Great piece. The relationship between autonomy and intrinsic motivation is often notable in sports. Agassi hated his life because he had a drill sergeant father and no amount of extrinsic rewards could compensate for the perceived lack of freedom.
I am curious about how we form goals. This is still a mystery to me. In my case I had no relatable peers to justify choosing the specific goals I chose in my life. Yet somehow I believed there was a clear relationship between effort and desired outcome and that gave me a significant amount of intrinsic motivation.
That idea - that Randall Collins theory of Emional Energy compliments Deci and Ryans conception of motivation - was the core idea in a draft proposal I made some ten years ago. Even though the review board turned it down, the idea has kinda haunted me ever since.
Wow that's quite a review. It's so important to understand what nourishes/enhances that precious impetus we have of intrinsic motivation - doing because the doing "bubbles up" from just being alive. I thought I'd add one angle that's especially relevant to the research concerning why animals perform behaviors that, to the surprise of old-time behaviorists, is not "reinforced". The Active Inference (predictive processing) framework claims that ALL behavior emerges from two - and only two! - types of results: Either our brains choose behavior to minimizes free energy ("surprise", sort of) to "gain" some PRAGMATIC value (reward) or because it has EPISTEMIC value - the latter is an intrinsic "drive" to explore, even when there are no "rewards" other than informing oneself. There is even a gnarly beautiful equation for how animals plan and choose behaviors with according to the lowest expected free energy, determined by the balance of information (epistemic) gain and pragmatic value (For the real deal and the equation, check out the book Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior. For more of my two cents on this, see my post:
Why I find this interesting: Scott Alexander recently blogged on Alpha School, where incentivization is an important part of the method. Rewards for number of books read and so on.
Great piece. The relationship between autonomy and intrinsic motivation is often notable in sports. Agassi hated his life because he had a drill sergeant father and no amount of extrinsic rewards could compensate for the perceived lack of freedom.
I am curious about how we form goals. This is still a mystery to me. In my case I had no relatable peers to justify choosing the specific goals I chose in my life. Yet somehow I believed there was a clear relationship between effort and desired outcome and that gave me a significant amount of intrinsic motivation.
Fascinating essay.
Are you familiar with Randall Collins's theory of Emotional Energy and Interaction Ritual Chains
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Collins)?
His theories compliment what you've written.
That idea - that Randall Collins theory of Emional Energy compliments Deci and Ryans conception of motivation - was the core idea in a draft proposal I made some ten years ago. Even though the review board turned it down, the idea has kinda haunted me ever since.
Wow that's quite a review. It's so important to understand what nourishes/enhances that precious impetus we have of intrinsic motivation - doing because the doing "bubbles up" from just being alive. I thought I'd add one angle that's especially relevant to the research concerning why animals perform behaviors that, to the surprise of old-time behaviorists, is not "reinforced". The Active Inference (predictive processing) framework claims that ALL behavior emerges from two - and only two! - types of results: Either our brains choose behavior to minimizes free energy ("surprise", sort of) to "gain" some PRAGMATIC value (reward) or because it has EPISTEMIC value - the latter is an intrinsic "drive" to explore, even when there are no "rewards" other than informing oneself. There is even a gnarly beautiful equation for how animals plan and choose behaviors with according to the lowest expected free energy, determined by the balance of information (epistemic) gain and pragmatic value (For the real deal and the equation, check out the book Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior. For more of my two cents on this, see my post:
https://open.substack.com/pub/jnicanorozores/p/chewing-on-your-nails-is-care-and?r=lx647&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Thanks!
“interest, curiosity, exploration and play”
Well described.
Preach! That’s the magic we’re all after in education! How do we get kids to be intrinsically motivated to learn this stuff? Great read!
Why I find this interesting: Scott Alexander recently blogged on Alpha School, where incentivization is an important part of the method. Rewards for number of books read and so on.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-alpha-school
Alexander doesn't comment on the effectiveness of the Alpha School approach.
Also, as a chronic under-achiever and procrastinator throughout life, I am delighted to find something and somebody else to blame it on.