[Xmca-l] Re: Intrinsic / Extrinsic Motivation

Sun Aug 25 10:33:27 PDT 2019

Hi All.

Motivation was in some ways my introduction to psychology at 18, and I spent a lot of time exploring ideas  about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, self-determination, and then the long list of motives (power, intimacy, affiliation, etc.) that have been studied, which is when I realized that the effort to isolate every motive without reference to the context wasn’t getting us anywhere. There was an early paper by White who developed the idea of effectance motivation that intrigued me most: the idea of just wanting to be effective — to be alive by impacting the world in some way. My advisor Joe Glick helped me with a book by D’Andrade and Strauss, which helped me move the ideas past individualistic concepts, but Joe also used to describe Piaget’s theory as containing the idea “if you’ve got it, flaunt it.” In essence, I think life is to boring if we do nothing, and if you want to call that innate, then so be it. 

I often worry that the idea of object leads us to lose that idea of doing something for intrinsic reasons or simply to be effective, and I think Lois Holzman and others have focused on this in terms of play. It’s an unresolved question for me, but I like to think of it as dialectical: Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are mutually defining and inseparable and contextualized.

When I’m teaching community college students, however, the simplicity of the terms is a useful tool for helping students think about why they are in college, given that most of them have never been exposed in any significant way to the idea of doing college for the simple purpose of knowing more and creating possibilities for new ways of thinking. I keep hoping to help them find some joy in learning and development.

Best,
Lara

> On Aug 25, 2019, at 12:32 PM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
>  
> The earliest I have read about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation (the earliest is was mentioned) was, as with so much else in John Dewey – Democracy and Education.  It may have been mentioned earlier and it was probably an idea floating around. I would be it came up at some of the salons at Jane Addams place. The general distinction (I don’t think dichotomy is the correct word here) is that the extrinsic reward is something that an agent is offering an individual (in Dewey’s case a child) to get them to do something. Dewey’s criticism is – for lack of a better word – pragmatic.  Extrinsic rewards tend to fade or disappear. If somebody it paying you to do something and the reason you are doing it is because they are paying you, then you stop doing it when you stop getting paid. There is nothing inherently bad in this but it is not what Dewey might call vital experience, it doesn’t change the way you approach the world, has not impact on lifelong learning. However if you are doing something because you want to do it, without an outside agent or the outside agent is superfluous then there is a greater chance you will keep doing. The action is not dependent on anybody else. So Andy I think your example or somebody attending a political meeting because they enjoy is actually intrinsic motivation while somebody attending a meeting because they want to get things done is extrinsic, in other words they will stop attending if they don’t think things will get done (something like this has been defined as political efficacy). If I read this wrong I apologize.
>  
> The reason I think it might be unwise to consider it a dichotomy is because of the way the two have been define since Bandura. It is more of a process. You need to start with extrinsic motivation but through a process of feedback (yes, Bandrua like cybernetics) and positive reinforcement through success it slowly becomes intrinsic. It is one of the fundamental tenets of socio-cognitive theory.
>  
> I have no idea why socio-culturalists do not like this, it seems to fit pretty well, but I am interested to here.
>  
> As for Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory I don’t really think of intrinsic motivation as innate (do they say that).  It is more emergent.  You have to have the right circumstances, which include autonomy, relatedness, and competence and this perfect storm leads to intrinsic motivation. But it is difficult to attain without it. Can you call that innate?
>  
> Michael
>  
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
> Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2019 11:53 AM
> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Intrinsic / Extrinsic Motivation
>  
> Artin, is there any chance that your 'trouble' can be expressed in a paragraph here?
> 
> Andrew, I also suspect that the making of the distinction into a dichotomy, a behaviourist interpretation of the distinction and an ahistorical understanding of the idea may cause others to reject it, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
> 
>  
> 
> We have politicians in this country, and I do believe that some of them participate in the practice of politics for the purpose of furthering and even perfecting that practice, maybe only a few, but some. But I am sure that there are some who in there for other purposes, mostly enrichment and/or fame. True, it is not a dichotomy; some who are there in order to advance political practice also enjoy the game and the fame in can bring. But to collapse the two would be madness. The practice of politics has an object which is not self-enrichment. Individual motivation must be judged against that concept of politics.
> 
> A while ago I was giving a talk on my book "Origins of Collective Decision Making," explaining the ethical and instrumental differences between Consensus and Majority, and a young anarchist said she enjoyedconsensus much more than majority decision making. That there could be reason for choosing one mode of action rather than another other the pleasure derived had not occurred to her. I was, I admit, a bit shocked. This case brings out the subtlety of the distinction. Acting in political meetings for the sheer pleasure of doing it is actually an extrinsic motive, whereas acting in meetings to produce good decisions impliesintrinsic motivation. But superficially, it seems to be the other way around.
> 
> In a certain context, e.g. playing tennis, doing it for the pleasure of doing it counts as an intrinsic motivation, and when you become a profession and maybe then start playing for the prize money and adulation, rather than in the perfection of the game, then that is extrinsic motivation. It depends on whether tennis is taken as a game or a sport, professional or otherwise.
> 
> But maybe it is just the difficulty in making a nice clear dichotomy which sets people against the distinction?
> 
> Andy
> 
> Andy Blunden
> https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm <https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm>
> On 26/08/2019 12:34 am, Coppens, Andrew wrote:
> I don’t know much about a characteristically CHAT objection to the distinction but, to my mind, the main problem is in how intrinsic motivation is characterized (i.e., acultural, ahistorical) and that extrinsic motivation is set up as its opposite (i.e., not just a distinction but a dichotomy). These two features of the theory create many problems regarding what I need a theory of motivation to help explain.
>  
> My objections might counter some primary CHAT texts, but there are a number of reasons I can imagine being OK with that.
>  
> / Andrew
>  
> ---
> Andrew D. Coppens
> UNH Education Dept., 302 Morrill Hall
> 603-862-3736, @andrewcoppens 
> Schedule a meeting: calendly.com/acoppens 
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> <mailto:andyb@marxists.org>
> Sent: Sunday, August 25, 2019 1:28:40 PM
> To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu <mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu> <mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Intrinsic / Extrinsic Motivation 
>  
> Caution - External Email
> For some reason which I have never understood many CHAT people seem to be set against this distinction. And yet the distinction is intrinsic to A N Leontyev's Activity Theory. In addition, Alasdair MacIntyre uses it to, in my opinion to great effect, such that I cannot imagine a theory of motivation that lacked this distinction.
> 
> What is the problem?
> 
> Andy
> 
> Andy Blunden
> https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.ethicalpolitics.org_ablunden_index.htm&d=DwMF-g&c=c6MrceVCY5m5A_KAUkrdoA&r=T292xnKwVOMtoHKpeIK_s9mDPzJBSXg6AqnqQfLlAoc&m=d4qKpoX8iBmMCrxfuKZ29rBuT4OVmseKPD3o9xA9qwQ&s=PhLbeiPXKpKBLPnSUpAm_95fDmRRopwgDK14cp4c9zc&e=>
> On 25/08/2019 1:00 pm, David H Kirshner wrote:
> 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 <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__doi.org_10.1006_ceps.1999.1020&d=DwMF-g&c=c6MrceVCY5m5A_KAUkrdoA&r=T292xnKwVOMtoHKpeIK_s9mDPzJBSXg6AqnqQfLlAoc&m=d4qKpoX8iBmMCrxfuKZ29rBuT4OVmseKPD3o9xA9qwQ&s=PIxeXNE4clr3Jrl5eX2Rj6bw92pwZxqgSO9opx54rtU&e=>
>  
>  

Dr. Lara Margaret Beaty
Professor of Psychology
Psychology Program Co-Director
SERG Director
Social Science Department
LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
718-482-5796

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