Motivation and emotion/Lectures/Extrinsic motivation and psychological needs

Lecture 04: Extrinsic motivation and psychological needs
This is the fourth lecture for the motivation and emotion unit of study.

Overview edit

This lecture discusses human motivation in terms of:

a taxonomy of motivation which includes intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
psychological needs according to self-determination theory (autonomy, competence, relatedness)

Key question: What is the "secret sauce" for unlocking "intrinsic motivation"?

Take-home messages:

Intrinsic motivation usually produces better outcomes than extrinsic motivation
The more complex the task, the more important is intrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivation is fostered by conditions which support autonomy, competence, and relatedness

Extrinsic motivation and internalisation

Psychological needs

The surprising science of motivation (Dan Pink, RSA Animate, YouTube) (10:47 min): What are the psychological ingredients for harnessing motivation in the workplace? External motivators such as money are useful, up to a point, but beyond that the work needs to allow for autonomy and be meaningful to engage intrinsic motivation.
What makes us feel good about our work? (Dan Ariely, TEDx talk, 2013) (10:32 min): Describes several eye-opening experiments which manipulate the way simple tasks are conducted and measure how this affects people's performance and reactions. The amount of control and effort we exert influences how much we value the outcome.