The Science of Effective Motivation Part I

[Tyrgal]

Seeing that many rebels struggle with motivation, I want to offer what psychological studies found out about motivation and behavior modification. I hope you'll find the information useful.

 

The Two Paths of Motivation

 

When rebels start out to change their life, motivation to actually start and keep on it, can be difficult to maintain. Most of us have fallen back on their goals and routines more than one time and you often hear rebels asking others to motivate them. Struggling with just not having the motivation to work towards one's goals is common. If you are low on motivation, there are two paths you can take: Raising your extrinsic motivation or working on your intrinsic motivation.

 

Extrinsic Motivation

You act out of extrinsic motivation when you follow your goals in order to attain a desired outcome. Extrinsic Motivation relies on how attractive the outcome is that you aim to achieve with your actions. This means that your motivation depends on external things. Let's see two examples on how extrinsic motivation works:

 

One rebel wants to work out and lose weight to look good on her wedding day (Congratulations!). If our rebel is very much in love with her partner, looking good for the partner can be a strong motivator. Imagining praise and compliments on her wedding day may serve her as a motivator to go to the gym to get there. Her motivation is driven by external outcomes (praise from the partner, positive feedback from the partner and family, looking good). From what we know, our rebel will likely struggle with motivation on the way. Why?

 

Qualities of extrinsic rewards

 

1. Immediacy: If there is a long delay between extrinsic reward (e.g. looking good) and the action needed to get there (going to the gym), the motivation will not be very high. Rewards that are immediate are more motivating. It's like killing monsters in an RPG: You get the experience immediately after the kill, not half a year later (Imagine what a bummer that would be!) It's also why the first level-ups of most RPGS/MMORPGS happen very quickly. Immediate rewards motivate us more than rewards with a long delay.

 

2. Consistency of rewards: If our rebel gets rewarded every time she does an action, she will do that action more often. One example: Every time our rebel goes to the gym, she takes a cool shower which is just the best for her a hard workout. Everytime our rebel goes to the gym, her partner also gives her this really awesome backrub! Ending a day with a backrub is awesome for her and a consistent reward gives consistent motivation. The flip side: when consistent rewards fall away at some point, motivation takes a hard strike. E.g. her partner is gone on a businesstrip for a week and can't give her a backrub. Our rebel will lose much of the extrinsic motivation to work out in this week. If rewards are intermittent, motivation will not suffer that much when the reward drops away - Intermittent rewards aren't as motivating though so it's a trade-off.

 

3. Reward-size/Reward-strength: If our rebel doesn't really give that much on what her family thinks of her, compliments from her family will not have a huge impact on her motivation. Extrinsic motivation is higher when the reward is high. If looking good on your wedding day means the world to you, then looking good is likely a strong reward. Many rebels do this one right actually. They think big and Steven also encourages people to draw on their imagination and on role models to think big. You work out in order to become like Jason Bourne, an indestructible agent that can take on any challenge in the world! How awesome would that be? Big outcomes, big goals are better motivators than aiming low. It's not motivating to train with the aim to "keep a minimum level of activity". In his book, However, please be smart about choosing valuable rewards for yourself. If you reward a week of going to the gym with the _BEST_ tasting food you know and choose Ben & Jerry's Chubby hubby Ice cream, you may go to the gym because hey, ice cream! However, your reward also also works against your long-term goals like looking good. Align your extrinsic rewards with your goals so that they don't work against you.

 

4. Reward-satiation: If you reward yourself extrinsically, the same reward will change in value over time. You get fed up with receiving the same reward over and over. If our rebel rewards going to the gym with eating her favourite tomato-cucumber salad afterwards, it won't take long until that salad comes pouring out of her ears because she's fed up with it. If she gets a backrub from her partner everytime after workout, she will get used to the backrubs and they won't feel so special anymore. Reward-satiation is a real problem. Being more flexible with the way you reward yourself when you feel reward-satiation is very helpful to keep a high level of motivation.

 

Our Rebel One Steven has given another good example of extrinsic motivation in action in his book: (p.128)

Quote

"To motivate myself to write articles ahead of schedule for Nerd Fitness, I have given $500 to Team Nerd Fitness member Staci. If I miss an article deadline, she's been instructed to donate $50 to the Westboro Baptist Church. Because it sickens me to donate my hard-earned money to a cause I don't believe in, I now have a built-in motivation to get my work done instead of slacking off. To date, exactly 0$ has been donated."

 

Steven motivates himself to write articles extrinsically: He writes to avoid two very negative outcomes: Losing hard-earned money and supporting something he despises. Extrinsic rewards can be effective in getting the work done. However - In Steven's case, he may lose motivation when the external motivator changes. For example, Steven could get so rich that $500 starts to feel small and expendable. Loosing that money would then not feel so harsh. Steven will also lose his motivation if his attitude towards the Westboro Baptist Church changes (e.g. because Steven reads news about the church supporting local soup kitchens with donations. Steven would then probably feel less bad if they get his money.)

Steven choose an extrinsic motivation strategy  that works for him because it checks all the qualities for extrinsic rewards.

 

1. Immediacy: The moment Steven finishes an article, he can immediately experience the satisfaction of keeping the money and not supporting the WBC. Immediate reward!

2. Consistency of reward: Steven experiences this satisfaction for every article he finishes before the deadline. High Consistency!

3. Reward-size/Reward-strength: Not supporting the WBChurch and not loosing his hard-earned money to them is important to him. High reward strength!

4. Reward-satiation: The reward continues to be important and satisfying to him. Even after the 10th or 50th article, Steven is glad that he is not giving money to the WBC. No Reward-satiation!

 

Rebels can motivate themselves using extrinsic rewards. Extrinsic rewards can help to even perform tasks you find rather tedious, boring or tiresome if the rewards are working for you. To increase your extrinsic motivation, make sure that rewards are...

1. immediate

2. occuring consistently

3. strong

and that you are

4. not satiated of getting the reward again.

 

Spoiler

Literature:

Miltenberger, R. G. (2015). Behavior Modification: Principles and Procedures (6 edition). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Pierce, W. D., & Cheney, C. D. (2003). Behavior Analysis and Learning (3 edition). Mahwah, N.J: Psychology Press.

 

 

I hope this provided you with some insight into how motivation works and what you can do to increase your motivation. Part II (covering intrinsic motivation) will come up soon.

So how about you? Do you struggle with motivation? How do you motivate yourself? What works and what doesn't work for you?