Last week, we focused on intrinsic motivation which is the kind of motivation where you're doing something because it's inherently enjoyable. We saw how important that is to learning and development, but this week we're going to talk about the other large class of motivation which we call extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is whenever you're doing something because there's some separable consequence you'd like to accomplish. So, when you for instance have go to work because you want the paycheck, or you do your homework because your parents would punish you if you didn't do it or you volunteer for an organization because you want to see them grow and meet their budget for the year. Each of these things would be an example of extrinsic motivation, because what you're doing may not be inherently enjoyable are fun. But it's something that you do because you want to accomplish that instrumental outcome. Like all of motivation, when we think a little bit about extrinsic motivation. We see that there are very different types of extrinsic motivation. There's the extrinsic motivation when you do something, because you're trying to avoid a punishment or get a reward. There's also the extrinsic motivation when you're trying to accomplish something of value. So, in self-determination theory we have a differentiated taxonomy about extrinsic motivation, which really shows how these different types of motives. I want to give some examples of both the types of motivation and some of the reasons why they differ so much in their consequences and attributes. The first kind of extrinsic motivation I want to talk about, is the one that really we've been talking about all along which is we call external regulation. You see it here at the left-hand side of this continuum of motivation. External regulation is when you do something precisely because somebody else has her award that they're going to give you if you do the activity, or a punishment that you will suffer if you don't. Therefore, when you're externally regulated the behavior is driven by external forces from without, It really represents a kind of pressure with that from without that is getting you to do something. It can be a very powerful form of motivation, if people have big enough rewards are strong enough punishments, you've might act very robustly to accomplish your ends. The problem with extrinsic motivation therefore isn't ineffectiveness. It's what we call its maintenance and transfer problem. Which is that, extrinsic motivation doesn't last unless the rewards and punishments are right there in front of you, as soon as the rewarder or punisher walks away so does the motivation. So, again, it's not because it's a weak form of motivation but rather because it's an unstable form of motivation that doesn't last without the rewards and punishments being present. Still a little bit to the right of external regulation is at another form of motivation we call interjection, and I think you'll recognize this too is a common form of motivation. Interjection is also a very pressured and controlling form of motivation, but here the pressure is coming from within. So, when you're interjecting your doing something, because if you don't accomplish a task or don't do well at it you'll feel bad about yourself or if you do well you'll feel a self-aggrandizing and proud. It's really the pressure of self esteem and self approval that drives interjection. We sometimes talk about interjection in terms of ego involvement. It's when your ego is on the line with respect to doing or attaining some kind of standard at behavior. So, interjection again very powerful form of motivation but it too is unstable. When people are highly interjected and something goes wrong, they're opt to withdraw and at the same time also beat themselves up for, so there are also a mental health costs to interjected motivation especially when it's pervasive. Still a third kind of extrinsic motivation. Now, to the right of interjection is what we call identification. Identification is when you do something because you really identify with the worth or value of the activity. So, now you're doing it because you're willingly engaged in the activity, because you see how important the outcome might be. So, when people are identified and they're motivated through that kind of valuing of an outcome, they tend to be very volitionally motivated and persistent. So, now we've gotten to the first type of stable high-quality motivation within this continuum. Still to the right of identification is what we call integration. Integration is when you're not only identified with the value of the activity, but that identification fits with all the other values that you have, so that you can now whole-heartedly be behind the activity itself. So, as you can see that as we move from left to right we're looking at a continuum here, that goes from very heteronomous or controlled forms of motivation like external regulation, all the way up through more on more autonomous forms of motivation of which integration reps represents the most autonomous form of all extrinsic motivation. So, as you go to the right on this continuum we're getting more and more autonomous, and the quality of motivation tends to be higher and higher. Now, there's one other kind of motivation I haven't mentioned that's also on this diagram and it's the one that's way to the far left, we call it A motivation. This is the lowest form of motivation in terms of autonomy, because when you're a motivated you're just not motivated to act either, one because you feel like you can't do the action in other words you're helpless or two because you just have no value for the action at all. So, A motivation represents the least positive form of motivation on this continuum. Now, most of the time when we're motivated to do something like have got to work, there's some combination of motives that are at work for us. So, when I got to work I might be going to work because I think I should which would be interjection because I want the pay which would be external regulation, and because I value what I am doing it work that would be identification. So, most of the time our motives are mixed motives, and we have some combination of all of these things at work. We tend in self-determination theory to kind of put those together algebraically, to form a score that we call the person's relative autonomy. How overall are they either in terms of being on the right-hand side of this continuum or the left-hand side. We'll see that the relative autonomy with which you're acting makes a great deal of difference. So, what I want to do in our next session is really talking about some specific examples of this internalization continuum, and how it plays itself out in contexts like school, like work, and like exercise or things that involve a good deal of extrinsic motivation.
