is conducive to certain types of behavior. Namely, people sometimes experience an emotional state where the brain is primed for exploration. In this state, people are more willing to take risks, more willing to recognize and process new information, etc.
Children need to learn a lot of new things and, in a primitive society at least, they can learn most of these things by observation, trial, experimentation, exploration, etc. So there exists a mood that encourages this type of behavior. So I equate intrinsic motivation with “exploration mood”. People are more likely to feel explorative when they are safe, because this emotional state tends to suppress our sensitivity to risk. If you enter this mood in the presence of threats, you can do something stupid and die.
Control of whether it is appropriate to enter an exploratory mood is regulated by our right brain (i.e., our holistic thinking capacity). But if intrinsic motivation is an emotional state regulated by our right brain, then what is extrinsic motivation?
The paper defines various types of extrinsic motivation but to me they all sound like left brain phenomena. On the one hand, we have something like rational calculation of punishments and rewards, and on the other extreme (the “integrated regulation”) we have something like authentic self-awareness. At the end of the day, extrinsic motivation has a lot do with how our behavior relates to our rational decision making and our self-narrative.
Part of the problem with this intrinsic/extrinsic motivation, though, is that there is actually not a clear mapping from intrinsic -> right brain and extrinsic -> left brain. The brain has a number of different emotional states other than the exploratory mood that aren’t really very well accounted for in this model.
Probably the most obvious of these other moods (regulated by our holistic thinking) is the threat sensitive mood, or hiding mood. In the exploratory mood, our eyes are opened to new opportunities. In this mood we feel fun and playful. In hiding mood, we are insensitive to new opportunities, but we are highly sensitive to new threats. In my view, this is also a learning mood, and it is also regulated by our right brain. But where does it fit in the intrinsic/extrinsic model?
I don’t really know, and that’s why I don’t love the paradigm. Maybe you could characterize the threat sensitive mood into a kind of extrinsic motivation because it can be triggered by external punishments (i.e., fear). But to me the fit isn’t perfect.
There is one other learning mood which I would propose, the focus state. Whereas exploratory mood and hiding mood are mainly regulated by the right brain, and feel like emotional states, the focus state is a left-brain dominated state (hence, I avoid the term “mood”). In the focus state we filter out new threats and new opportunities and perform detail oriented tasks. We are in a kind of zone, but we don’t feel very emotional at all.
Emotional State-Based Teaching
The paradigm I outlined above leads to a model of teaching that is similar to but, in my view, more fruitful than the extrinsic/intrinsic motivation theory. Children need to learn a variety of different things, and different moods are appropriate for different types of learning.
When a child needs to become more aware of a certain kind of threat, the most effective way to teach them this is by triggering a threat sensitive mood. Verbal instruction can be part of this, but it is mostly non-verbal. Emotional expressions and images are better, and if effective, the response will be something like a hiding response.
When it is appropriate for a child to learn something new, the most effective mood is the exploratory mood. Again, verbal discussion can be a part of it, but children are primed to learn new ideas when they feel safe and autonomous. Effective opportunities for exploration often include variety of non-verbal stimuli.
But sometimes you don’t want children hiding or exploring. Sometimes they need to perform. And in this case, neither the threat sensitive mood nor the exploratory mood are appropriate. When focus is desired, it is better to minimize non-verbal stimulus, and dampen both positive and negative emotional expressions.
In my experience as a teacher, you can’t really force students to be creative. In that sense, you can’t really force them to learn (or even direct their learning). You can only try to set a mood and provide room for them to explore.
But, you more or less can force students to perform. And since most schools are based on trying to get a bunch of students to do the same thing at the same time, exerting control over the classroom is essential. As a result, most academic environments are more about performance than exploration.
In my view, exploration is actually much more important for younger children (say, below age 13). As a result, I tend to favor unstructured play at these ages over focused performance. As people get older, performance becomes more important and exploration becomes less important. And as for threat sensitive mood? It can become appropriate at any time with very little notice.
