READING 2: The Science of Motivation - By Kou Murayama, PhD - June 2018

LINK: https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2018/06/motivation

The article focuses on motivation within education however some areas of the discussion can be applied to a management context.

Key points:

• Rewards (eg money) increase motivation on task was the individual is not intrinsically motivated but rewards decrease motivation and performance when the individual is initially interested.
• Competition, on average, only produces a slight increase in performance.
• Individuals underestimate how motivated they will be during a task when asked before starting the task.
• New studies suggest that motivation may be contagious.

Summary:

- the most relevant sections are highlighted in orange
- analysis is in blue
- red is copy and pasted

Types of motivation in learning

Learners usually have either a goal of "mastery"; to "master the material and develop thier competency" or a "performance goal"; "to perform well in comparison to others" (Dweck, 1986; Nicholls, 1984). Studies show (Murayama & Elliot, 2011) "that performance goals [only] help short-term learning, whereas, mastery goals facilitate long term learning."

Reward and motivation

Rewards such as money can be used to enhance learning (Murayama & Kitagami, 2014) however, extrinsic (coming from outside the individual) rewards can sometimes undermine intrinsic (coming from inside the individual) motivation. When people found an activity intrinsically interesting, rewards, due to the "undermining effect or overjustification effect" (Deci, Koestner & Ryan, 1999; Lepper, Greene & Nisbett, 1973) reduced later performances and engagement. A study found (Murayama, Matsumoto, Izuma & Matsumoto, 2010) that participants who were rewarded for playing a game or completing a task were less likely (compared to a control group) to voluntarily engage in the game/task afterwards if they had been given a reward for participating originally. This and other studies suggest that if intrinsic interest and motivation is damaged/lessened by offering rewards. However, rewards can be used to increase motivation for tasks for which intrinsic motivation does not exist and that are not intrinsically interesting.

This can be applied to the workplace, people should ideally not be motivated by rewards but by an interest in the job/task. People may feel less satisfied once the job/task is complete if it was "just for the bonus" or "just to get paid" and this may set a president for future tasks. In instances where there is no interest (eg something like cleaning a toilet), a reward may increase motivation and performance.

Thoughts: Does this mean that performance bonuses are bad for motivation? Could a bonus be used by the company as a way to safeguard against poor performance? - ie If an employees target is not met, the company saves money by not paying out the bonus.

Competition and Motivation

When a meta-analysis (Murayama & Elliot, 2012) on the effect of competition on performance averaged the findings across 174 studies (with 30,000 participates) only a very small average effect was found (r = 0.03, 95% CI = [-.00, .06]). They (Elliot & Harackiewicz, 1996) created a model that states "when we're faced with the competition we adopt two different types of motivational goals: performance-approach goals and performance avoidance goals. Performance-approach goals are goals that focus on positive outcomes of the competition (“My goal is to outperform others”) whereas performance-avoidance goals focus on negative outcomes (“My goal is not to do worse than others”). Importantly, previous research has shown that performance-approach goals positively predict task performance whereas performance-avoidance goals negatively predict performance (Elliot & Church, 1997)." - it is believed that these goals cancel each other out resulting in the weak effect of competition on performance. 

These results indicate that competition engages multi-faceted motivational processes, which explains why the introduction of competition does not consistently bring motivational benefits (see also Murayama & Elliot, 2009)
.

Metamotervation & Motivation Contagion

Metamtervation is how we believe and understand how our own individual motivation works. When asked before starting a task we often believe our interest and motivation will be lower during a task than it actually is. This was demonstrated in this study: (Murayama, Kuratomi, Johnsen, Kitagami & Hatano., under review) - "under review" means not published yet.

Motivation contagion occurs when you initially don't like something (like maths) but you see a close peer enjoying it which creates a "fictive internal reward" making you feel as if you also enjoy it. (The maths example is from the article). Motivation contagion is being explored by this study: (Burgess, Riddell, Fancourt & Murayama, under review).

Cool terms: 

Organisational psychology - is the branch of psychology that applies psychological theories and principles to organizations, often with the aim of increasing workplace productivity and empoyee's mental well being. (verywellmind.com)