[Xmca-l] Re: Intrinsic / Extrinsic Motivation

[Coppens, Andrew]

Hi David,

I agree; from a sociocultural account there are many problems with the intrinsic/extrinsic dichotomy.

One problem has to do with the “origin” of motivation. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) claims intrinsic motivation is innate. From a theoretical perspective, in Psychology, this innate needs and drives perspective has been replaced by cognitive perspectives such as goal theories (e.g., Eccles, Dweck). Here, the origin of motivation changes to cognitions but the individualistic perspective remains.

The next problem with the dichotomy is that it contrasts – indeed opposes – the individual and the social and argues that intrinsic motivation is an individual phenomenon. There are many critiques of this aspect, and the field of educational psychology has a number of examples where motivation is conceived as much more social. Although social cognitive theories are now more popular in psychological research, the internal location of self-regulatory mechanisms that contrast with external “forces” is also central to many of those theories. The need to theorize an “internalization” mechanism in SDT reflects this individual/social division.

Cultural-historical critiques address both of these problems in historicizing motivation as a social and cultural phenomenon. Mariane Hedegaard, Marilyn Fleer, Richard Walker, Dan Hickey, and others have written on this. Not referring to these authors necessarily, “sociocultural” perspectives on motivation more generally tend to focus on the social and secondarily the historical shifts in theorizing motivation that a CH perspective would offer.

Empirically, I and colleagues have critiqued the intrinsic/extrinsic dichotomy for its inability to account for striking motivational differences in young children’s helpfulness across cultural communities. At ages as young as 2, we’ve found that toddlers from a US Mexican-heritage background voluntarily help around the house more often and with more sophistication than do middle-class European American toddlers – a difference that seems to increase with age. A theory of motivation focused on innate and universal drives isn’t helpful in accounting for these differences. Ruth Paradise (2005) has a phrase I like – “inherent” motivation, as in motivation that is inherent to taking part in shared cultural activity – that captures the essence of a CH perspective on motivation. US Mexican-heritage toddlers’ deep inclusion in family and community activities, I believe, sets the developmental foundation for this inherent motivation to help voluntarily. I’m attaching her paper (it’s in Spanish).

Finally, in the early 1970s an interesting explanation by Mark Lepper of the undermining quality of extrinsic incentives (which Deci was among the first to write about in American psychology) on young children’s motivation was that such rewards “over-justified” their actions – they were being incentivized to do things they already wanted to do. CHAT perspectives on object/motive offer, I think, more explanatory power: the apparent reduction in motivation may have also been a shift in the object/motive that organized the young children’s actions. The children in Deci’s early studies may have been motivated, inherently, in a variety of different activities with different motives.

(I’m happy to share more references if any of this is helpful.)

/ Andrew

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Andrew D. Coppens
UNH Education Dept., 302 Morrill Hall
603-862-3736, @andrewcoppens<https://twitter.com/andrewcoppens>
Schedule a meeting: calendly.com/acoppens<https://calendly.com/acoppens>

From: <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu>
Reply-To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Date: Saturday, August 24, 2019 at 11:03 PM
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Intrinsic / Extrinsic Motivation


I’m reading a behaviorally oriented account of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation by authoritative authors Ryan and Deci (2000):
“The most basic distinction is between intrinsic motivation, which refers to doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable, and extrinsic motivation, which refers to doing something because it leads to a separable outcome [one undertaken for instrumental reasons]” (p. 55).

This seems to me an impoverished account for a variety of reasons, most pressingly because it attempts to naturalize what is pleasurable or intrinsically motivating as inherent to the organism, without respect to individuals as people, engaged in socioculturally constituted life histories.

Does the construct of intrinsic / extrinsic motivation surface anywhere in sociocultural theory?
Alternatively, can anyone point me toward a sociocultural critique of the intrinsic / extrinsic construct?

David

Ryan R. M., & Deci E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 54–67. https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1999.1020


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