PSY100H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Motivation, Behaviorism, Operant Conditioning
PSY100H1 - Lecture 15 - Lifespan Development
“Most people aren’t anywhere near to realizing their creative potential in part because they’re
labouring in environments that impede intrinsic motivation” -Teresa Amabile
Goals and Motivation
● Despite the early dominance of behaviourist approaches, psychologists now recognize
the intimate role that top-down processes (ie. meaning, construal, interpretation), play in
determining how our motivational systems function
The Continuum of Motivation
● Example : At first monkeys were solving puzzle boxes with enjoyment and with creativity
but as soone as experimenter began rewarding the monkeys for successfully completing
the puzzle boxes, it turned the game into work. Thus the monkeys stopped being
creative, they got more stressed and became less curiosity.
○ So, their purpose was to solve the boxes for the reward. By changing the game,
the experimenters were changing the monkey’s framing/top-down processes.
● Framing for motivation
○ Ex. Setting a goal multiple time (ex. Health, no procrastination, maintaining
connections with family and friends)
■ By having motivation, setting intentions → goal lasts for a limited amount
of time before falling apart
■ Failure of goals is often due to lack of willpower → lack of skillful
application (Simply need to learn the skills to succeed)
○ Autonomy is a source of your goal.
■ Easier to pursue a goal if you make it up yourself vs. Harder to fulfill a
goal if it is not created by yourself.
● If you have some motivation where does it come from?
● Extrinsic Motivations
○ External regulation
■ Those who have power over us have the tools (ex. reward, punishment)
to shape our behaviour
■ Ex. Rewards, punishments, authority command, social pressure, etc…
■ Do they get the job done? Vs How do they get the job done? (Better)
Amotivation
Not Self-
Determined
Self-
Determined
External
Regulatio
Introjected
Identified
Integrated
Intrinsic
find more resources at oneclass.com
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○ Introjected regulation
■ Partial internalization of reward/punishment; contingent self-esteem, ego-
involvement
■ Powerful, will govern most of our lives
■ Internalization of rewards and punishments → behaviourist way of thinking
● When things are good it validate our worth inside
● When things go bad, we feel depressed
■ Enjoyment, fascination of learning become marks and grades (when we
internalize rewards and punishments)
● Ex. Getting a grade and looking at someone else’s mark to
compare
■ Social world is set up in operant terms
● Praises and disapproval are inescapable
● This builds conditional self-acceptance
○ People experience themselves as not fundamentally okay
○ Only okay if… (ex.part of the norm, succeeding at school)
○ ‘Okayness’ hooked up to external sources of regulation
■ Remember that not every ‘failure’ is a failure
● They could simply be constructive feedback, a setback or time to
grow and learn.
● Intrinsic Motivations
○ Identified and integrated regulation (almost non-distinguishable)
■ Personal valuation and importance, integration with values, life goals,
self-concept, etc
■ Extend to the motivation that comes from inside the person, long-term
goals (identified regulation) ex. Life goals
■ Values, beliefs, worldview, religion, identity → sources of integrated
regulation
■ Extent to which a person’s actions, goals is congruent with deep sources
of meaning (ex. purpose, philosophy, meaning, ethics etc.)
○ Intrinsic Regulation
■ Doing for the sake of doing; engagement, flow, enjoyment, growth,
challenge
■ Is it self-determined or not self-determined?
● Is a person motivated from the inside or outside?
○ Mixed amount of motivation
○ Meaning & Enjoyment (Intrinsic)
■ How to make goals more intrinsic/have more meaning?
● Simply a framing issue, different framing = different significance
● Think about what about the goal is important? Hooking up goal to
meaning system
● Ex. Can I find a way to make studying more interesting?
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Most people aren"t anywhere near to realizing their creative potential in part because they"re labouring in environments that impede intrinsic motivation -teresa amabile. Despite the early dominance of behaviourist approaches, psychologists now recognize the intimate role that top-down processes (ie. meaning, construal, interpretation), play in determining how our motivational systems function. Example : at first monkeys were solving puzzle boxes with enjoyment and with creativity but as soone as experimenter began rewarding the monkeys for successfully completing the puzzle boxes, it turned the game into work. Thus the monkeys stopped being creative, they got more stressed and became less curiosity. So, their purpose was to solve the boxes for the reward. By changing the game, the experimenters were changing the monkey"s framing/top-down processes. Health, no procrastination, maintaining connections with family and friends) By having motivation, setting intentions goal lasts for a limited amount of time before falling apart.
