Developing Usable Experiences

Intrinisic motivation

April 7th, 2009 10:40 pm —  49 views

SI 529 W09Intrinsic motivation occurs when people engage in an activity without obvious external incentives1. In other words, you aren’t offered something to do whatever you’re doing.

Intrinsic motivation explains much of the engagement with online social networking systems. Consider Facebook, Yelp, Yammer, Twitter, Wikipedia, open source projects as a whole. Most everyone using these systems are not motivated by some promise of reward2. There are incentives that encourage quality contributions, but these aren’t guaranteed.

So why do it? Is it because we are social animals and are using the internet to be social? I mean, why tell someone you’re thirsty, that you can’t sleep, or share some random opinion or perspective?

Maybe because we hope to reach someone, anyone.

We are by nature intrinsically motivated. Something inside encourages us to get up everyday, feed ourselves, and go about tending to our needs and satisfying wants. According to Professor Steven Reiss, there are 16 intrinsic reasons why we pursue things3.

It’s another late night and I’m up stewing thoughts for a paper I’ll be writing throughout the week on motivating contributions. What motivates you to contribute online? Is it one of those 16 things?

Image: A friend and rich thinker from this class. The class is rooted in social psychology and isn’t technical enough to motivate me but long-term intrinsic goals are allowing me to substitute the pursuit of good grades for the real reason…learning.

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  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_motivation#Intrinsic_motivation [↩]
  2. Though some at Yelp get paid to be ambassadors I understand. [↩]
  3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_motivation#Intrinsic_motivation_and_the_16_basic_desires_theory [↩]

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