The Two Types of Motivation
Dancing Elephant Press Book Project Prompt Motivation
There are two types of motivation — not the two you’re thinking of.
How can I be sure? Because there are many different ways of breaking down motivation, many of which contain two types.
If there are so many ways to break down motivation, does that mean the breakdowns are meaningless? No. Each way of looking at motivation provides some insight, some useful way of getting more from it.
It’s just that, taken alone, none tell the whole story. So let’s consider them together.
Content versus Process motivation
This is more of a meta-division, of different types of motivational theories.
Content motivation theories refer to motivational theories about motives. In short, these theories try to explain what motivation is.
The most famous content motivation theory is Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I had a professor in college who had an unusual take on this hierarchy. His advice to students suffering from any of the usual angsts college students are prone to — worries about grades, fitting in, finding love, or their future career — was to throw themselves into a snowbank. They would shortly stop caring about any of those things, and only care about getting warm.
Process motivation theories, on the other hand, refer to motivational theories about how motivation works. Why does something motivate someone in one instance, but not in another? Why does the same thing motivate different people by different amounts?
The most famous process motivation theory is BF Skinner’s operant conditioning, or reinforcement theory. It is the theory used by most modern businesses to motivate employees to do what the business wants, via bonuses and incentives, and not what it doesn’t want, via various punishments.
How is content/process motivation useful?
Depending on what you’re trying to do, looking at content motivation theories versus process motivation theories helps you to find the right kind of theory. If you’re wondering why your cat does things that seem to make no sense, you might look at content motivation theories. If you’d just like to figure out how to get your cat to stop scratching the couch, a process motivation theory might be more appropriate.
Growth versus Fixed mindset motivation
Which type of mindset you have affects what and how you are motivated.
If you have a fixed mindset, you believe that you have a limited ability or capacity for any given skill or talent. If that skill or talent is an important part of your identity, you will be motivated to avoid challenging it. You’d rather do easy things that reinforce that identity, instead of hard things you might fail at.
With a growth mindset, you believe that your ability or capacity for any given skill or talent is unlimited (although there may be a diminishing return of improvement for effort expended). People with growth mindsets seek challenges that allow them to improve their skills, or increase their overall number of skills.
How is growth/fixed mindset motivation useful?
Rather than offering you different ways to motivate yourself, this distinction instead helps you to identify the way you are currently motivated. And, if it shows you have a fixed mindset, you can change to a growth mindset. Research shows you’ll be much happier in the long run.
Intrinsic versus Extrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivation refers to the self-generated motivation provided by an activity. It is pleasurable to do. You may actually feel stress, anxiety, or other negative emotions if you don’t do it. Many forms of social media have tapped into this motivation to keep you endlessly scrolling and clicking.
Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, uses something you want / don’t want, other than the activity, to get you motivated to do the activity. Many people who diet or exercise to lose weight hate the dieting or exercising. They’re extrinsically motivated by losing weight.
How is intrinsic/extrinsic motivation useful?
It’s important to know why you are doing something, if you want to do more of it. Research has shown that applying extrinsic motivations (rewards) for intrinsically motivated behaviors actually reduces the intrinsic motivation. Many people who try to turn a hobby into a business discover that when they have to do it for money, they no longer enjoy doing whatever it was.
Internal versus External motivation
This breakdown divides motivating factors into those generated by the person being motivated (internal) and those being generated outside of the person being motivated (external). The description is often conflated with the intrinsic/extrinsic division, although it is helpful to think of them separately.
Consider the classic case of a teenager needing to clean their room. My brother had an internal motivation — he had dust allergies, and regularly cleaning and vacuuming his room helped him to breathe better. I, on the other hand, had an external motivation — I cleaned my room when my mother told me to. Neither of us found the activity particularly pleasurable — there was no intrinsic motivation. We both had extrinsic motivations — to breathe, or to not be yelled at.
The important thing about the internal/external distinction is that it says nothing about your relationship to the activity you’re being motivated to do. Just where the motivation is coming from.
How is internal/external motivation useful?
If you don’t have enough internal motivation to get something done, you can turn to external motivation. This is why “gym buddies” and “diet buddies” are so popular. If you’re relying solely on external motivation, realize that it might stop working when a competing motivation shows up. This is what leads to “shiny object syndrome” with people trying to make money online. Since the only motivation is the external promise of money, they switch from task to task as soon as something else promises more money.
Positive versus Negative motivation
This theory of motivation says that people will be motivated to move towards things that give them pleasure, and away from things that give them pain. Therefore, when it comes to reinforcing or reducing behaviors, positive reinforcement will encourage the behavior, and negative reinforcement will discourage the behavior.
Where this gets a little fuzzy is that, technically, “positive” means “adding” and “negative” means “removing”, not good and bad. “Reinforcement” and “punishment” are used to refer to if you want a behavior to increase or decrease. So you can actually have positive punishment (touching a hot stove produces burns on your fingers) or negative reinforcement (parents allow a child to skip chores as a reward).
How most people who aren’t psychologists or behavioral scientists use the terms, however, is that “positive reinforcement” is a good reward, and “negative reinforcement” is a bad punishment.
How is positive versus negative motivation useful?
What matters to changing behaviors is not how big the reinforcement is, but how quickly it follows upon the behavior. This lets you create small reinforcements that are easily done in the moment. A popular negative reinforcement is to wear a rubber band around your wrist, and every time you catch yourself doing something you want to stop, snap the rubber band. I’m fond of doing a little desk dancing to reward myself for completing hard tasks, but fist pumps and verbally congratulating yourself can also work.
Final thoughts
If you want to do something — or want to stop doing something — understanding your motivation can help you. Moreover, since there are many ways to understand motivation, there are many ways that you can be motivated at the same time.
Stacking your motivations allows you to use different types of motivation together to increase the force behind them. Just be sure they’re different types, not conflicting types. So stacking an intrinsic and an internal motivation works better than stacking an intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
Thank you, Lady Dr. Gabriella Korosi, Sharing Randomly, and Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles for including me in this project. It’s been an incredibly fun time, with intrinsic motivation (learning new stuff! yay!), external motivation (deadlines), and positive motivation (people reading and commenting on my articles).
