Extrinsic motivators flop. Again.
I wish I were half as insightful and one-eighth as funny as Scott Adams.
(via Dilbert.com with a HT to Becky Blanton)
I wish I were half as insightful and one-eighth as funny as Scott Adams.
(via Dilbert.com with a HT to Becky Blanton)
Dan;
Check out a guest post on my blog about motivation. http://tinyurl.com/knxq4c
I love it! it really hits the spot when you’ve been a recipient of such an award in the past 😀 *grin*
Dear Dan,
I appologize for taking 5 years to be in touch with your motivation concept. This comment is my 50 years of clinical observation swan song of never being acknowledged for corresponding thoughts as your own. I am still inspired by a presentation that I heard Harlow make at the 1957 APA conference in Chicago when I was a psychiatry resident. The drive of bonding compared to humorous discription that Willson (of Music Man fame) made in the 40’s about “love” being a recognizable surprising change of a theme as is usually heard in music. Later I understood “recognition of a change” rewarded a need for all creatures to feel in control by being effective. That gratification is the same felt with solving a puzzle and is more profound than so-called physiological drives considered important to Freud and Darwin. This motivation has been present in all of my patients as well (including autistic children who are mistakenly described as fearful of change). People are fearful of not being in control and primarily wish to control change by action or recognition.
I was equally impressed in 1949 with stories by former German concentration camp survivors who knew when fellow comrades were going to die by their loss of humor essential to the prisoners’ survival. Their turn to fatalism was a death call. The same control-of-change motivation for life has been demonstrated with mice and is shared by every creature that needs to counter entropy.
The uniquely human aspect of this control has been the human invention of iconic thinking in the abstract that has provided all of the advantages of civilization.
Iconic thinking is an emotional cognitive defense that provides belief systems for being in control (and for an excuse for social bonding that is natural for all herding and pack animals). However, iconic thinking can also block scientific investigation with dominating social beliefs as illustrated by Copericus waiting till death to publish. Descarte was frightened by Galileo’s threat of being burnt and devised a church-accepted tongue-in-cheek dualism (still alive today, see: Paul Bloom, Psychology Department, Yale University), Descarte’s published philosophy was never accepted by Spinoza who was excommunicated by Jewish religion, but he continued to greatly admire Descarte’s math genius.
In additon to fairy tales, a devise unheard of in the rest of life forms, iconic thinking makes scientific questions possible that can be tested with iconic logic provided by virtual reality of language and mathematics. Emotional defenses are beneficial when applied critically without dogma.
I first presented this concept at a “Future of Medicine” conference sponsored by the US Navy at Charlestown, MA in 1969 and have had many refusals of publication and research proposals since then. I have much clinical data to support the concept of the primary motivation to be control or recognition of a surprising change from familiar (i.e., not novelty or mastery proposed by cognitive psychologists) that evokes satisfaction of a desire-for-living sense of effectiveness.
I believe this concept corresponds to your own findings of intrinsic motivation for having fun in life.
I would be gratified to know anyone read this and may repair the switch to my broken flashlight under a bushel.