research motivation example

How to Write a PhD Motivation Letter

• Applying to a PhD

A PhD motivation letter is a document that describes your personal motivation and competence for a particular research project. It is usually submitted together with your academic CV to provide admissions staff with more information about you as an individual, to help them decide whether or not you are the ideal candidate for a research project.

A motivation letter has many similarities to a cover letter and a personal statement, and institutions will not ask you to submit all of these. However, it is a unique document and you should treat it as such. In the context of supporting a PhD application, the difference is nuanced; all three documents outline your suitability for PhD study. However, compared to a cover letter and personal statement, a motivation letter places more emphasis on your motivation for wanting to pursue the particular PhD position you are applying for.

Academic cover letters are more common in UK universities, while motivation letters are more common abroad.

A motivation letter can play a key part in the application process . It allows the admission committee to review a group of PhD applicants with similar academic backgrounds and select the ideal candidate based on their motivations for applying.

For admission staff, academic qualifications alone are not enough to indicate whether a student will be successful in their doctorate. In this sense, a motivational letter will allow them to judge your passion for the field of study, commitment to research and suitability for the programme, all of which better enables them to evaluate your potential.

How Should I Structure My Motivation Letter?

A strong motivation letter for PhD applications will include:

• A concise introduction stating which programme you are applying for,
• Your academic background and professional work experience,
• Any key skills you possess and what makes you the ideal candidate,
• Your interest and motivation for applying,
• Concluding remarks and thanks.

This is a simplistic breakdown of what can be a very complicated document.

However, writing to the above structure will ensure you keep your letter of motivation concise and relevant to the position you are applying for. Remember, the aim of your letter is to show your enthusiasm and that you’re committed and well suited for the programme.

To help you write a motivation letter for a PhD application, we have outlined what to include in the start, main body, and closing sections.

How to Start a Motivation Letter

Introduction: Start with a brief introduction in which you clearly state your intention to apply for a particular programme. Think of this as describing what the document is to a stranger.

Education: State what you have studied and where. Your higher education will be your most important educational experience, so focus on this. Highlight any relevant modules you undertook as part of your studies that are relevant to the programme you are applying for. You should also mention how your studies have influenced your decision to pursue a PhD project, especially if it is in the same field you are currently applying to.

Work experience: Next summarise your professional work experience. Remember, you will likely be asked to submit your academic CV along with your motivation letter, so keep this section brief to avoid any unnecessary repetition. Include any other relevant experiences, such as teaching roles, non-academic experience, or charity work which demonstrates skills or shows your suitability for the research project and in becoming a PhD student.

Key skills: Outline your key skills. Remember the admissions committee is considering your suitability for the specific programme you are applying for, so mention skills relevant to the PhD course.

Motivation for applying: Show your enthusiasm and passion for the subject, and describe your long-term aspirations. Start with how you first became interested in the field, and how your interest has grown since. You should also mention anything else you have done which helps demonstrate your interest in your proposed research topic, for example:

• Have you attended any workshops or seminars?
• Do you have any research experience?
• Have you taught yourself any aspects of the subject?
• Have you read any literature within the research area?

Finally, describe what has convinced you to dedicate the next 3-4 years (assuming you are to study full time) of your life to research.

How to End a Motivation Letter

Concluding the motivation letter is where most people struggle. Typically, people can easily describe their academic background and why they want to study, but convincing the reader they are the best candidate for the PhD programme is often more challenging.

The concluding remarks of your motivation letter should highlight the impacts of your proposed research, in particular: the new contributions it will make to your field, the benefits it will have on society and how it fits in with your aspirations.

With this, conclude with your career goals. For example, do you want to pursue an academic career or become a researcher for a private organisation? Doing so will show you have put a lot of thought into your decision.

Remember, admissions into a PhD degree is very competitive, and supervisors invest a lot of time into mentoring their students. Therefore, supervisors naturally favour those who show the most dedication. Your conclusion should remind the reader that you are not only passionate about the research project, but that the university will benefit from having you.

Finally, thank the reader for considering your application.

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Motivation Letter Format

There are some basic rules to follow when writing a successful motivation letter. These will mimic the standard format for report writing that the supervisor will be familiar with:

• Use a sans serif font (e.g. Arial or Times New Roman),
• Use a standard font size (e.g. 12pt) and black font colour,
• Keep your writing professional throughout and avoid the use of informal language,
• Write in the first person,
• Address your motivation letter to a named person such as the project supervisor, however, this could also be the person in charge of research admissions,
• Structure your letter into paragraphs using the guidance above, such as introduction, academic history, motivation for research, and concluding remarks.

How Long Should a Motivation Letter Be?

A good rule of thumb for PhD motivation letters is to keep it to around one side of A4. A little longer than one page is acceptable, but two pages is generally considered too long. This equates to approximately 400-600 words.

Things to Avoid when Writing Your Motivational Letter

Your motivational letter will only be one of the several documents you’ll be asked to submit as part of your PhD application. You will almost certainly be asked to submit an Academic CV as well. Therefore, be careful not to duplicate any of the information.

It is acceptable to repeat the key points, such as what and where you have studied. However, while your CV should outline your academic background, your motivation letter should bring context to it by explaining why you have studied what you have, and where you hope to go with it. The simplest way to do this is to refer to the information in your CV and explain how it has led you to become interested in research.

Don’t try to include everything. A motivation letter should be short, so focus on the information most relevant to the programme and which best illustrates your passion for it. Remember, the academic committee will need to be critical in order to do their jobs effectively , so they will likely interpret an unnecessarily long letter as in indication that you have poor written skills and cannot communicate effectively.

You must be able to back up all of your statements with evidence, so don’t fabricate experiences or overstate your skills. This isn’t only unethical but is likely to be picked up by your proposed PhD supervisor or the admissions committee.

Whilst it is good to show you have an understanding of the field, don’t try to impress the reader with excessive use of technical terms or abbreviations.

PhD Motivation Letter Samples – A Word of Caution

There are many templates and samples of motivation letters for PhDs available online. A word of caution regarding these – although they can prove to be a great source of inspiration, you should refrain from using them as a template for your own motivation letter.

While there are no rules against them, supervisors will likely have seen a similar letter submitted to them in the past. This will not only prevent your application from standing out, but it will also reflect poorly on you by suggesting that you have put minimal effort into your application.

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Home Market Research

Motivational Research: Techniques, Strengths, and Weaknesses

Motivational research is to identify and understand the aspects of the consumer that they do not fully comprehend. It makes the assumption that there are hidden or unconscious motivations influencing consumer behavior.

Motivational research gradually got linked with traditional marketing research, influencing and expanding the inventory of marketing research and research procedures. Its popularity peaked in the latter half of the 1950s and early 1960s.

So, in this blog, we will describe motivational research, its techniques, strengths, and weaknesses.

What is Motivational Research?

Motivational Research is the currently famous phrase for using psychiatric and psychological procedures to understand better why individuals react the way they do to products, advertisements, and other marketing scenarios.

Motivational research is consumer research that has grown in popularity in recent years. It is an endeavor to uncover and explain why customer behavior differs and why they behave in a specific manner.

Thus, it prompts the consumer’s inhibited (conscious) and repressed (unconscious) motives. In denial, the consumer is aware of his intentions but refuses to reveal them to others for fear of humiliation, punishment, or ostracism.

However, information regarding the motivating reason remains in the conscious mind. Because the individual will not accept the presence of a motive even to himself, repression suggests a more profound rejection of knowledge about an explanation.

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Research

Techniques of Motivational Research

Customers need to efficiently or accurately express their emotional feelings on direct questioning. As a result, Clinical Psychological methods/techniques are applied in motivational research for the psychoanalytical research of consumers.

All marketing activities require motivational research. The motivational study employs the following techniques:

01. Observation Technique

Consumer motivations can be deduced from their communication and actions. The researcher uses this strategy to observe consumer behavior without revealing their name. This procedure does not include any interviews.

Under this technique, the researcher may obtain relevant data or information individually using mechanical aids. This technique is appropriate for researching the purchasing process of consumers.

02. Depth Interview Technique

The researcher uses this strategy to conduct an intense interview.

The researcher questions respondents individually for several hours in the form of an interview. Interviewers are taught to develop rapport and not to steer the conversation too much. Respondents are urged to open up about their activities or interests and a specific issue or brand under investigation.

Interview transcripts are then thoroughly examined, along with comments on respondents’ moods and gestures they may have used to express attitudes or motives.

Such studies are appropriate for giving the market a head start on potential appeals.

03. Self Reports Technique

In this technique, the researcher merely verbally inquires about the respondent’s intentions, objectives, and needs or through a questionnaire.

The researcher may administer many tests using pencil and paper under this method of motivation study to elicit replies from the participants regarding their wants, desires, opinions, interests, reactions, etc.

The information is next quantified, which involves giving it a score to determine the degree to which a given need or motivation exists.

This technique has two measure restrictions:

• First, people must be conscious of their actions’ causes or motivations.
• Second, respondents might explain their words or actions. Respondents could be reluctant to disclose their genuine intentions and might be prone to providing socially acceptable answers.

04. Projective Techniques

Projective techniques aim to expose an individual’s genuine emotions and intentions.

Various cloaked tests with unclear stimuli, including unfinished sentences, cartoons, untitled images, other person characterization, etc., make up projective techniques .

Projective techniques operate on the fundamental presumption that participants are oblivious to the fact that they are expressing their emotions. These tactics need to give respondents a chance to explain their answers.

Some important projective techniques are as under:

• Thematic Apperception Test (T.A.T)
• Word Association
• Sentence Completion
• Third Person Technique
• The Paired Pictures Test.

Strengths and weaknesses of motivational research

Like anything and everything else in this world, motivational research has some of its strengths and weaknesses. Some of them are given below:

Strength: 

Some of the strengths of motivational research include the following:

• In-depth insights into consumer behavior and motivations
• Assists marketers in tailoring their products and marketing messages better to fit the wants and wishes of their customers.
• Can assist businesses in identifying unmet consumer requirements and product development prospects
• Can give helpful information for market segmentation and target marketing
• It can increase the success of marketing campaigns by identifying important motivators and drivers of consumer behavior.

Weaknesses:

Measuring the influence of motivational studies on consumer behavior and corporate outcomes can take time and effort. Some of the weaknesses of motivational research are as follows:

• It can be time-consuming and costly, especially compared to other market research types.
• It is based on self-reported data, which might be skewed and inaccurate.
• It is often based on tiny, non-representative samples, which limits the conclusion’s generalizability.
• It might be challenging to transform ideas from motivational research into tangible activities or marketing and product development initiatives.

LEARN ABOUT: Market research vs marketing research

Motivational research is a type of market research that tries to find out what drives, wants, and needs people really have. In-depth interviews, focus groups, and observation are all common ways to research what motivates people.

Overall, motivational research can be useful for businesses that want to learn more about their customers and make better marketing plans.

QuestionPro is survey software that can be used to research what motivates people. The platform has various features and tools that help researchers design, run, and analyze surveys for motivational research.

QuestionPro lets people create surveys with different kinds of questions, like multiple choice, open-ended, and rating scales. It also lets you change how surveys look and feel and target specific groups of respondents.

QuestionPro also has various tools for analyzing and reporting data that can help researchers make sense of the information they collect and come to useful conclusions. Overall, QuestionPro can be a useful tool for doing motivational research.

LEARN MORE         FREE TRIAL

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

When research is me-search: How researchers’ motivation to pursue a topic affects laypeople’s trust in science

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Resources

Roles Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

• Marlene Sophie Altenmüller, 
• Leonie Lucia Lange, 
• Mario Gollwitzer

• Published: July 9, 2021
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253911
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

Research is often fueled by researchers’ scientific, but also their personal interests: Sometimes, researchers decide to pursue a specific research question because the answer to that question is idiosyncratically relevant for themselves: Such “me-search” may not only affect the quality of research, but also how it is perceived by the general public. In two studies ( N = 621), we investigate the circumstances under which learning about a researcher’s “me-search” increases or decreases laypeople’s ascriptions of trustworthiness and credibility to the respective researcher. Results suggest that participants’ own preexisting attitudes towards the research topic moderate the effects of “me-search” substantially: When participants hold favorable attitudes towards the research topic (i.e., LGBTQ or veganism), “me-searchers” were perceived as more trustworthy and their research was perceived as more credible. This pattern was reversed when participants held unfavorable attitudes towards the research topic. Study 2 furthermore shows that trustworthiness and credibility perceptions generalize to evaluations of the entire field of research. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Citation: Altenmüller MS, Lange LL, Gollwitzer M (2021) When research is me-search: How researchers’ motivation to pursue a topic affects laypeople’s trust in science. PLoS ONE 16(7): e0253911. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253911

Editor: Lynn Jayne Frewer, Newcastle University, School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, UNITED KINGDOM

Received: December 4, 2020; Accepted: June 15, 2021; Published: July 9, 2021

Copyright: © 2021 Altenmüller et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: We provided all materials, the anonymized data and analyses, and supplementary materials online at the Open Science Framework via the following link: https://osf.io/phfq3/ .

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

“Being a scientist is, at the most fundamental level, about being able to study what’s exciting to you”, says Jeremy Yoder, a gay man studying experiences of queer individuals in science [ 1 ]. Like Yoder, many researchers are passionate about their research and dedicated to their field. After all, they are free to choose research questions they deem important and are interested in. Freedom of science and research secures the independence of the academic from the political and other spheres. In return, researchers are expected to be neutral and objective and make their research process transparent to guarantee that this freedom is not exploited for personal gains.

Just as people differ in what they are interested in in their personal lives, researchers differ in what they find more or less fascinating and worth studying. Such fascination can have multiple causes and is often rooted in a perceived personal connection to a topic. For instance, Sir Isaac Newton allegedly became interested in gravity after an apple fell on his head [ 2 ]. A specific type of personal connection exists when researchers study a phenomenon because they are directly (negatively) affected by that phenomenon. In 1996, Harvard alumni and neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a rare form of stroke that made her undergo major brain surgery, affected her personal and academic life tremendously, and eventually awakened her interest in studying the plasticity of the brain [ 3 ]. In 2006, she published an award-winning book covering her research and her personal story that led her to pursue this path. The Jill Bolte Taylor case is, thus, a prototypical example for such “me-search”: researchers studying a phenomenon out of a particular personal affection by (or connection to) this phenomenon. “Me-search” thus means pursuing a scientific question when the answer to that question is idiosyncratically relevant for the individual researcher (as opposed to when the answer is relevant per se).

Being directly affected by a phenomenon provides researchers studying it with a high degree of expertise and motivation: Jill Bolte Taylor, for instance, claims to bring a deep personal understanding and compassion to her research and work with patients [ 4 , 5 ]. That said, being personally affected may also come at the cost of losing one’s scientific impartiality and neutrality for the subject: Jill Bolte Taylor was criticized for being overly simplistic in her scientific claims and mixing them with esoteric ideas, and for pushing her own agenda (i.e., selling her story) by dramatizing her own experiences [ 4 – 7 ].

While some criticized Jill Bolte Taylor heavily, the general public does not seem to have a problem with her research as “me-search”. Her book is currently translated into 30 languages, and thousands of people visit her talks and keynote addresses [ 4 – 6 ]. Does that suggest that the general public tends to turn a blind eye on conflicts of interest that may arise from a researchers’ personal affection by their research object? While the Jill Bolte Taylor case seems to suggest so, research on science communication and public understanding of science has shown that people are highly sensitive to potential conflicts of interest arising from researchers’ personal involvement: perceiving researchers as pursuing an “agenda” for personal reasons is a major factor predicting people’s loss of trust in researchers and science [ 8 – 11 ]. On the other hand, people may see personal (“autoethnographic”) experiences of researchers personally affected by their topic as valuable and laudable ‒ it may imply that “they know what they’re talking about” [ 12 – 14 ]. Similarly, revealing a personal interest or even passion for a particular research topic (e.g., due to being personally affected) could also overcome the stereotypical perception of scientists as distant “nerds in the ivory tower” [ 15 , 16 ]: researchers who openly disclose the idiosyncratic relevance of their research topic may appear more approachable, more likeable, and more trustworthy [ 17 – 19 ].

Thus, the public’s reaction to “me-search” seems to be ambivalent and contingent on certain boundary conditions. Thus, the question we are going to address in this article is whether and when ‒ that is, under which circumstances ‒ a researcher’s personal affection by a research topic (“me-search”) positively vs. negatively impacts public perceptions regarding the trustworthiness of the respective researcher (and the entire research area in general) and the extent to which this researcher’s findings are perceived as credible .

Perceivers’ motivated stance as a moderating variable

This potentially ambivalent perception of “research as me-search” can be understood from a motivated reasoning [ 20 ] perspective: Laypeople receive and process information in a manner biased towards their own beliefs, expectations, or hopes. This also applies to the reception of scientific information [ 21 , 22 ]: For example, laypeople are more likely to dismiss scientific evidence if it is inconsistent with their beliefs [ 23 , 24 ] or if it threatens important (moral) values [ 25 , 26 ] or their social identity, respectively [ 27 – 29 ].

However, identity-related and attitudinal motivated science reception might differ in their underlying mechanisms. For identity-related motivated science reception, biased perception of information, which is relevant to a social identity, is driven by a defense motivation to protect this positive social identity [ 30 ]. Thus, identity-threating scientific information is countered by identity-protection efforts, such as discrediting the findings and the source. These efforts will be more pronounced among strongly identified individuals [ 27 – 29 ]. For attitudinal motivated science reception, however, the mechanism might function as a broader perception filter. When confronted with new scientific information about the respective attitude object, the perceptual focus will be directed at clues helping to uphold prior attitudes (i.e., confirmation bias [ 31 ]): Potentially attitude-inconsistent information is attenuated, while potentially attitude-consistent information is accentuated. The ambivalent nature of “me-search” might allow to be easily bend in such a motivated manner and, thus, lead to biased perceptions of a researcher either way: when the findings are in line with one’s prior beliefs, being personally affected may be considered an asset–the respective researcher is perceived as more trustworthy and his/her findings as more credible (compared to no idiosyncratic relevance). However, when the findings are inconsistent with one’s prior beliefs, idiosyncratic relevance may be considered a flaw–the respective research is perceived as biased, untrustworthy, and less competent, and his/her findings are likely perceived as less credible than when idiosyncratic relevance is absent.

Prior research on motivated science reception mainly focused on laypeople’s reactions towards specific scientific findings: after learning about the outcome of a particular study, participants dismiss the research (and devalue the researcher) if these outcomes are consistent vs. inconsistent with their prior beliefs [ 23 – 25 , 27 – 29 ]. However, people might be prone to motivated science reception even before results are known, judging researchers proverbially just by their cover (e.g., by biographical data, personal and scientific interests and motivations). People who hold positive attitudes towards a certain research topic might perceive “me-searchers” as more trustworthy and anticipate their results to be more credible (before knowing the specific outcomes). By contrast, people who hold negative attitudes towards a certain research topic they might trust “me-searchers” less and expect their findings to be less credible.

Additionally, motivated reception processes can be extended over and above the specific information under scrutiny and lead to questioning the scientific method in itself–a phenomenon termed the “scientific impotence excuse” [ 32 ]. In line with that, critical evaluations of specific researchers and their findings are sometimes generalized to the entire field of research [ 27 ]. Thus, the fact that a researcher engages in “me-search” might be interpreted in a way that fits best to one’s preexisting convictions and may generalize to the entire field of research.

The present research

In two studies, laypeople read alleged research proposals concerning potentially polarizing research topics (i.e., LGBTQ issues and veganism) which were submitted by researchers who disclosed being either personally affected or not affected by the respective topic. We investigated whether ( Study 1 ) and when (i.e., moderated by preexisting positive attitudes towards the respective research topic, Studies 1 and 2) such “me-search” information increased or decreased laypeople’s perceptions regarding these researchers’ epistemic trustworthiness and the anticipated credibility of their future scientific findings. Of note, we use the term “credibility” to differentiate evidence-related trust/credibility from person-related trust/credibility (i.e. “trustworthiness”). Further, we test whether one researcher’s “me-search” impacts the evaluation of the entire respective field ( Study 2 ).

For both studies in this paper, we report how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions (if any), all manipulations, and all measures [ 33 ]. All materials, the anonymized data, and analyses are available online at the Open Science Framework (OSF; see https://osf.io/phfq3/ ). Before starting the respective study, informed consent was obtained. Participants read a GDPR-consistent data protection and privacy disclosure declaration specifically designed for the present study. Only participants who gave their consent could start the respective survey. According to German laws and ethical regulations for psychological research [ 34 ], gathering IRB approval is not necessary if (i) the data are fully anonymized, (ii) the study does not involve deception, (iii) participants’ rights (e.g., voluntary participation, the right to withdraw their data, etc.) are fully preserved, and (iv) participating in the study is unlikely to cause harm, stress, or negative affect. The present studies met all of these criteria; therefore, no IRB approval had to be obtained.

In our first study, we conducted an online experiment investigating the main effect of a researcher’s disclosure of being personally affected vs. not affected by their research on their trustworthiness and the credibility of their future research. Further, we tested whether laypeople’s preexisting attitudes towards the research topic moderate this effect.

Four-hundred and eleven German participants were recruited via mailing lists and social networks. Ninety-seven participants had to be excluded due to pre-specified criteria: Sixty-seven participants failed the manipulation check; 25 participants failed the pre-specified time criteria (viewing the manipulation stimulus less than 30sec, taking less than 3min or more than 20min for participation); 5 participants had apparently implausible response patterns (e.g., “straight-lining;” identical responses on every single item on more than one questionnaire page in a row). Eighty-five further participants failed the attention check. Excluding them did not change the overall results, so, for the sake of statistical power, we did not exclude these 85 cases. The final sample consisted of N = 314 participants. We conducted sensitivity analyses using G*Power [ 35 ] for determining which effect sizes can detected with this sample in a moderated (multiple) regression analysis: At α = 0.05 and with a power of 80%, small-to-medium effects (f 2 ≥0.03) can be detected with this sample. Participants were mostly female (74% female, 25% male, 2% other) and their age ranged between 16 and 68 years ( M = 26.79; SD = 10.18). Most participants were currently studying at a university (71%; working: 21%; unemployed or other: 8%). Participants who were currently studying or already had a university degree (93%) came from a variety of disciplines (law, economics, and social sciences: 49%; humanities: 16%; mathematics and natural sciences: 14%; medicine and life sciences: 11%; engineering: 4%).

Materials and procedure.

After obtaining informed consent, we asked participants to imagine they were browsing the website of a research institute and came across a short proposal for a new research project by a researcher named Dr. Lohr (no gender was indicated for greater generalizability and avoiding possible gender confounds). Next, participants read the beginning of the alleged proposal of a planned research project for which Dr. Lohr was allegedly applying for external funding. The text briefly introduced the planned project (i.e., investigating social reactions to queer employees at the workplace) and a statement of Dr. Lohr explaining why they were interested in conducting this project. Participants were randomly allocated to two groups. In the “not personally affected” condition, Dr. Lohr wrote:

“ I am interested in investigating this research topic in more detail not only out of scientific reasons but also because I–as someone who does not identify as homosexual and is not affected by my own research–really think we need more evidence-based knowledge about queer topics which we can implement in everyday life .”

In the “personally affected” condition, Dr. Lohr wrote:

“ I am interested in investigating this research topic in more detail not only out of scientific reasons but also because I–as someone who identifies as homosexual and is affected by my own research–really think we need more evidence-based knowledge about queer topics which we can implement in everyday life .”

We added a definition for the word “queer” below the proposal: “ Queer is a term used as self-description by people who do not identify as heterosexual and/or who do not identify with the gender assigned at birth . The term is often used as umbrella term for LGBTQ (lesbian , gay , bisexual , trans and queer) and describes all people who identify as queer .” After completing an attention check question (see pre-registration), we measured participants’ trust in Dr. Lohr with the Muenster Epistemic Trustworthiness Inventory (METI; [ 36 ]), which was constructed for measuring trust in experts encountered online. It consists of 14 opposite adjective pairs measuring an overall trustworthiness score (Cronbach’s α = .95) as well as the sub-dimensions expertise (e.g., competent–incompetent, Cronbach’s α = .92) and integrity/benevolence (e.g., honest–dishonest, Cronbach’s α = .93) on 6-point bipolar Likert scales. Factor analyses (see Appendix A in the supplementary materials, https://osf.io/phfq3/ ) suggest that a two-factor model (with expertise and integrity/benevolence) fit the data better than a three-factor model (as suggested by [ 36 ]), corroborating the idea of a cognitive-rational dimension and an affective dimension of trustworthiness [ 37 ]. Next, participants rated the extent to which they found Dr. Lohr’s research credible on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = “not at all” to 6 = “very much” (6 items, e.g., “I think Dr. Lohr’s future findings will be credible;” “I will be critical of Dr. Lohr’s research results” (reverse-coded); Cronbach’s α = .84).

Next, we measured participants’ own positive attitudes towards LGBTQ issues—the moderator variable in our design—with eleven statements developed from research on sympathy, group attitudes, and allyship [ 38 , 39 ] rated on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from “not at all” to “very much” (e.g., “I think that LGBTQ-related topics receive more attention than necessary” (reverse-coded); “I am open to learning more about concerns raised by LGBTQ people;” Cronbach’s α = .93). Next, we conducted a manipulation check by asking participants to indicate whether Dr. Lohr disclosed being personally affected by their research (“Dr. Lohr stated being personally affected;” “Dr. Lohr stated not being personally affected;” “Dr. Lohr did not say anything about being affected or not”).

Finally, we measured demographic variables (age, gender, occupation, academic discipline) and control variables: general perceptions of researchers’ neutrality (self-developed 6-point bipolar scale with 4 adjective-pairs, e.g. subjective–objective, and 6 distractor pairs, e.g. introverted–extraverted, Cronbach’s α = .81) and Public Engagement with Science (PES) with two measures adapted from a survey by the BBVA Foundation [ 40 ]: a 5-item scale measuring PES frequency (e.g., “How often do you read news about science?” 5-point Likert scale ranging from 0 =“never” to 5 =“almost daily,” Cronbach’s α = .78) and a multiple choice question measuring 15 potential PES experiences during the last 12 months (e.g., “I know someone who does scientific research;” “I visited a science museum”). Participants had the opportunity to participate in a lottery and sign up for more information and were debriefed.

Our randomized groups did not differ in regard to general perception of neutrality in science ( p = .924) or PES (PES frequency, p = .709; PES experiences, p = .533). Table 1 summarizes all means, standard deviations, correlations and internal consistencies of the measured variables.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253911.t001

Main effect of being personally affected.

First, we tested the main effect of the researcher’s disclosure of being personally affected on epistemic trustworthiness and credibility of future findings. Laypeople trusted Dr. Lohr significantly more in the “personally affected” condition ( M = 4.92, SD = 0.75) than in the “not personally affected” condition ( M = 4.66, SD = 0.81), t (312) = 2.93, p = .004, d = 0.33, 95% CI d [0.11; 0.56]. For credibility, the difference between the “personally affected” condition ( M = 4.15, SD = 0.96) and the “not personally affected” condition ( M = 4.04, SD = 0.86) was not significant, t (312) = 1.02, p = .306, d = 0.12, 95% CI d [-0.11; 0.34]. Further exploring the two dimensions of epistemic trustworthiness, Dr. Lohr was perceived as higher on integrity/benevolence, t (312) = 3.19, p = .002, d = 0.36, 95% CI d [0.14; 0.59], and on expertise, t (312) = 2.17, p = .030, d = 0.25, 95% CI d [0.02; 0.47] when disclosing being personally affected.

Moderation by pre-existing attitudes.

Second, we tested whether the effect of being personally affected by the research topic on trustworthiness was moderated by participants’ pre-existing attitudes towards LGBTQ issues. Using standardized linear regression, we again found a main effect of condition on trustworthiness, beta = 0.15, p = .004, 95% CI beta [0.05, 0.26]. There was a significant main effect of participants’ pre-existing attitudes, beta = 0.30, p < .001, 95% CI beta [0.20, 0.40] and the condition × attitudes interaction effect was significant, beta = 0.19, p < .001, 95% CI beta [0.08, 0.29], increasing the amount of explained variance in trustworthiness by 3% to R 2 adj = .14. Table 2 summarizes the results. Fig 1A displays the interaction effect and standardized simple slopes analysis further qualifies it: Participants with more positive attitudes towards LGBTQ issues (+1 SD above sample mean) trusted Dr. Lohr more when the researcher was personally affected vs. not affected, beta = 0.34, p < .001, 95% CI beta [0.20, 0.49]. For participants with less positive attitudes towards LGBTQ issues (-1 SD below sample mean), this effect appears to be reversed, yet the simple slope was not significant, beta = -0.03, p = .646, 95% CI B [-0.18, 0.11]. The same pattern of interaction effects emerged for both, integrity/benevolence ( p = .009, total R 2 adj = .14) and expertise ( p < .001, total R 2 adj = .10); full analyses are reported in Appendix B (see https://osf.io/phfq3/ ).

Linear regression plots for the interaction effect of attitudes × condition on epistemic trustworthiness (Fig 1A) and credibility (Fig 1B) with 95% confidence intervals: Participants’ attitudes towards the research topic moderated how a researcher’s disclosure of being personally affected (vs. being not personally affected) by one’s own research was perceived.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253911.g001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253911.t002

Regarding our second dependent variable, credibility, we found no main effect of condition, beta = 0.04, p = .456, 95% CI beta [-0.06, 0.13]. However, there was a significant main effect of participants’ pre-existing attitudes, beta = 0.48, p < .001 95% CI beta [0.39, 0.58]: Participants with more positive attitudes anticipated a higher credibility of future research findings in this condition than participants with less positive attitudes. Similar to epistemic trustworthiness, there was a significant condition × attitudes interaction effect, beta = 0.21, p < .001, 95% CI beta [0.12, 0.31], increasing the amount of explained variance in credibility by 4% to R 2 adj = .26. Table 2 summarizes the results. Fig 1B displays this interaction effect: Again, participants with more positive attitudes towards LGBTQ issues (+1 SD above sample mean) anticipated Dr. Lohr’s future research findings to be more credible when the researcher was personally affected vs. not affected, beta = 0.25, p < .001, 95% CI beta [0.12, 0.38]. However, for participants with more negative attitudes (-1 SD below sample mean) this effect was significantly reversed: They rated the future research as less credible when the researcher was personally affected vs. not affected, beta = -0.18, p = .009, 95% CI B [-0.31, -0.04].

Results from Study 1 suggest that LGBTQ researchers are perceived as more trustworthy and their future findings as more credible when they disclose being personally affected by their research topic (i.e., being queer themselves), but only if perceivers hold positive attitudes towards LGBTQ issues. By contrast, holding less favorable attitudes towards LGBTQ issues lead to more skeptical reactions towards personally affected vs. unaffected researchers. This finding shows that learning about a researcher’s personal affection by their research can, indeed, go both ways, as suggested by our theoretical reasoning. On a more general level, our research suggests that public reactions towards “me-search” is a matter of pre-existing attitudes, and, thus, a case of motivated science reception [ 21 , 22 ].

There are some limitations to this first study: As most people in our sample held rather positive attitudes towards the LGBTQ community ( M = 4.93, SD = 1.02; on a scale from 1 to 6), predicted values on trustworthiness and credibility at the lower end of the attitude spectrum are probably less reliable. Also, we did not control for participants’ own identification as belonging to the LGBTQ community. Thus, we cannot differentiate clearly between attitudinal and identity-related effects, which is important because attitudes and identity concerns have a psychologically distinguishable impact on motivated science reception [ 27 , 28 ]. Additionally, replicating our results in a different domain is necessary to be able to generalize our findings. Another question of generalizability that is left unanswered is how such individual experiences with one personally affected researcher might impact laypeople’s perception of the entire field. This calls for more research on the double-edged nature of the moderating effect of preexisting attitudes.

In our preregistered second study (see https://osf.io/c9r4e ), we aimed to replicate our findings in a more diverse sample and with a different research topic that has the potential of polarizing participants even more strongly. We used the same design as in Study 1, but changed the proposed research topic to perceptions of vegans and introduced a vegan vs. non-vegan researcher. Again, we hypothesized that laypeople’s attitudes towards veganism moderate the effects on trustworthiness as well as credibility of future research. Additionally, we tested whether the effect of one researcher being personally affected by their own research generalizes to the broader perception of their entire field. Furthermore, we also explored whether the moderation by attitudes towards veganism prevailed when controlling for self-identification as being vegan (not included in preregistration).

We conducted an a-priori power analysis using G*Power [ 35 ] for detecting the hypothesized interaction effect in a moderated multiple regression analysis ( f 2 = 0.04, based on Study 1, with 1- β = 0.90 and α = 0.05, which resulted in a total sample of N = 265. Anticipating exclusions (see specified criteria) of comparable size as in the previous study, we aimed for a sample of at least 350 participants.

We collected data from 364 participants via mailing lists and social media. Fifty-seven participants had to be excluded due to our preregistered criteria (see https://osf.io/c9r4e ): one participant was younger than 16 years, 31 failed the manipulation check, 10 took less than 20sec viewing the proposal, 12 took less than 3min or more than 20min for participation, 3 had apparently implausible patters of response (i.e., “straight-lining;” identical responses on every single item on more than one questionnaire page in a row). The final sample consisted of N = 307 participants (76% female, 23% male, 1 other) who were between 18 and 79 years old ( M = 33.55, SD = 13.92). Approximately half of the sample (50%) was currently studying at a university, further 40% were working and 10% not working, one person was currently in training. Eighty-five percent were currently studying or already held a university degree (social sciences: 49%, humanities: 17%, natural sciences: 14%, life sciences: 8%, engineering: 6% and other 6%). Most participants did not consider themselves as vegans (89%).

We used the same materials and procedure as in Study 1 (see OSF for full materials: https://osf.io/phfq3/ ). However, we changed the research topic to “perceptions of vegans”. Participants were randomly assigned to two conditions. In the “not personally affected” condition, the researcher Dr. Lohr wrote:

“ I was interested in investigating this research questions not only out of scientific reasons but because , as someone who is not living as a vegan and , thus , not personally affected by my own research , I think we have a need for more evidence-based knowledge regarding the social embedding of vegan lifestyles , which we can acknowledge in everyday life .”

“… because , as someone who is living as a vegan and , thus , personally affected by my own research , I think we have a need for more evidence-based knowledge regarding the social embedding of vegan lifestyles , which we can acknowledge in everyday life . ”

As dependent variables, we again used the 14-item METI [ 36 ] to measure epistemic trustworthiness, but we expanded the measure for credibility of future research by adding one more item (“I would express skepticism towards Dr. Lohr’s future findings”) to better capture the behavioral aspects of credibility (now: 7 items; Cronbach’s α = .86). We also added a measure of participants’ evaluation of the entire field (not the specific researcher) as a third dependent variable. This 12-item scale was adapted from a related study [ 28 ] (e.g., “I think researchers who do research on that topic sometimes lack competence,” “I think it is difficult to apply results from this line of research to reality;” 6-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = “not at all” to 6 = “very much;” Cronbach’s α = .85). Next, participants’ attitudes towards veganism (i.e., the moderator variable) were measured with a 14-item scale adapted from the attitude measure in Study 1 by changing and adding items (e.g., “I think veganism is exaggerated” (reverse-coded) and “I can imagine being a vegan myself;” 6-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = “not at all” to 6 = “very much;” Cronbach’s α = .95).

To reduce exclusions after data collection, participants could proceed only if they answered all attention checks correctly (4 items; multiple choice). We added self-identification as vegan as a control variable (“Do you presently consider yourself a vegan?” yes/no); and an open-ended question about participants’ opinion regarding the researcher being personally affected to explore how laypeople rationalize their opinion. These responses were later coded for valence (positive, negative, mixed, or neutral) and content (deductive and inductive coding) by two raters blind to the specific research question (see Appendix C in the supplementary materials, https://osf.io/phfq3/ ; interrater reliability for valence, Cohen’s κ = .86, p < .01; and for content, Cohen’s κ = .74, p < .01). Again, the questionnaire closed with a sign-up for a lottery and more information as well as a debriefing.

Our randomized groups did not differ in regard to PES (PES frequency, p = .147; PES experiences, p = .101). However, they did differ significantly in regard to the general perception of neutrality in science ( p = .049). Possible implications are addressed in the Discussion. Table 3 summarizes all means, standard deviations, correlations and internal consistencies. In the following, we report our findings for all three dependent variables (trustworthiness, credibility, evaluation of the entire field), consecutively.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253911.t003

Trustworthiness.

First, we ran the standardized regression model for epistemic trustworthiness. There was neither a significant main effect of condition on epistemic trustworthiness, beta = 0.04, p = .482, 95% CI beta [-0.07, 0.15] nor a significant main effect of attitudes towards veganism, beta = 0.07, p = .205, 95% CI beta [-0.04, 0.18]. However, the hypothesized condition × attitudes interaction effect was significant, beta = 0.22, p < .001, 95% CI beta [0.11, 0.34], increasing the amount of explained variance in trustworthiness by 4% to R 2 adj = .05. Table 4 summarizes the results. Fig 2A and standardized simple slopes analyses show that participants with more positive attitudes towards veganism (+1 SD above sample mean) trusted Dr. Lohr more when personally affected vs. not affected, beta = 0.26, p = .001, 95% CI beta [0.11, 0.42]. This conditional effect was reversed for participants with more negative attitudes (-1 SD below sample mean), who trusted Dr. Lohr less when personally affected vs. not affected, beta = -0.19, p = .020, 95% CI beta [-0.34, -0.03]. The interaction effect remained significant when controlling for participants’ self-identification as being vegan ( p < .001, total R 2 adj = .06). In secondary analyses, we explored the effects on the two facets of epistemic trustworthiness, separately. The same pattern of interaction effects emerged for both integrity/benevolence ( p < .001, total R 2 adj = .08) and expertise ( p = .005, total R 2 adj = .02); full analyses are reported in Appendix D in the supplementary materials (see https://osf.io/phfq3/ ).

Linear regression plots for the interaction effect of attitudes × condition on epistemic trustworthiness (Fig 2A), credibility (Fig 2B) and critical evaluation of the entire field (Fig 2C) with 95% confidence intervals: Participants’ attitudes towards the research topic moderated how a researcher’s disclosure of being personally affected (vs. being not personally affected) by one’s own research was perceived.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253911.g002

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0253911.t004

Credibility.

On credibility, there was no significant main effect of condition, beta = -.07, p = .146, 95% CI beta [-0.17, 0.03] but a significant main effect of attitudes towards veganism, beta = .35, p < .001, 95% CI beta [0.25, 0.45]. As predicted, the condition × attitudes interaction effect was also significant for credibility, beta = 0.25, p < .001, 95% CI beta [0.15, 0.35], increasing the amount of explained variance in credibility by 6% to R 2 adj = .21. Table 4 summarizes these results. Fig 2B and standardized simple slope analyses qualify the interaction effect: In line with the results for trustworthiness, participants with more positive attitudes (+1 SD above sample mean) anticipated Dr. Lohr’s future findings to be more credible when personally affected vs not affected, beta = 0.18, p = .016, 95% CI beta [0.03, 0.32], while the conditional effect for participants with more negative attitudes (-1 SD below sample mean) changed its sign, beta = -0.32, SE ( B ) = 0.14, p < .001, 95% CI beta [-0.47, -0.18]. As before, the interaction effect remained significant when controlling for self-identification as being vegan ( p < .001, total R 2 adj = .21).

Evaluation of the field.

Third, we investigated whether this moderation effect generalizes to the evaluation of the entire field of veganism research. There was no significant main effect of condition, beta = -.00, p = .989, 95% CI beta [-0.10, 0.10] but a significant main effect of attitudes, beta = -.41, p < .001, 95% CI beta [-0.51, -0.31]. Again, we found the hypothesized condition × attitude interaction effect, beta = -.27, p < .001, 95% CI beta [-0.37, -0.18], increasing the amount of explained variance in critical evaluation by 7% to R 2 adj = .27. Again, Table 4 summarizes these results and Fig 2C and standardized simple slopes analyses further qualify the interaction effect: Participants with more positive attitudes towards veganism (+1 SD above sample mean) were less critical of research on veganism when Dr. Lohr was personally affected vs. not affected, beta = -0.28, p < .001, 95% CI beta [-0.41, -0.14]. By contrast, this conditional effect was reversed for participants with more negative attitudes towards veganism (-1 SD below sample mean), beta = 0.27, p < .001, 95% CI beta [0.14, 0.41]. This interaction effect also remained significant when controlling for self-identification as being vegan ( p < .001, total R 2 adj = .28).

Participants’ opinion.

Overall, participants who responded to the open-ended question expressed mostly negative opinions about the researcher being personally affected by his own research (negative: 48%, neutral: 21%, positive: 17%, and mixed: 14%). The most frequently mentioned (negative) remark was that a “me-searcher” might be biased towards their research (60%; e.g., “ By introducing himself as being affected , I fear he cannot evaluate the results of his research objectively ”). The second most frequently mentioned remark was that such idiosyncratic relevance is irrelevant (24%; e.g., “ It wouldn’t make a difference ”). Positive remarks were mentioned less frequently: Participants ascribed more motivation (11%; e.g. “ I think interest , also personal interest , is an important prerequisite for determined research ”) or knowledge about the topic (8%; e.g. “ Very good , most likely , he thus is knowledgeable about the subject matter and can conduct the study in a more purposeful manner ”) to the “me-searcher”, or recognized the transparency (7%; e.g., “ The main thing is transparency . People are always biased , perhaps even unconsciously ”; for more details, see Appendix C in the supplementary materials: https://osf.io/phfq3/ ).

In Study 2, we replicated the moderation effect of preexisting attitudes on the effect of a researcher disclosing being personally affected (vs. not affected) by their own research on participants’ epistemic trustworthiness and credibility ascriptions regarding the research and researcher’s future findings. Further, we showed that this effect generalizes to the evaluation of the entire research area. Here, positive attitudes towards veganism determined how learning about an openly vegan researcher impacted participants’ perceptions of trustworthiness and credibility as well as the evaluation of the entire field of veganism research compared to learning about a non-vegan (i.e., non-affected) researcher. Participants who held more positive attitudes towards veganism reported more trust, higher anticipated credibility of future findings, and a less critical evaluation of the field when confronted with a vegan researcher. Conversely, for participants with less positive attitudes this effect was reversed. The moderation by positive attitudes towards veganism persisted when controlling for participants’ self-identification as vegans. Overall, the interaction effects observed in Study 2 explained similar amounts of variance as in Study 1 (epistemic trustworthiness: 3% vs. 4%, and credibility: 4% vs. 6%). Further, qualitative analyses revealed that most participants reported negative–or, at least, mixed–perceptions of a “me-searcher” (e.g., “me-searchers” may be biased, but also highly motivation and knowledgeable), which corroborated our theoretical prediction that “me-search” may be a double-edged sword. Interestingly, these qualitative findings seem somewhat contradictory to the quantitative findings, according to which there was no main effect of researchers’ idiosyncratic affection by their research topic.

In Study 2, one caveat is that the groups differed significantly in regard to participants’ general expectations of neutrality in science. Participants who read about the personally affected researcher had weaker expectations of neutrality; yet, when added to the regression model as a control, the pattern of results remained unchanged (see Appendix E in the supplementary materials, https://osf.io/phfq3/ ). Further, as a second caveat, we show that participants generalized their perceptions to the overall field of veganism research. However, this research area might be considered quite narrow and, thus, future research should investigate how far such generalization processes stretch out to perceptions of broader areas of research (e.g., health psychology).

General discussion

In two studies, we show that laypeople’s perception of researchers who disclose being personally affected by their own research can be positive as well as negative: The effect of such “me-search” was moderated by laypeople’s preexisting attitudes. Queer or vegan researchers were perceived as more trustworthy and their future findings were anticipated to be more credible when participants had positive, sympathizing attitudes towards the related research object (i.e., LGBTQ community or veganism). When participants’ attitudes were less positive, this pattern reversed. In Study 2, we extended our research from individualized perceptions of single researchers and their findings to evaluations of the entire field of research. Participants who were confronted with a personally affected researcher seemed to consider this person a representative example and generalized their judgment to their evaluation of the entire (though here quite narrow) research area.

We explored epistemic trustworthiness in more detail in both studies, namely the cognitive-rational facet of expertise and the affective facet of integrity/benevolence: Both were impacted by researchers’ disclosure of being personally affected, although effect sizes for expertise were descriptively smaller than for integrity/benevolence. This points to “me-search”–when received positively–possibly adding to the perception of competence-related aspects like a deeper knowledge of a phenomenon (e.g., via anecdotal insights) [ 12 – 14 ] and, even more so, warmth-related aspects like seeming more sincere, benevolent, transparent and, thus, approachable [ 15 , 16 , 41 ]. Disclosing such personal interest in a scientific endeavor might be able to bridge the stereotypical perception of cold and distant “science nerds” by revealing passionate, human and, thus, more relatable side of a researcher. When received negatively, however, “me-search” might be regarded as harboring vested interests, which casts doubts on a researcher’s neutrality and objectivity [ 8 – 11 , 42 ].

In general, the main models tested here explained between 5% and 28% of variance which may not appear impressive at first glance. However, our studies posed a very strict test of the effects of “me-search” by only using a subtle manipulation sparse in information followed by measures of very specific perceptions which might have contributed to an understatement of the real-world impact.

“Me-search” neither automatically sparks trust nor mistrust in laypeople, even if their explicit opinions seem rather negative. In line with assumptions from motivated science reception [ 22 , 43 ], our findings suggests that the ambivalence of the fact that a researcher is personally affected can be seized as an opportunity to interpret the situation in a manner that best fits to preexisting attitudes: Researchers, their findings and even their entire field of research are evaluated–even before learning about specific findings–based on prior attitudes towards the research topic. We show in Study 2 that the moderation effect of participants’ positive attitudes towards the respective research topic (i.e., veganism) prevails when controlling for self-identification with the topic (i.e., being a vegan). This suggests that, indeed, in motivated reasoning attitudinal and identity-related processes can be differentiated: Here, social identity protection could be ruled out as alternative explanation for the effects of pre-existing attitudes. Noteworthily, we demonstrate that motivated science reception already operates when the results are not (yet) known. This points towards a perceptual filter made up of pre-existing attitudes that is activated when confronted with scientific information and leads to biased pre-judgments: Ambivalent cues (i.e., “me-search”) are prematurely interpreted in line with prior attitudes without actually knowing whether the new scientific information will be attitude-consistent or inconsistent (when, later, results are reported).

Future research

Future research on the motivated reception of “me-search” should focus on three open questions. First, while we consider it a strength of our studies that the results of the proposed research project were not yet known, it might be interesting to see how being personally affected or not interacts with the perceived direction of the communicated scientific results (e.g. supporting vs. opposing a certain position): To what extent can the first, premature evaluation of a “me-searching” researcher be adapted if the actual results are inconsistent with this pre-judgment?

Second, the investigation of what specific characteristics of “me-search” are instrumentalized by benevolent or skeptical perceivers might not only provide practical tips on how to handle being personally affected (e.g., in science communication) but also important theoretical insights on the building blocks of trust in science and researchers (see discussion above regarding the effects on the facets of epistemic trustworthiness). As one example, knowing that a qualitative level of knowledge is highly valued could further research on the trust-benefit of enriching statistical evidence with anecdotal and narrative elements [ 44 , 45 ]. As second example, we argue that researchers’ self-disclosure of being personally affected by their research might signal transparency and, thus, improve the perception of the trust facets integrity and benevolence. Yet, even the disclosure of not being personally affected could have such an effect on a researcher’s reputation and, at the same time, it might be less ecologically valid (as, presumably, it is rather unusual to explicitly state to not be affected by something). Introducing a control group without any information about a researcher’s relation towards their research object might bring light to this.

Third, we demonstrated the moderation effect of preexisting attitudes for two research areas (i.e., LGBTQ and veganism) and in different populations. Yet, further research should investigate whether this effect will hold up for other areas, more diverse samples and different kinds of “me-search”, as well. For example, in some research fields being personally affected by the research might be perceived as more morally charged than in others and, thus, having stronger polarizing effects [ 46 ]: While, in veganism-research, “me-search” might be grounded in an ideological choice (e.g., thinking its morally wrong to consume animal products and, thus, being vegan), having a stroke and, following, studying stroke-related brain plasticity is likely perceived as less ideological. Also, different scientific methods (typically) used in a field might impact the perceptions of “me-search” depending on how prone for subjectivity these methods are perceived to be (e.g., qualitative “me-search” like autoethnographic analyses might be perceived more critically than when using seemingly objective, quantitative methods like physiological measures). Further, researchers who are not directly personally affected by their research but “merely” interested in something for personal reasons (e.g., being highly empathetic towards queer concerns without identifying as queer) might not profit from disclosure of such personal motivations: Such researchers might be perceived as impostors [ 47 ] lacking the expertise stemming from directly firsthand experiences.

Practical implications

Finally, for the applied perspective on public engagement with science, it should again be noted, that motivated reasoning processes are activated even before specific results are presented (e.g. before hearing a talk or reading about a study). This might be important, as judgments are quickly formed and remembered [ 48 , 49 ] and, therefore, the first impression of a researcher might set the tone for further interactions and, particularly, for the acceptance and implementation of their findings. This emphasizes the importance of researchers knowing their audience (and their attitudes) when engaging in science communication.

Of course, there are also ethical considerations concerning “me-search”: Researchers should always declare any conflict of interests when conducting research [ 50 , 51 ]. Failing to disclose being personally affected by one’s own research might backfire severely on researchers’ reputation–especially concerning their trustworthiness and the credibility of their findings–and in particular, when this information is disclosed by someone else and not themselves. At least for achieving positive reputational effects, it seems researchers need to freely initiate the disclosure of limitations and problems themselves [ 41 , 52 ]. A possible solution for reaping all the benefits and protecting against the potential harms of engaging in “me-search” might be to actively seek out mixed research teams. Including affected as well as non-affected individuals in research projects might be worth considering from the stance of the public’s trust in science: It enables deep, even personal insights to the studied phenomenon, while still securing balanced perspectives and impartiality.

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor became famous for turning her “stroke of fate” into productive and well-selling “me-search”. Yet, she was praised as well as heavily criticized for mixing her personal and scientific motivations: When research is also “me-search”, it can be perceived positively as well as negatively depending on laypeople’s preexisting attitudes towards the research object. Researchers who disclose being personally affected by their own research can benefit from this disclosure in terms of trustworthiness and credibility when it is perceived by laypeople with positive attitudes; however, for audiences with more negative attitudes this effect is reversed and disclosure can be harmful. One experience with a personally affected researcher might be enough to impact the evaluation of the whole field. Thus, openly acknowledging “me-search” in one’s research is an ambivalent matter and its communicative framing as well as the targeted audience should be well considered.

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Motivation: The Driving Force Behind Our Actions

Verywell / Emily Roberts 

• Improvement

The term motivation describes why a person does something. It is the driving force behind human actions. Motivation is the process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviors.

For instance, motivation is what helps you lose extra weight, or pushes you to get that promotion at work. In short, motivation causes you to act in a way that gets you closer to your goals. Motivation includes the biological , emotional , social , and cognitive forces that activate human behavior.

Motivation also involves factors that direct and maintain goal-directed actions. Although, such motives are rarely directly observable. As a result, we must often infer the reasons why people do the things that they do based on observable behaviors.

Learn the types of motivation that exist and how we use them in our everyday lives. And if it feels like you've lost your motivation, do not worry. There are many ways to develop or improve your self-motivation levels.

Press Play for Advice on Motivation

Hosted by therapist Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast shares an exercise you can use to help you perform your best. Click below to listen now.

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What Are the Types of Motivation?

The two main types of motivation are frequently described as being either extrinsic or intrinsic.

• Extrinsic motivation arises from outside of the individual and often involves external rewards such as trophies, money, social recognition, or praise.
• Intrinsic motivation is internal and arises from within the individual, such as doing a complicated crossword puzzle purely for the gratification of solving a problem.

A Third Type of Motivation?

Some research suggests that there is a third type of motivation: family motivation. An example of this type is going to work when you are not motivated to do so internally (no intrinsic motivation), but because it is a means to support your family financially.

Why Motivation Is Important

Motivation serves as a guiding force for all human behavior. So, understanding how motivation works and the factors that may impact it can be important for several reasons.

Understanding motivation can:

• Increase your efficiency as you work toward your goals
• Drive you to take action
• Encourage you to engage in health-oriented behaviors
• Help you avoid unhealthy or maladaptive behaviors, such as risk-taking and addiction
• Help you feel more in control of your life
• Improve your overall well-being and happiness

Click Play to Learn More About Motivation

This video has been medically reviewed by John C. Umhau, MD, MPH, CPE .

What Are the 3 Components of Motivation?

If you've ever had a goal (like wanting to lose 20 pounds or run a marathon), you probably already know that simply having the desire to accomplish these things is not enough. You must also be able to persist through obstacles and have the endurance to keep going in spite of difficulties faced.

These different elements or components are needed to get and stay motivated. Researchers have identified three major components of motivation: activation, persistence, and intensity.

• Activation is the decision to initiate a behavior. An example of activation would be enrolling in psychology courses in order to earn your degree.
• Persistence is the continued effort toward a goal even though obstacles may exist. An example of persistence would be showing up for your psychology class even though you are tired from staying up late the night before.
• Intensity is the concentration and vigor that goes into pursuing a goal. For example, one student might coast by without much effort (minimal intensity) while another student studies regularly, participates in classroom discussions, and takes advantage of research opportunities outside of class (greater intensity).

The degree of each of these components of motivation can impact whether you achieve your goal. Strong activation, for example, means that you are more likely to start pursuing a goal. Persistence and intensity will determine if you keep working toward that goal and how much effort you devote to reaching it.

Tips for Improving Your Motivation

All people experience fluctuations in their motivation and willpower . Sometimes you feel fired up and highly driven to reach your goals. Other times, you might feel listless or unsure of what you want or how to achieve it.

If you're feeling low on motivation, there are steps you can take to help increase your drive. Some things you can do to develop or improve your motivation include:

• Adjust your goals to focus on things that really matter to you. Focusing on things that are highly important to you will help push you through your challenges more than goals based on things that are low in importance.
• If you're tackling something that feels too big or too overwhelming, break it up into smaller, more manageable steps. Then, set your sights on achieving only the first step. Instead of trying to lose 50 pounds, for example, break this goal down into five-pound increments.
• Improve your confidence . Research suggests that there is a connection between confidence and motivation. So, gaining more confidence in yourself and your skills can impact your ability to achieve your goals.
• Remind yourself about what you've achieved in the past and where your strengths lie. This helps keep self-doubts from limiting your motivation.
• If there are things you feel insecure about, try working on making improvements in those areas so you feel more skilled and capable.

Causes of Low Motivation

There are a few things you should watch for that might hurt or inhibit your motivation levels. These include:

• All-or-nothing thinking : If you think that you must be absolutely perfect when trying to reach your goal or there is no point in trying, one small slip-up or relapse can zap your motivation to keep pushing forward.
• Believing in quick fixes : It's easy to feel unmotivated if you can't reach your goal immediately but reaching goals often takes time.
• Thinking that one size fits all : Just because an approach or method worked for someone else does not mean that it will work for you. If you don't feel motivated to pursue your goals, look for other things that will work better for you.

Motivation and Mental Health

Sometimes a persistent lack of motivation is tied to a mental health condition such as depression . Talk to your doctor if you are feeling symptoms of apathy and low mood that last longer than two weeks.

Theories of Motivation

Throughout history, psychologists have proposed different theories to explain what motivates human behavior. The following are some of the major theories of motivation.

The instinct theory of motivation suggests that behaviors are motivated by instincts, which are fixed and inborn patterns of behavior. Psychologists such as William James, Sigmund Freud , and William McDougal have proposed several basic human drives that motivate behavior. They include biological instincts that are important for an organism's survival—such as fear, cleanliness, and love.

Drives and Needs

Many behaviors such as eating, drinking, and sleeping are motivated by biology. We have a biological need for food, water, and sleep. Therefore, we are motivated to eat, drink, and sleep. The drive reduction theory of motivation suggests that people have these basic biological drives, and our behaviors are motivated by the need to fulfill these drives.

Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs is another motivation theory based on a desire to fulfill basic physiological needs. Once those needs are met, it expands to our other needs, such as those related to safety and security, social needs, self-esteem, and self-actualization.

Arousal Levels

The arousal theory of motivation suggests that people are motivated to engage in behaviors that help them maintain their optimal level of arousal. A person with low arousal needs might pursue relaxing activities such as reading a book, while those with high arousal needs might be motivated to engage in exciting, thrill-seeking behaviors such as motorcycle racing.

The Bottom Line

Psychologists have proposed many different theories of motivation . The reality is that there are numerous different forces that guide and direct our motivations.

Understanding motivation is important in many areas of life beyond psychology, from parenting to the workplace. You may want to set the best goals and establish the right reward systems to motivate others as well as to  increase your own motivation .

Knowledge of motivating factors (and how to manipulate them) is used in marketing and other aspects of industrial psychology. It's an area where there are many myths, and everyone can benefit from knowing what works with motivation and what doesn't.

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Ambition, Goals

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

Motivation is the desire to act in service of a goal. It's the crucial element in setting and attaining our objectives.

Motivation is one of the driving forces behind human behavior. It fuels competition and sparks social connection. Its absence can lead to mental illnesses such as depression . Motivation encompasses the desire to continue striving toward meaning, purpose, and a life worth living.

• Sources of Motivation
• How to Set and Accomplish Goals
• How to Increase Motivation
• Diet, Exercise, and Finance Goals

People often have multiple motives for engaging in any one behavior. Motivation might be extrinsic, whereby a person is inspired by outside forces—other people or rewards. Motivation can also be intrinsic, whereby the inspiration comes from within—the desire to improve at a certain activity. Intrinsic motivation tends to push people more forcefully, and the accomplishments are more fulfilling.

One framework used for understanding motivation is the hierarchy of needs proposed by American psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943. According to Maslow, humans are inherently motivated to better themselves and move toward expressing their full potential—self-actualization—by progressively encountering and satisfying several levels of need from the most fundamental, such as for food and safety, to higher-order needs for love, belonging, and self-esteem .

Eventually, Maslow extended the theory to include a need for self-transcendence: People reach the pinnacle of growth and find the highest meaning in life by attending to things beyond the self. Although the universality of Maslow's theory has been challenged, many believe it captures fundamental truths about human motivation.

Motivation can stem from a variety of sources. People may be motivated by external incentives, such as the motivation to work for compensation, or internal enjoyment, such as the motivation to create artwork in one’s spare time. Other sources of motivation include curiosity, autonomy, validation of one’s identity and beliefs, creating a positive self-image , and the desire to avoid potential losses.

Intrinsic motivation is a drive that comes purely from within; it’s not due to any anticipated reward, deadline, or outside pressure. For example, people who are intrinsically motivated to run do so because they love the feeling of running itself, and it's an important part of their identity. Extrinsic motivation can increase motivation in the short term, but over time it can wear down or even backfire. By contrast, intrinsic motivation is powerful because it is integrated into identity and serves as a continuous source of motivation.

Extrinsic motivation is any reason someone does work other than the joy of doing the work itself. Anything promised for completing the task or received as a result of completing the task are extrinsic motivators. An extrinsic motivator needs three elements to be successful, according to research by psychologist Victor Vroom: expectancy (believing that increased effort will lead to increased performance), instrumentality (believing that a better performance will be noticed and rewarded), and valence (wanting the reward that is promised).

Achieving a goal is a process. And all of the components of that process deserve attention to ensure success, from setting the objective, to overcoming obstacles, to sustaining momentum until the project is complete.

Failing to accomplish a goal is sometimes due to the way it was set. But a few psychological tricks can help set and reach those goals. One is to ensure that the goal is attached to a value, such as the value of supporting your local community or fighting climate change . Another is to frame your goal as an asset to be gained rather than a threat to be avoided. For example, instead of thinking, “I shouldn’t bother my boss, so we can avoid a rocky relationship,” try thinking, “I want to learn new communication skills to reset our relationship.” Yet another idea is to try setting a learning goal instead of a performance goal; instead of deciding to lose 20 pounds, decide to learn more about nutrition and cook two healthy recipes each week.

Motivation targets the “why” of change, but momentum targets the “how.” Generating momentum is pivotal for taking the concrete steps needed to shift out of entrenched patterns and make change. Focusing on momentum can also be used in a therapeutic context. For example, a therapist might address a pattern of avoidance in a patient with depression by identifying small steps they have already taken (getting out of bed that morning, coming to therapy ) and then listing the next steps they can take next. Recognizing the motivation for change and focusing on the dynamics that support change can also help build momentum.

It’s natural to feel stuck at certain points, especially when working through difficult tasks. But research suggests that several strategies can help. One is to focus on the positive consequences of the activity, such as passing a final exam. Another is to try and regulate your emotions during the task, such as by thinking about an upcoming vacation while running on the treadmill. Yet another is to monitor and track your progress, which can continue to propel you toward the next milestone. Lastly, try to enrich the task and make it more enjoyable (called “temptation bundling”), like listening to a podcast as you do the laundry.

Tracking progress is key to sustaining motivation and achieving your goals. It’s helpful to make progress visual and concrete, such as by writing it down or using an app. Tracking can also help you spot patterns that might derail your success. For example, health and wellness goals are generally long-term. Tracking your progress and behavior can help you spot when you tend to slip up, and then address the underlying causes. Additionally, it can be motivating to reflect back on the progress you’ve made, or look forward to the work to come if it’s a core part of your identity.

Some people may find themselves completely stymied by a project; others may simply want to pack a little more productivity into their timeline. No matter where motivation begins, there are always ways to increase it—whether that be your own motivation or someone else’s.

Sometimes you might feel completely unmotivated —and that’s ok. In that situation, allow yourself to feel the discomfort, hear the negative self-talk , and then take action anyway, For example, let’s say you come home after a long day at work and just want to unwind and watch TV. Instead of turning the TV on, acknowledge that you’re tired and then challenge yourself to read five pages of the book on your nightstand first. This approach gives space for negative thoughts and feelings, while helping you change ingrained patterns.

Procrastination is often driven by underlying feelings of distress or anxiety elicited by a given task. But there are ways to navigate the discomfort and beat procrastination. You can break the project into small, more manageable pieces; accomplishing one step will fuel your motivation for the next. You can set limits for the time spent preparing to begin, or aim to complete tasks as quickly as possible. You can also set a reward that you’ll get after completing the task or a part of it.

Companies have the opportunity to motivate employees with incentives, but they also need to be mindful that incentives can backfire—as in the case of the Wells Fargo scandal. Employees are motivated by external rewards when they believe that working harder will lead to a better performance, that they’ll be rewarded for a better performance, and they appreciate the reward, such as a bonus or time off. It can be difficult to meet those criteria—“Will my hard work really be noticed?” “Does my contribution really matter since I’m on a large team?—so companies should tailor incentives to each unique team and role.

Successful interventions often motivate through a combination of psychology and economic policy, which vary by context but often leverage social norms. For example, more people enrolled in a sustainable energy program when the sign up sheet was in their building lobby, because they could showcase their values to their neighbors—or perhaps feel pressured to sign up to maintain a good reputation.

Some of the most common goals people make—and the most common goals they struggle to meet—are to eat healthier, work out more, and save more money. Many traps can prevent people from achieving those goals, but anticipating those challenges can help achieve real change.

Many people struggle to stick to a diet. Research suggests that extrinsic motivators—to avoid hurtful comments or fit into an outfit—can jumpstart the process but that intrinsic motivation—interest, enjoyment, and challenge in the journey—is key to sustained, lasting weight loss. Intrinsic motivation encompasses competence, autonomy, and relatedness, so it’s helpful to 1) choose a diet that will be sustainable and effective 2) believe that the diet, start date, and end goals have been chosen autonomously and not “assigned” by others 3) find a community of supporters.

There are a few creative ideas to consider if motivation is a barrier to exercise. One is to widen the options you have: If you don’t have time to go to the gym, exercise by going for a walk, doing a bodyweight circuit, or watching a yoga video. Another is to make exercise more enjoyable, such as by listening to a book on tape. Yet another is to establish a social contract with a friend or family member. For example, if you allow phone time to supersede exercise, you must donate to a cause of the other person’s choosing.

Four steps can help cultivate the habit of saving money. The first is to set a specific saving goal for an emergency fund. This focused goal will build habits that become sustainable saving. The second is to save something every day, even if it’s just a few dollars, because repetition helps to form habits. Third, making savings visible, whether by checking a savings account online or keeping cash in a glass jar. Fourth, consistently spend less than you make—in addition to cultivating a saving mindset, it’s important to change a spending mindset.

Most people, unfortunately, fail to follow through on their New Year’s resolutions. This might be because people tend to set overwhelming goals, engage in all-or-nothing thinking, don’t anticipate obstacles, and beat themselves up when they get off track. By addressing those traps—such as by breaking large goals into smaller pieces or thinking of results as a range of positive outcomes rather than “success or failure”—people are more likely to truly achieve their goals.

Does your child persevere when faced with adversity or just give up? If the latter, maybe you should teach them to be gritty. Yes, grit can be learned.

Holding back and resisting are necessary aspects of restraint. Restraining involves wanting something, and also preventing yourself from getting it.

Discover how to reignite your teen's passion for learning with practical tips on engaging in school, making education meaningful, and setting them up for future success.

As the new season begins, people are off to college or the workplace. With multiple new friendship opportunities, navigating relationships can be a challenge.

Have you been dreading the return to work after your summer holidays? These three tips might help you regain your motivation.

Hope-in-action might just sway an election.

What drives us to act? Your body feels that you want to, and your mind thinks it knows how to get there. But first, you'd better double-check whether your goals fit your motives.

Anyone who believes that belittling or bullying is necessary for success knows little about sports performance and even less about human psychology.

Why do some musicians who achieve greatness in their careers experience a stoppage of creative output?

Amazing successes emerge from some people's efforts to be perfect, but for most of us, perfectionism can harm our relationships and our careers. Here's why.

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Intrinsic Motivation Explained: 10 Examples & Key Factors

“Perhaps no single phenomenon reflects the positive potential of human nature as much as intrinsic motivation, the inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise one’s capacities, to explore, and to learn” (Ryan & Deci, 2000, p. 3).

When we do something we love doing, we are like an engine that does not require any fuel. For some, that is running marathons; for others, it is solving math puzzles or graphic design.

The increasing knowledge and awareness about intrinsic motivation is also the reason why extrinsic motivators, such as financial incentives, have been perceived slightly less favorably in recent years.

But is intrinsic motivation truly as good as it is made out to be? Is it true that it is exclusively determined by birth, or can we shape it? And are extrinsic motivators as detrimental to our drive as they seem?

This article will provide some answers to these questions.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients create actionable goals and master techniques to create lasting behavior change.

This Article Contains:

What is intrinsic motivation, self-determination theory explained, intrinsic motivation vs extrinsic motivation, 4 relatable examples, 6 factors that promote intrinsic motivation, 15 benefits of intrinsic motivation, is it better than extrinsic motivation.

• A Look at the Research

PositivePsychology.com’s Helpful Resources

A take-home message.

Motivation is the force behind human performance. It can arise from physiological or psychological needs, thoughts, or emotions (Baumeister, 2016). Our physiological needs help us preserve optimal physical functioning, while psychological needs typically help us thrive.

The source of motivation can come from within ourselves (i.e., intrinsic) or be external to us (i.e., extrinsic).

The American Psychological Association defines intrinsic motivation as “an incentive to engage in a specific activity that derives from pleasure in the activity itself (e.g., a genuine interest in a subject studied) rather than because of any external benefits that might be obtained (e.g., money, course credits)” (Intrinsic motivation, n.d.).

So, we are intrinsically motivated when we do something just because we want to do it and because the act of doing it provides us with a feeling of pleasure, based on our natural interests, values, and passions.

Tasks that are intrinsically motivating are also referred to as ‘autotelic tasks’ (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Autotelic tasks have the potential to lift us into a state of flow , marked by deep engagement, energized focus, and a warped sense of time. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi recognized the significance of ‘flow’ and coined the term accordingly.

“The autotelic experience, or flow, lifts the course of life to a different level. Alienation gives way to involvement, enjoyment replaces boredom, helplessness turns into a feeling of control, and psychic energy works to reinforce the sense of self, instead of being lost in the service of external goals. When experience is intrinsically rewarding life is justified in the present, instead of being held hostage to a hypothetical future gain.”

Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, p. 69

Dan Pink has given this interesting TED talk about intrinsic motivation.

It is impossible to study intrinsic motivation without considering the research done by Richard Ryan and Edward Deci.

These researchers spent decades advancing our knowledge about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and developed what is possibly the most widely accepted motivational theory to date: Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

The theory is concerned with the “interplay between the extrinsic forces acting on persons and the intrinsic motives and needs inherent in human nature” (Center for Self-Determination Theory, n.d.).

At the core of the theory lies the innate motivation for people to grow, similar to the highest, self-actualization level in Maslow’s (1943) famous hierarchy of needs .

This motivation is determined by three essential, inborn, psychological human needs that motivate performance: autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Ryan & Deci, 2000).

• Autonomy refers to our willingness, volition, or perceived control over what we do. It involves how much say we have over when and how we do something, and how much we want to do something rather than have to do it.
• Competence pertains to how much our action aligns with our capabilities, such as our knowledge and skills. We need to feel capable of achieving the desired outcome. However, in order to achieve an optimal level of engagement, the activity must not be too easy, either.
• Relatedness is the level of feeling cared for and connected to others. It is the degree of meaning we derive from an activity, the sense of connectedness to others it brings us, and if it is aligned with a purpose bigger than ourselves. Relatedness is also sometimes referred to as ‘belonging.’ So, if you come across a source inviting you to develop an ‘ABC mindset’ for motivation, you’ll know it refers to the three components (autonomy, belongingness, and competence) of Self-Determination Theory.

Our motivation is highest if these three factors are met.

The Center for Self-Determination Theory is a great resource to browse research findings, books, videos, and more if you would like to find out more about the theory. You can also watch this short YouTube video explaining Self-Determination Theory.

Self-Determination Theory made another substantial contribution to our knowledge about motivation by defining a continuum that moves from externally to internally regulated motivation and, with that, a clearer picture of the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

While intrinsic motivation is based on internal incentives such as joy or interests, extrinsic motivation is an “external incentive to engage in a specific activity, especially motivation arising from the expectation of punishment or reward such as completing a disliked chore in exchange for payment” (Extrinsic motivation, n.d.).

External incentives can be praise, monetary payment, or other incentives. Realistically, individuals are typically driven by a combination of factors, some of which may be somewhat internally driven, while others are more externally regulated. The result can be described as different types of extrinsic motivation, depending on the degree of perceived autonomy.

Ryan and Deci (2000) have expressed this notion in the self-determination continuum shown in the figure below.

On the left of the continuum is where none of the three psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness are met. Hence, there is no motivation at all, also called ‘amotivation.’

Motivation that is completely externally regulated, such as through rewards, punishment, obedience, or modes of compliance is referred to as external motivation. Along the horizontal axis toward the right is an increasing degree of autonomy. If motivation is mostly externally driven but has some aspects of internal interests (e.g., pride), it is known as ‘introjected motivation.’

If we perceive value in the activity and personal importance, we may call it ‘identified motivation.’ One step away from intrinsic motivation is ‘integrated motivation,’ which occurs when the activity is completely internally motivated, such as through alignment with the concept of oneself.

Integrated motivation is still labeled as extrinsic motivation. Only if the integrated activity simultaneously provides pleasure and joy or aligns with our natural interests would we label it as intrinsically motivating.

1. External regulation

There were kids in my extracurricular music class who clearly didn’t want to be there.

The only reason they went is that mom and dad made them go. They had no choice, and they did not progress quickly either. The lack of progress did not bother them, as there was no pride or ego involvement with their attempts to learn an instrument.

2. Introjected regulation

Slightly more autonomously driven is someone who might go to an event even though they do not want to, simply because they confirmed their presence and canceling would make them feel guilty.

3. Identified regulation

If you have ever worked in a role that did not fulfill you, but you did it because earning money was important to you, your motivation could have been labeled as ‘identified.’

It’s probably fair to say that what drove you to get through it every day was more determined by yourself (i.e., internally) than someone else, yet you certainly did not enjoy it.

4. Integrated regulation

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The advantage of feeling intrinsically motivated to do something is obvious. So how can we increase intrinsic motivation  for a new behavior or habit we are hoping to cultivate?

Here are six factors you can address to do so.

1. Autonomy

In order to optimize your level of autonomy over the activity, identify opportunities to do it in a way that suits you best. For example, if you want to incorporate more physical activity into your daily habits, but you don’t enjoy running, is there a different way to exercise, such as cycling or dancing, that you feel more willing to do?

2. Competence

If activities are too easy or too difficult, they are not engaging and therefore less motivating. You can avoid this by identifying opportunities to adjust the level of difficulty of the target activity to match your own capability. Sticking to the example above, if you want to take up running, this might mean aiming for a challenging yet achievable distance rather than tackling a full marathon.

3. Relatedness

In order to increase your sense of relatedness or belonging, you have several options: you can pursue the target activity with someone else or even join a club or community. You can also identify opportunities to support others or serve your community in their pursuit to implement the same activity, such as by sharing your experiences with them.

4. Alignment with personal values

The phenomenon of integrated motivation shows the opportunity to harness internal motivation by aligning the activity with the concept of the self. You can do this by gaining clarity around your values and identifying how the activity fosters and supports them (Vansteenkiste et al., 2018).

5. Removal of factors impeding intrinsic motivation

Sometimes, the reason we do not feel driven toward an activity is not that we are not intrinsically motivated, but because there are other things that undermine our motivation (Fischer, Malycha, & Schafmann, 2019).

This can include too many other and potentially competing goals or unmet physical needs (e.g., imagine your motivation to go for a run after a sleepless night). In this instance, it helps to identify those impeding factors and remove them as best as you can.

6. Timing of extrinsic rewards

Time your extrinsic rewards. While in the past, external rewards have had the reputation of undermining intrinsic motivation, recent research has shown that more immediate rewards in fact increase intrinsic motivation by “creating a perceptual fusion between the activity and its goal” (Woolley & Fishbach, 2018, p. 877).

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Numerous studies have highlighted several benefits of intrinsic motivation. These include health behavior changes , leading to:

• Mental health benefits, such as less depression, somatization, and anxiety, and higher quality of life (Ryan, Patrick, Deci, & Williams, 2008)
• Physical health benefits, including smoking cessation, increased physical activity, weight loss, glycemic control, improved medication use, healthier dieting habits, and improved dental hygiene (Ryan et al., 2008)

Other studies have highlighted higher levels of performance (Cerasoli, Nicklin, & Ford, 2014), persistence (Grant, 2008), and higher employee satisfaction as well as improved turnover intentions (Cho & Perry, 2011).

Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are important for performance.

Extrinsic motivators, however, have been less intensely studied in the past. Nevertheless, a recent study highlights the synergistic effects of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators for performance (Fischer et al., 2019).

This workplace study showed that when highly intrinsically motivated workers had a high perceived likelihood of receiving relational rewards (i.e., those that satisfy emotional and intellectual demands), this had a compounding effect on creative and innovative outcomes (Fischer et al., 2019).

A substantial literature review and meta-analysis found that intrinsic motivation is a better predictor of quality of performance, while extrinsic motivation is a stronger predictor of the quantity of performance (Cerasoli et al., 2014).

A Look At The Research

If you are interested in looking at some of the research studies about intrinsic motivation, the following may interest you.

Cerasoli et al. (2014) published a literature review and meta-analysis about the ability of intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives to predict performance, taking into account research studies conducted over the last 40 years.

Their aim was to shed light on the perception that extrinsic rewards undermine intrinsic motivation (the so-called ‘undermining effect’). They included data from more than 200,000 participants from 183 independent samples in their review.

From their analysis, they drew three main conclusions:

• Intrinsic motivation and performance are positively correlated.
• The presence of extrinsic rewards does not undermine intrinsic motivation but, in fact, boosts it. This is particularly true when the rewards are directly performance salient (e.g., through sales commissions). However, intrinsic motivation is a medium-to-strong predictor of performance, regardless of incentives.
• Intrinsic motivation is a stronger predictor of quality of performance, whereas extrinsic rewards are a better predictor of the quantity of performance.

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If you enjoyed this article and would like to read more about intrinsic motivation and Self-Determination Theory, the following articles will be of interest to you:

• Measuring Intrinsic Motivation: Top 24 Questionnaires & Inventories
• Fostering Intrinsic Motivation in Students: 29 Tools & Tips for Your Classroom
• How to Increase Intrinsic Motivation: 20 Foolproof Methods & Strategies
• The Vital Importance and Benefits of Motivation
• Self-Motivation Explained + 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

If you are ready to take things a step further and want to help your clients maximize their motivation and achieve meaningful success, our Motivation & Goal Achievement Coaching Masterclass© will be a great resource for you. Across six evidence-based modules, you will learn everything there is to know about the topic, including coaching exercises and practical tools.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others reach their goals, this collection contains 17 validated motivation & goals-achievement tools for practitioners . Use them to help others turn their dreams into reality by applying the latest science-based behavioral change techniques.

Clearly, intrinsic motivation is a powerful force.

There are several ways you can foster it or help others do so, in order to support them to achieve their goals in a way that is inherently enjoyable.

Research has not yet identified a foolproof way to develop intrinsic motivation to live perfectly healthy lifestyles and maximize performance without ever falling prey to procrastination. However, if we continuously cultivate the factors fostering our drive, we have a pretty good chance at achieving our goals nonetheless.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free .

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• Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior . Plenum Press.
• Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-Determination Theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. The American Psychologist , 55 (1), 68–78.
• Ryan, R. M., Patrick, H., Deci, E. L., & Williams, G. C. (2008). Facilitating health behaviour change and its maintenance: Interventions based on Self-Determination Theory. The European Health Psychologist , 10 , 2–5.
• Vansteenkiste, M., Aelterman, N., De Muynck, G. J., Haerens, L., Patall, E., & Reeve, J. (2018). Fostering personal meaning and self-relevance: A Self-Determination Theory perspective on internalization. The Journal of Experimental Education , 86 (1), 30–49.
• Woolley, K., & Fishbach, A. (2018). It’s about time: Earlier rewards increase intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 114 (6), 877–890.

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How to Write the Rationale of the Study in Research (Examples)

What is the Rationale of the Study?

The rationale of the study is the justification for taking on a given study. It explains the reason the study was conducted or should be conducted. This means the study rationale should explain to the reader or examiner why the study is/was necessary. It is also sometimes called the “purpose” or “justification” of a study. While this is not difficult to grasp in itself, you might wonder how the rationale of the study is different from your research question or from the statement of the problem of your study, and how it fits into the rest of your thesis or research paper. 

The rationale of the study links the background of the study to your specific research question and justifies the need for the latter on the basis of the former. In brief, you first provide and discuss existing data on the topic, and then you tell the reader, based on the background evidence you just presented, where you identified gaps or issues and why you think it is important to address those. The problem statement, lastly, is the formulation of the specific research question you choose to investigate, following logically from your rationale, and the approach you are planning to use to do that.

Table of Contents:

How to write a rationale for a research paper , how do you justify the need for a research study.

• Study Rationale Example: Where Does It Go In Your Paper?

The basis for writing a research rationale is preliminary data or a clear description of an observation. If you are doing basic/theoretical research, then a literature review will help you identify gaps in current knowledge. In applied/practical research, you base your rationale on an existing issue with a certain process (e.g., vaccine proof registration) or practice (e.g., patient treatment) that is well documented and needs to be addressed. By presenting the reader with earlier evidence or observations, you can (and have to) convince them that you are not just repeating what other people have already done or said and that your ideas are not coming out of thin air. 

Once you have explained where you are coming from, you should justify the need for doing additional research–this is essentially the rationale of your study. Finally, when you have convinced the reader of the purpose of your work, you can end your introduction section with the statement of the problem of your research that contains clear aims and objectives and also briefly describes (and justifies) your methodological approach. 

When is the Rationale for Research Written?

The author can present the study rationale both before and after the research is conducted. 

• Before conducting research : The study rationale is a central component of the research proposal . It represents the plan of your work, constructed before the study is actually executed.
• Once research has been conducted : After the study is completed, the rationale is presented in a research article or  PhD dissertation  to explain why you focused on this specific research question. When writing the study rationale for this purpose, the author should link the rationale of the research to the aims and outcomes of the study.

What to Include in the Study Rationale

Although every study rationale is different and discusses different specific elements of a study’s method or approach, there are some elements that should be included to write a good rationale. Make sure to touch on the following:

• A summary of conclusions from your review of the relevant literature
• What is currently unknown (gaps in knowledge)
• Inconclusive or contested results  from previous studies on the same or similar topic
• The necessity to improve or build on previous research, such as to improve methodology or utilize newer techniques and/or technologies

There are different types of limitations that you can use to justify the need for your study. In applied/practical research, the justification for investigating something is always that an existing process/practice has a problem or is not satisfactory. Let’s say, for example, that people in a certain country/city/community commonly complain about hospital care on weekends (not enough staff, not enough attention, no decisions being made), but you looked into it and realized that nobody ever investigated whether these perceived problems are actually based on objective shortages/non-availabilities of care or whether the lower numbers of patients who are treated during weekends are commensurate with the provided services.

In this case, “lack of data” is your justification for digging deeper into the problem. Or, if it is obvious that there is a shortage of staff and provided services on weekends, you could decide to investigate which of the usual procedures are skipped during weekends as a result and what the negative consequences are. 

In basic/theoretical research, lack of knowledge is of course a common and accepted justification for additional research—but make sure that it is not your only motivation. “Nobody has ever done this” is only a convincing reason for a study if you explain to the reader why you think we should know more about this specific phenomenon. If there is earlier research but you think it has limitations, then those can usually be classified into “methodological”, “contextual”, and “conceptual” limitations. To identify such limitations, you can ask specific questions and let those questions guide you when you explain to the reader why your study was necessary:

Methodological limitations

• Did earlier studies try but failed to measure/identify a specific phenomenon?
• Was earlier research based on incorrect conceptualizations of variables?
• Were earlier studies based on questionable operationalizations of key concepts?
• Did earlier studies use questionable or inappropriate research designs?

Contextual limitations

• Have recent changes in the studied problem made previous studies irrelevant?
• Are you studying a new/particular context that previous findings do not apply to?

Conceptual limitations

• Do previous findings only make sense within a specific framework or ideology?

Study Rationale Examples

Let’s look at an example from one of our earlier articles on the statement of the problem to clarify how your rationale fits into your introduction section. This is a very short introduction for a practical research study on the challenges of online learning. Your introduction might be much longer (especially the context/background section), and this example does not contain any sources (which you will have to provide for all claims you make and all earlier studies you cite)—but please pay attention to how the background presentation , rationale, and problem statement blend into each other in a logical way so that the reader can follow and has no reason to question your motivation or the foundation of your research.

Background presentation

Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, most educational institutions around the world have transitioned to a fully online study model, at least during peak times of infections and social distancing measures. This transition has not been easy and even two years into the pandemic, problems with online teaching and studying persist (reference needed) . 

While the increasing gap between those with access to technology and equipment and those without access has been determined to be one of the main challenges (reference needed) , others claim that online learning offers more opportunities for many students by breaking down barriers of location and distance (reference needed) .  

Rationale of the study

Since teachers and students cannot wait for circumstances to go back to normal, the measures that schools and universities have implemented during the last two years, their advantages and disadvantages, and the impact of those measures on students’ progress, satisfaction, and well-being need to be understood so that improvements can be made and demographics that have been left behind can receive the support they need as soon as possible.

Statement of the problem

To identify what changes in the learning environment were considered the most challenging and how those changes relate to a variety of student outcome measures, we conducted surveys and interviews among teachers and students at ten institutions of higher education in four different major cities, two in the US (New York and Chicago), one in South Korea (Seoul), and one in the UK (London). Responses were analyzed with a focus on different student demographics and how they might have been affected differently by the current situation.

How long is a study rationale?

In a research article bound for journal publication, your rationale should not be longer than a few sentences (no longer than one brief paragraph). A  dissertation or thesis  usually allows for a longer description; depending on the length and nature of your document, this could be up to a couple of paragraphs in length. A completely novel or unconventional approach might warrant a longer and more detailed justification than an approach that slightly deviates from well-established methods and approaches.

Consider Using Professional Academic Editing Services

Now that you know how to write the rationale of the study for a research proposal or paper, you should make use of Wordvice AI’s free AI Grammar Checker , or receive professional academic proofreading services from Wordvice, including research paper editing services and manuscript editing services to polish your submitted research documents.

You can also find many more articles, for example on writing the other parts of your research paper , on choosing a title , or on making sure you understand and adhere to the author instructions before you submit to a journal, on the Wordvice academic resources pages.

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The Emerging Neuroscience of Intrinsic Motivation: A New Frontier in Self-Determination Research

Stefano i. di domenico.

1 Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University, Strathfield, NSW, Australia

Richard M. Ryan

2 Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA

Intrinsic motivation refers to people’s spontaneous tendencies to be curious and interested, to seek out challenges and to exercise and develop their skills and knowledge, even in the absence of operationally separable rewards. Over the past four decades, experimental and field research guided by self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan and Deci, 2017 ) has found intrinsic motivation to predict enhanced learning, performance, creativity, optimal development and psychological wellness. Only recently, however, have studies begun to examine the neurobiological substrates of intrinsic motivation. In the present article, we trace the history of intrinsic motivation research, compare and contrast intrinsic motivation to closely related topics (flow, curiosity, trait plasticity), link intrinsic motivation to key findings in the comparative affective neurosciences, and review burgeoning neuroscience research on intrinsic motivation. We review converging evidence suggesting that intrinsically motivated exploratory and mastery behaviors are phylogenetically ancient tendencies that are subserved by dopaminergic systems. Studies also suggest that intrinsic motivation is associated with patterns of activity across large-scale neural networks, namely, those that support salience detection, attentional control and self-referential cognition. We suggest novel research directions and offer recommendations for the application of neuroscience methods in the study of intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation refers to the spontaneous tendency “to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise one’s capacity, to explore, and to learn” (Ryan and Deci, 2000 , p.70). When intrinsically motivated, people engage in an activity because they find it interesting and inherently satisfying. By contrast, when extrinsically motivated, people engage in an activity to obtain some instrumentally separable consequence, such as the attainment of a reward, the avoidance of a punishment, or the achievement of some valued outcome. Early evidence for the distinction between these types of motivation came from experimental studies demonstrating that tangible rewards can undermine intrinsic motivation (Deci, 1971 ). That is, contrary to the ideas that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are additive or synergistically positive (e.g., Atkinson, 1964 ; Porter and Lawler, 1968 ), studies show that people experience less interest and exhibit less spontaneous engagement with activities for which they were initially intrinsically motivated after receiving tangible rewards for performing the activities (Deci et al., 1999 ).

Self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan and Deci, 2000 , 2017 ) has emerged as the principle framework for the study of intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is frequently assessed behaviorally in terms of freely pursued activities, and experientially through self-report questionnaires that probe the reasons for one’s engagement with activities, as well as specific affective states such as interest, curiosity and fun. Intrinsic motivation has also been assessed in the laboratory through the coding of specific exploratory and manipulatory behaviors and facial displays of interested engagement (Reeve and Nix, 1997 ). Since the earliest demonstrations of the undermining effect, many experimental and field studies have found intrinsic motivation to be associated with enhanced learning, performance, creativity, and affective experience. Further, a large body of research within SDT has examined the situational factors (e.g., types of rewards, feedback, communication styles) that undermine or facilitate the expression of intrinsic motivation (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). These studies have made it clear that although intrinsic motivation is a lifelong psychological growth function, by no means is its expression automatic; rather, intrinsic motivation depends on ambient supports for basic psychological needs, especially those for competence (feeling effective) and autonomy (feeling volitional).

Despite being a longstanding topic within the field of motivation, only recently have researchers begun to use neuroscience methods to examine intrinsic motivational processes (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ). The use of neuroscience methods is an important new frontier for intrinsic motivation research for at least three interrelated reasons. First, to state the obvious, experience and behavior are mediated by the brain and a complete account of intrinsic motivation therefore requires an understanding of the neural systems that support it. Second, neuroscience affords the examination of internal processes that are not accessible by self-reports of experience or behavioral observations. A neuroscience of intrinsic motivation therefore promises new insights that introspective and behavioral methods alone cannot afford. Finally, neuroscience methods can be used to investigate motivational processes at a higher level of resolution than experiential and behavioral methods. Neuroscience methods therefore have the potential to refine conceptual accounts of intrinsic motivation by articulating the granular processes that comprise it. In a relevant discussion, Ochsner ( 2007 ; p.51) stated that, “The combination of multiple streams of data allows researchers to converge on theoretical explanations that are robust and flexible and are not tied to a single specific experimental methodology”. Intrinsic motivation would seem to be an especially ripe topic for neuroscience precisely because of the large body of empirical data that has already been garnered at the experiential and behavioral levels of analysis.

Our purpose of this review article is to survey the progress of neuroscience research on intrinsic motivation. Because intrinsic motivation is not a uniquely human capacity (Harlow, 1953 ; Wilson, 2000 ; Ryan and Deci, 2017 ) we review conceptual developments in the comparative affective neurosciences (Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ) that inform the concept of intrinsic motivation. Such considerations are essential for appreciating intrinsic motivation as a basic organismic capacity and for helping to clarify its unique components in humans (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ). Building upon these insights, we map the phenomenology of intrinsic motivation onto the neural substrates of motivational processes that are encompassed by intrinsic motivation. Against the backdrop of these preliminary ideas, we then review recent studies that have examined the neural correlates of intrinsic motivation. To anticipate our main conclusions, affective neuroscience suggests that human intrinsic motivation is based in ancient mammalian systems that govern exploration and play. Neuroimaging studies, which have up to now focused on curiosity and mastery tendencies, indicate that intrinsically motivated states are subserved by neural regions that are central to dopamine systems. These studies also hint at the possible role of dynamic switching between large-scale brain networks involved in salience detection, attentional control and self-referential cognition. On the basis of these ideas, we suggest novel research directions and offer recommendations for the application of neuroscience methods in the study of intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic Motivation: An Organismic Growth Process

Long before Deci’s ( 1971 ) experiments concerning intrinsic motivation in humans and its undermining by rewards, Harlow ( 1950 ) documented this effect in rhesus monkeys. He coined the term intrinsic motivation to describe his observation that these primates would persist in playing with mechanical puzzles even in the absence of external rewards. Indeed, he observed that the introduction of rewards for playing led these primates to decrease their spontaneous manipulative explorations, relative to those not exposed to external rewards. These and related observations of spontaneous exploratory and play behaviors defied some behaviorist views that intentional behaviors are invariably controlled by reinforcement contingencies within the environment (e.g., Skinner, 1953 ).

Early work with both primates and rats also exposed some limitations of empirical drive theory (Hull, 1943 ), which asserted that motivated behaviors aim to reduce internal drives that stem from physiological need deficits. Because intrinsic motivation often ensues in the absence and, on occasion, independent of such deprivations, it was poorly explained by traditional drive reduction accounts (White, 1959 ). Early attempts to amend drive theory led researchers to postulate the existence of various exploratory drives as the basis for seemingly spontaneous curiosity, exploratory and manipulatory behaviors (e.g., Butler, 1953 ; Harlow, 1953 ; Montgomery, 1954 ; Myers and Miller, 1954 ). Apart from its lack of parsimony, this “drive-naming” approach could not be reconciled with the observations that exploratory activities do not resemble consummatory responses and that animals often behave to increase rather than decrease such exploratory drives (White, 1959 ; Deci and Ryan, 1985 ). As we shall see, these points are respectively echoed in the contemporary research on the role of dopamine in motivation, particularly by Berridge ( 2007 ) distinction between incentive “wanting” and consummatory “liking” and by Panksepp’s ( 1998 ) work on the mammalian SEEKING system.

Variants of psychodynamic drive theory (Freud, 1927/1960 ) proved similarly inadequate. For example, Fenichel ( 1945 ) proposed that exploratory and mastery behaviors are driven by the desire to reduce anxiety in the face of novel stimuli. A revision of this hypothesis may be approximated from the perspective of Gray and McNaughton’s ( 2000 ) septo-hippocampal theory of anxiety. An extensive program of research has established that novel stimuli—on an a priori basis—represent potential sources of both punishment and reward, elicit tendencies for both avoidance and approach, and therefore often arouse anxious uncertainty and prompt cautious investigatory behaviors. The investigatory behaviors instigated by the septo-hippocampal system include risk assessment and scanning the environment and one’s memory to resolve the motivational conflict, that is, to compute whether approach or avoidance should predominate.

Intrinsically motivated curiosity, exploration and mastery behaviors, however, pertain to specific types of novel stimuli, namely, those that present optimal challenges or optimal inconsistencies with one’s extant knowledge and that accordingly energize tendencies to approach (White, 1959 ; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990 ; Loewenstein, 1994 ; Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). Consistent with the work of Gray and McNaughton ( 2000 ) intrinsic motivation researchers have long noted that whereas too much novelty relative to a person’s skill and knowledge produces anxiety, too little novelty produces to boredom. During intrinsic motivation, feelings of interest and positive excitement predominate over both anxiety and boredom. Indeed, such exploratory states entail searching for novelties and challenges and, moreover, acting on the world to elicit novelties and to discover new problems (Harlow, 1953 ; White, 1959 ; Deci and Ryan, 1985 ). These observations indicate that intrinsically motivated exploratory and mastery behaviors are primarily energized by interest and appetitive mastery tendencies, not anxiety reduction.

Given the shortcomings of operant behaviorism and drive theory in regards to intrinsic motivation, White ( 1959 ) proposed effectance motivation as a general behavioral and developmental propensity of many organisms. Seemingly prescient of later developments in the affective neurosciences (e.g., Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ), White ( 1959 ) argued that effectance motivation is inherent to the activity of the central nervous system and described it as “what the neuromuscular system wants to do when it is otherwise unoccupied (e.g., by strong homeostatic drives) or is gently stimulated by the environment” (p.321). According to White ( 1959 ), the satisfactions associated with the effectance motive are not tied to consummatory activities, but are instead intrinsic to the arousal and maintenance of the activities that stem from it. Along similar lines, DeCharms ( 1968 ) proposed that intrinsic motivation is based in people’s “primary propensity” to experience themselves as causal agents, that is, to experience their own actions as having an internal perceived locus of causality . DeCharms’s ( 1968 ) insightful theorizing helped set the stage for the earliest experiments on the undermining effect as it suggested that external enticements and pressures that detract one from experiencing oneself as the center of initiation of their own behaviors—that undermine autonomy—can diminish intrinsic motivation (Deci and Ryan, 1985 ).

By the mid-1980s, numerous studies had examined the effects of various situational factors on the expression of intrinsic motivation (Deci and Ryan, 1985 ). This research indicated that events like the provision of positive feedback (e.g., Fisher, 1978 ; Boggiano and Ruble, 1979 ; Ryan, 1982 ) and choice (e.g., Zuckerman et al., 1978 ) enhanced intrinsic motivation and that negative feedback (e.g., Deci and Cascio, 1972 ; Vallerand and Reid, 1984 ), deadlines (e.g., Amabile et al., 1976 ), and other external impositions (e.g., surveillance; Lepper and Greene, 1975 ) generally diminished intrinsic motivation. To account for the diversity of findings from these and other studies, Deci and Ryan ( 1985 ), drawing on the ideas of White ( 1959 ) and DeCharms ( 1968 ), proposed that intrinsic motivation is a lifelong psychological growth function that is based in the basic psychological needs for competence and autonomy. Competence refers to feelings of effectance, the sense of growing mastery in activities that are optimally challenging and that further develop one’s capacities. Autonomy refers to an experience of volition and integrity, the sense that one’s behavior is authentic and self-organized rather than internally conflicted and pressured or externally coerced. Within SDT, competence and autonomy are seen as essential elements in people’s active propensities to seek out challenges, to be curious and interested, and to develop and express their capacities: when these needs are supported, intrinsic motivation may ensue; when these needs are thwarted, intrinsic motivation is undermined (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ).

In terms of both evolution and development, intrinsic motivation confers many adaptive consequences for organisms (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). For example, intrinsic motivation exposes organisms to novel situations and therefore occasions the development of diverse skills and competencies to cope with uncertain future situations. Intrinsic motivations are particularly important for those species that have a protracted period of postnatal development and occupy complex habitats (Wilson, 2000 ). In this vein, Deci and Ryan ( 2000 , p.252) pointed out that:

If people did not experience satisfaction from learning for its own sake (but instead needed to be prompted by external reinforcements) they would be less likely to engage the domain-specific skills and capacities they inherited, to develop new potentialities for adaptive employment, or both … for instance, by aiding in the discovery of alternative food sources, mapping the complexities of game migrations, or taking interest in skills, rituals, and social rules transmitted by other group members.

Extending this evolutionary thinking, Ryan and Hawley ( 2016 ) reviewed empirical evidence that competence and autonomy satisfactions supply proximal supports for intrinsically motivated activities even when the adaptive consequences of such activities are not the phenomenal aims of the individuals enacting them.

At the level of personality functioning, intrinsic motivation provides the impetus for individuals to learn about particular subject areas and to differentiate their interests, fostering the development of personal identities that confer a sense of authenticity, meaning, and purpose (Deci and Ryan, 1985 ; Ryan and Deci, 2012 ). For example, meta-analyses and field studies point to intrinsic motivation as perhaps the most important form of motivation in school achievement (e.g., Taylor et al., 2014 ; Froiland and Worrell, 2016 ). In a related vein, Peterson ( 1999 ) argued that the dedicated and courageous pursuit of one’s interests optimizes personality development by incrementally exposing one to new ideas and challenges, thereby preventing ideological rigidity and fostering learning, growth, and meaning in life. Indeed, various scholars have proposed that intrinsically motivated self-examination plays a key role in the development of the highest human virtues, including wisdom (e.g., Habermas, 1972 ; Csikszentmihalyi and Rathmunde, 1990 ; Vervaeke and Ferraro, 2013 ).

Neuroethological Perspectives on Mammalian Exploration: A Starting Point for Conceptualizing Intrinsic Motivation in the Brain

We previously pointed out (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ) that the concept of intrinsically motivated exploration is consistent with the “affective neuroethological” perspective of Panksepp and colleagues (Panksepp, 1998 ; Ikemoto and Panksepp, 1999 ; Alcaro et al., 2007 ; Alcaro and Panksepp, 2011 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ). These researchers have argued that mammals are hardwired with a general-purpose SEEKING system that energizes many types of foraging and exploratory activities. Although the SEEKING system does service homeostatic imbalances and is responsible for energizing learned appetitive behaviors, it continuously operates to keep animals in a state of exploratory engagement with their environments. That is, the SEEKING system is believed to function as an objectless appetitive system—a “goad without a goal”—until the exploratory disposition it produces leads to the discovery and learning of useful regularities.

The SEEKING system is a spontaneous, unconditioned behavior generator that takes animals to places, actively and inquisitively, where associated learning mechanisms allow them to develop knowledge structures, to guide their foremost evolutionary action tools (inbuilt emotional systems) to create more structures—more higher mental processes—which facilitate survival (Panksepp and Biven, 2012 , p.135).

It is worth pointing out that even within radical behaviorism this inherent activity of organisms could not be fully ignored, though it was marginalized by Skinner’s concept of “the operant”. Skinner acknowledged that organisms do “operate” on their environments, but regarded such exploratory activities as random behaviors that come under the control of external reinforcement.

The core structures that comprise the SEEKING system in the rat are the ventral tegmental area (VTA), the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), and the dopaminergic projections originating from the VTA that innervate these areas (Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ). These regions are frequently called the “brain reward network” because, as Olds and Milner ( 1954 ) discovered, rats will learn to instrumentally obtain electrical stimulations in this area. However, the invigorated searching and sniffing following such electrical stimulations look like states of invigorated curious exploration rather than states of calm satiation (see White, 1959 ): “The most dramatic observation…is that animals getting this kind of brain stimulation frantically explore their environments, taking notice of all the new stimuli they encounter” (Panksepp and Biven, 2012 , p.126). These basic SEEKING urges are elaborated into more complex forms of exploration in behaviorally and cognitively sophisticated animals: our dexterity affords the manipulation and exploration of complex objects and our cognitive faculties afford interest in ideas, abstract objects and possibilities that we can explore and manipulate with our minds. The SEEKING system is thus believed to energize “many mental complexities that humans experience as persistent feelings of interest, curiosity, sensation seeking and, in the presence of a sufficiently complex cortex, the search for higher meaning” (Panksepp, 1998 , p.145).

The first experimental studies on intrinsic motivation were conducted on nonhuman animals (Harlow, 1950 ) and it is therefore fitting that the first insights on the neurobiology of intrinsic motivation have been derived in animal research. Although generalizations based on animal research must be made with caution, affective neuroscience suggests that human intrinsic motivation is an elaboration of ancient mammalian motivations for exploratory SEEKING. The affective neuroethological point of view from which this system is conceptualized dovetails the organismic perspective from which SDT developed (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). It is remarkable and telling that independent lines of research stemming from such methodologically diverse traditions should converge on similar points of view.

Related Perspectives on Intrinsic Motivation

Aspects of intrinsic motivation have also been examined from perspectives other than SDT. Because some of the empirical studies that we review in upcoming sections are based on these related topics, we briefly summarize these perspectives here to note similarities and differences with SDT. We also briefly review topics that bear important conceptual relations to intrinsic motivation and note the utility of these for helping to inform the emerging neuroscience of intrinsic motivation.

The close relation between SDT’s concept of intrinsic motivation and Csikszentmihalyi ( 1990 ) concept of flow has been noted for a long time (Deci and Ryan, 1985 , 2000 ). Flow refers to experiential states of total absorption, optimal challenge, and non-self-conscious enjoyment of an activity. Like intrinsic motivation, when people experience flow, the satisfactions they experience are inherent to the activity itself and their behavior is “autotelic” ( auto = self, telos = goal) or performed for its own sake. Like SDT, flow theory emphasizes the phenomenology of intrinsic motivation. Flow theory is particularly articulate in its description of the optimal challenges and ensuing competence satisfactions associated with intrinsic motivation. For example, Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi ( 2014 ; p.90) describe the flow state as the subjective experience of engaging “just-manageable challenges by tackling a series of goals, continuously processing feedback about progress, and adjusting action based on this feedback”. However, apart from recognizing the autotelic (i.e., intrinsically motivating) aspects of flow activities, flow theory does not formally recognize autonomy as an essential component of flow (Deci and Ryan, 2000 ).

Loewenstein ( 1994 ) proposed an “information-gap” hypothesis of curiosity according to which curiosity arises when people experience a discrepancy between what they know and what they want to know. Although this knowledge discrepancy is supposedly experienced as aversive, satisfying curiosity is pleasurable and people therefore voluntarily seek to elicit curiosity. There are some obvious links between SDT and Loewenstein’s ( 1994 ) information-gap hypothesis of curiosity. First, feelings of curiosity are regularly referenced in descriptions of intrinsic motivation within SDT and Loewenstein ( 1994 ; p.87) correspondingly described curiosity as “an intrinsically motivated desire for specific information”. Second, both intrinsic motivation and curiosity seeking are processes that describe types of self-directed learning. Finally, although Lowenstein’s theory does not formally include the concept of autonomy, his notion of what constitutes an “information-gap” is well-aligned with SDT’s notion of competence. Specifically, one way to conceptualize information-gaps in knowledge is in terms of optimal incongruities between one’s extant knowledge structures and the unknown (Deci and Ryan, 1985 ). Intrinsically motivated activities, activities that are energized by the need for competence and that entail orienting toward novel stimuli and optimal challenges, can thus be seen as a process of continually seeking and reducing information-gaps in knowledge.

Perhaps the most notable divergence between SDT and Loewenstein’s account concerns his description of curiosity as a consummatory, drive-reduction process—i.e., the closure of information gaps. A close variant of this discrepancy between organismic and drive-theory accounts of intrinsic motivation was resolved in the earliest critiques of the drive-naming approach to intrinsically motivated exploration. Both White ( 1959 ) and Deci and Ryan ( 1985 ) pointed out that while curiosity for particular objects or places may satiate the tendency to explore those particular objects or areas, the tendency to explore itself is not satiated. Thus, SDT’s organismic account of intrinsic motivation and Loewenstein’s ( 1994 ) drive-reduction account of curiosity seeking can be reconciled by recognizing that curiosity is a more delimited phenomenon subsumed by intrinsically motivated exploration. Piaget ( 1971 ), in his organismic account of cognitive development, expressed a similar view. He proposed that cognitive-behavioral schemata possess inherent functions to assimilate new information and to elaborate pre-existing skills, inherent functions that can be productively described as being intrinsically motivated (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). Piaget ( 1971 ) thus saw curiosity as a continual process that “goes through various steps, in the sense that whenever one problem is solved, new problems are opened up. These are new avenues for curiosity” (Evans, 1973 , pp.68–69).

A concept related to intrinsic motivation has also emerged within the “Five-Factor” or “Big Five” model of personality research (John et al., 2008 ; McCrae and Costa, 2008 ). Specifically, DeYoung ( 2010 , 2013 ) has argued that the higher-order trait plasticity (i.e., the shared variance of extraversion and openness/intellect) represents stable interindividual differences in people’s exploratory tendencies. Apart from the obvious difference that intrinsic motivation refers to a motivational state , whereas plasticity refers to dispositional trait , these two phenomena have some notable features in common. Like intrinsic motivation, plasticity entails being “actively engaged with the possibilities of the environment, both generating and attending to novel aspects of experience” (DeYoung, 2010 , p.27, and although plastic exploration has not been formally described using the concept of autonomy, people high in plasticity are hypothesized to “desire exploration for its own sake (i.e., they treat it as a goal in itself) and engage in it even at times when exploration will not obviously further their goals” (DeYoung, 2013 , p.8). These conceptual links between plasticity and intrinsic motivation are important because recent years have seen a marked increase in the field’s understanding of the neurobiology of plasticity, most specifically, its association with dopamine (DeYoung, 2013 ). These insights inform some of the ideas in the current presentation.

Mapping Phenomenology to Brain Function: Toward a Neurobiological Model of Human of Intrinsic Motivation

The biggest challenge facing researchers who wish to examine the neural substrates of intrinsic motivation is the absence of an overarching neurobiological framework with which to derive and test specific hypotheses. Exploratory studies, though potentially useful for advancing research in novel directions when conducted with suitably large samples, typically afford lower statistical power and are therefore prone to both Type I errors (false positives) and Type II errors (false negatives). This limitation of exploratory research is especially problematic in neuroimaging studies that do not specify a priori regions of interest and need to correct for multiple statistical tests when comparing neural activity across multiple brain regions (Allen and DeYoung, 2016 ). In the absence of a guiding theory, it is also difficult to design experimental paradigms that are optimally suited to examine specific components of intrinsic motivation.

Recognizing that even a preliminary neurobiological account of intrinsic motivation could facilitate theory-driven research and provide a useful vantage point for aligning the disparate empirical studies to date, we offer an initial iteration by mapping the phenomenology of intrinsic motivation to the neural substrates of motivational processes that are encompassed by intrinsic motivation. We organize these ideas in the form of summary propositions. Against the backdrop of these propositions, we review studies that have examined the neural correlates of intrinsic motivation.

Proposition I: Intrinsic Motivation is Supported by Dopaminergic Systems

Intrinsic motivation is a complex cognitive, affective, and behavioral phenomenon that is likely mediated by multiple neural structures and processes. For this reason, a useful point of entry for elucidating the neurobiology of intrinsic motivation is to consider the broad neurotransmitter systems that may underlie it.

Three lines of evidence suggest that dopamine is a key substrate of intrinsic motivation. First, as the review above suggests, intrinsic motivation in humans is an elaboration of the exploratory activities subserved by the mammalian SEEKING system, and dopamine is central to the neurochemistry of this system (Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ). Second, like intrinsic motivation, dopamine is associated with increased positive affect, cognitive flexibility, creativity (Ashby et al., 1999 ), behavioral persistence (Salamone and Correa, 2016 ), and exploration in the face of novelty (DeYoung, 2013 ). Importantly, the positively affective states associated with dopamine reflect energized appetitive “wanting” not consummatory “liking”, the hedonic effects of which are mediated by opioids (Berridge, 2007 ; Kringelbach and Berridge, 2016 ). Third, there is some evidence of a direct link between intrinsic motivation and dopamine. Using positron emission tomography, de Manzano et al. ( 2013 ) found that people who are disposed to experience intrinsically motivated flow states in their daily activities have greater dopamine D2-receptor availability in striatal regions, particularly the putamen. This finding suggests that people’s capacities for intrinsic motivation are associated with the number of targets within the striatum for dopamine to act upon. More recently, Gyurkovics et al. ( 2016 ) found that carriers of a genetic polymorphism that affects striatal D2-receptor availability were more prone to experience flow during study- and work-related activities. Altogether, it would thus seem reasonable to forward the initial working hypothesis that dopamine is a key substrate of intrinsic motivation.

Dopamine neurons originate in the midbrain and have two modes of activity, tonic and phasic (Grace, 1991 ). In the tonic mode, the neurons exhibit a steady baseline rate of firing in which dopamine is steadily released to target structures. This tonic activity promotes the normal functioning of relevant neural circuits (Schultz, 2007 ) and may reflect the general strength of animals’ exploratory SEEKING tendencies (Alcaro and Panksepp, 2011 ). In the phasic mode, dopamine neurons exhibit short bursts of activity or inactivity (above or below their baseline) in response to specific events, resulting in an increase or decrease of dopamine in target structures lasting several seconds. The phasic mode of dopamine transmission may “transiently activate SEEKING patterns in coincidence with specific cue- or context-dependent information, attributing to such information an incentive motivational, action-orienting effect” (Alcaro and Panksepp, 2011 , p.1810). Of course, the tonic and phasic modes of dopamine transmission likely interact in complex ways to regulate intrinsic motivation. For example, Alcaro et al. ( 2007 ) advanced the hypothesis that moderately high levels of tonic dopamine optimize the SEEKING behavior promoted by phasic dopamine release: when tonic levels of dopamine are too low, phasic signals lack the efficacy to promote exploration; but when tonic levels are too high, phasic signals lose their informational value and exploratory behavior patterns are uncoupled from relevant contextual stimuli. Given the nascent state of the field, however, questions about how the tonic and phasic modes of dopamine release interact to influence intrinsic motivation remain outside the scope of the present effort. We instead focus on making the less specific case for a general relation between dopamine and intrinsic motivation.

Bromberg-Martin et al. ( 2010 ) recently proposed a model of dopaminergic function that is based on the recognition of two types of dopamine neurons that exhibit distinct types of phasic activity: value-coding neurons and salience-coding neurons. We review the properties of these neurons and their relevance to intrinsic motivation below.

Value-coding neurons are phasically excited by unexpected rewarding events and inhibited by unexpected aversive events; events that are wholly expected elicit little or no response. Value-coding dopamine neurons are found in the ventromedial substantia nigra pars compacta (SN) and throughout the VTA. From these midbrain regions, these neurons project axons that innervate the NAcc shell, the dorsal striatum (caudate and putamen), and the VMPFC, where they send signals about the availability of rewards, evaluation of outcomes, and learning. The phasic signals emitted by value-coding neurons are classically recognized as “reward-prediction errors” within neobehaviorist theories and are believed to be an important mechanism through which animals learn about external reinforcement contingencies (Schultz, 2007 ).

However, Tricomi and DePasque ( 2016 ) recently argued that, even in the absence of external rewards, this dopaminergic pathway registers the endogenous signals of positive and negative feedback that are elicited during the performance of many activities. The types of activities that people find intrinsically motivating provide just-manageable challenges, clear proximal goals, and immediate feedback (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2014 ; Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). For example:

As people work on crossword puzzles, they get feedback from the task itself (i.e., the letters fit), and they are likely to feel a sense of joy from making progress at puzzles that challenge them…No external feedback is required, and, surely, the task-inherent positive feedback is gratifying and helps sustain interest and persistence (Ryan and Deci, 2017 , p.154).

Another way of describing this optimally challenging nature of intrinsically motivated activities is to say that the positive and negative feedback that people receive during their performance of such activities is not entirely unexpected—a performative context that suggests phasic dopaminergic signaling. Following Tricomi and DePasque ( 2016 ), we therefore propose that a high rate of dopaminergic signaling within the value system is inherent to the performance of intrinsically motivating activities.

In addition to value-coding neurons, Bromberg-Martin et al. ( 2010 ) identified salience-coding neurons. These dopamine neurons are phasically excited by both unexpected rewarding and punishing events. These neurons are found in the dorsolateral SN and medial VTA, and project to the NAcc core, the dorsal striatum, and the dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC). The regions innervated by salience-coding neurons support the orienting of attention, cognitive processing, and the invigoration of actions. Dovetailing Loewenstein’s ( 1994 ) information-gap hypothesis of curiosity, DeYoung ( 2013 ) proposed that salience-related dopaminergic activity energizes exploration “in response to the incentive value of the possibility of gaining information—that is, it drives curiosity and the desire for information” (p.4). Curiosity and interest are of course long recognized components of intrinsic motivation. For example, the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (Ryan et al., 1983 ), a self-report measure of intrinsic motivation for experimental settings that is used to predict free choice behavioral persistence, includes items such as “I found the task very interesting” and “I thought the task was very boring (reverse scored)”. These items describe the type of eager attentiveness and behavioral engagement that may be associated dopaminergic salience signaling. Thus, building on DeYoung ( 2013 ), we propose that the salience-coding system also subserves intrinsic motivation.

Apart from the aforementioned studies by de Manzano et al. ( 2013 ) and Gyurkovics et al. ( 2016 ), empirical studies have not directly examined the link between dopamine and intrinsic motivation. However, if intrinsic motivation is associated with dopaminergic transmission, then intrinsically motivated activities should be associated with activation across core regions of the dopaminergic systems identified by Bromberg-Martin et al. ( 2010 ). In the paragraphs that follow, we focus on neuroimaging findings relating intrinsic motivation to activity within regions of the dopaminergic value system. Studies relating intrinsic motivation to activity within regions of the dopaminergic salience system are reviewed separately because such findings are also consistent with the complementary proposition that intrinsic motivation is associated with patterns of activity across specific large-scale neural networks.

Murayama et al. ( 2010 ) examined the neural correlates of the undermining effect using fMRI. University undergraduates were asked to play a game-like stopwatch task in which they were asked to press a button within 50 ms of the 5 s mark. In a series of pilot tests, the authors determined that students found this task challenging and interesting, and therefore suitable for examining intrinsic motivation. Like classic studies on the undermining effect (e.g., Deci, 1971 ), participants were divided in two groups: a reward group that received performance-contingent rewards for each successful trail and a control group that received no payments. During an initial scanning session, participants in both groups evidenced greater activity in the midbrain and caudate upon the receipt of success feedback relative to failure feedback. Subsequent to the experimental manipulation, and consistent with previous behavioral studies on the undermining effect, participants in the reward group were less likely to voluntarily engage with the task during a free-choice time period relative to those in the control group. Importantly, this behavioral undermining of intrinsic motivation was paralleled by reduced activity in the caudate and midbrain during a second scanning session when monetary rewards were no longer administered to the reward group. In contrast the unrewarded group maintained its previous levels of activation. This difference in activity between the control and experimental groups is consistent with the idea that the dopaminergic value system is responsive to cues that signal task-related progress during intrinsically motivated activities.

In a more recent fMRI study, Murayama et al. ( 2015 ) had participants perform an adapted version of the stopwatch task (Murayama et al., 2010 ) in two conditions: an autonomy condition in which they were free to choose the appearance of the stopwatch according to their preferences and a forced-choice condition in which they had to proceed with the stopwatch selected by the computer. Results indicated that activity within the VMPFC (bilateral gyrus rectus and medial orbitofrontal gyrus) was greater upon the receipt of success feedback than failure feedback. However, this effect was modulated by the type of the trial conditions. On the one hand, the VMPFC exhibited similarly high levels of activity across success and failure feedback after free-choice (autonomy) trials. On the other hand, this region exhibited marked reductions in activity after forced-choice trials. Importantly, this sustained activity within the VMPFC in response to failure feedback was associated with enhanced performance within the free-choice condition. Present evidence suggests that value coding dopamine neurons in the midbrain project to the VMPFC and that this structure is involved in learning from negative reward prediction errors and updating outcome expectations during learning (Bromberg-Martin et al., 2010 ). These results are thus consistent with the idea that intrinsic motivation, and the perceived autonomy that phenomenally supports it, is associated with activity within the dopaminergic value system.

Conceptually related to these fMRI studies is research examining intrinsic motivation using electroencephalography (EEG). Two specific EEG waveforms that have been associated with intrinsic motivation are the “error-related negativity” (ERN) and the “feedback-related negativity” (FRN). Both of these waveforms are negative-going deflections in EEG recordings that arise during speeded-response tasks. Whereas the ERN appears within 100 ms following the commission of errors, the FRN appears between 200 ms and 350 ms following the receipt of negative feedback. Holroyd and Coles ( 2002 ) proposed that both the ERN and FRN arise as a consequence of phasic reductions in midbrain dopaminergic signaling to ACC, the purported neural generator of these waveforms. These phasic reductions in dopamine transmission to the ACC, and the consequent ERN and FRN, are believed to constitute a learning signal that tunes the ACC to optimize behavioral performance, an account that parallels the reward-prediction signaling of value-coding dopamine neurons (Schultz, 2007 ; Bromberg-Martin et al., 2010 ).

In a sample of school children, Fisher et al. ( 2009 ) found that intrinsic academic motivation was associated with larger ERN amplitudes during a flanker task. In a study that paralleled the design of Murayama et al. ( 2010 ), Ma et al. ( 2014 ) found that participants who had received performance-contingent monetary rewards while performing a challenging activity evidenced reduced FRN amplitudes whereas those in a control group evidenced consistently pronounced FRNs. In another study, this time paralleling the design of Meng and Ma ( 2015 ) and Murayama et al. ( 2015 ) found that having the opportunity to exercise choice during the performance of an intrinsically motivating task was associated with larger FRN amplitudes. An important caveat to these studies is their small sample sizes ( N = 17, 36 and 18, respectively), which raises uncertainty about reliability of their reported effects. To this point, Jin et al. ( 2015 ; N = 16) found lower FRN amplitudes when participants received negative feedback on a supposedly interesting task relative to a boring task. In light of these small sample sizes and diversity of findings, it is clear that more decisive larger-sample studies are required. Nevertheless, the available evidence from these EEG studies is generally consistent with the idea that intrinsic motivation is associated with dopaminergic signaling.

Other evidence of a link between intrinsic motivation and the dopaminergic system comes from studies examining the neural correlates of curiosity. Kang et al. ( 2009 ; Study 1) used fMRI to examine curiosity as it is framed by the information-gap theory of Loewenstein ( 1994 ). We previously pointed out that the information-gaps in people’s knowledge structures, and the ensuing feelings of curiosity that such gaps elicit, can be productively framed in terms of people’s orienting toward optimal challenges. Participants reflected upon a series of trivia questions (e.g., What instrument was invented to sound like a human singing?) and rated their curiosity for each one. During the presentation of the trivia questions, items that elicited greater curiosity were associated with activations in the left caudate and parahippocampal gyri (PHG). Furthermore, when trivia answers were revealed following incorrect responses, participants’ level of curiosity was associated with greater activity in the midbrain and left PHG. Although Bromberg-Martin et al. ( 2010 ) did not identify the PHG as a core component of the dopamine system, Kang et al. ( 2009 ) point out that this region is involved in successful memory encoding and its activity during states of curiosity is therefore consistent with the idea that intrinsic motivation is associated with enhanced learning.

A follow-up study by Gruber et al. ( 2014 ) more directly assessed the relation between curiosity and learning. This study used trivia questions similar to Kang et al. ( 2009 ) to examine if states of curiosity improved memory for task-relevant information and for information that was incidental to the main task. Incidental information consisted of face stimuli that were presented to participants when they anticipated trivia answers. During the presentation of trivia questions, curiosity was associated with activity in the left SN/VTA, bilateral NAcc, and bilateral dorsal striatum. Furthermore, replicating the behavioral results of Kang et al. ( 2009 ; Study 2), in both immediate and delayed memory tests, participants recalled more answers for high- relative to low-curiosity questions. Extending these previous behavioral findings, Gruber et al. ( 2014 ) also found enhanced recall of incidental face stimuli presented during high-curiosity questions. These memory effects were associated with greater activity in the SN/VTA and the hippocampus during the presentation of trivia questions and increased functional connectivity between these regions when participants anticipated answers to the trivia questions.

Proposition II: Intrinsic Motivation Entails Dynamic Switching between Brain Networks for Salience Detection, Attentional Control and Self-Referential Cognition

A complementary approach to theorizing about the neural systems that support intrinsic motivation is to map its phenomenology with the activity of large-scale neural networks (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ). Research on structural and functional brain organization has revealed multiple large-scale brain networks that support various cognitive functions (Bressler and Menon, 2010 ). Among these is the so-called salience network , which is believed to support the detection of subjectively important events and the mobilization of attentional and working memory resources in the service of goal-directed behavior (Menon and Uddin, 2010 ; Menon, 2015 ). The salience network is anchored in the anterior insula (AI) and dorsal ACC and includes major subcortical nodes in the amygdala, NAcc, the SN, and VTA. These subcortical nodes are believed to send signals about the motivational significance of stimuli to the AI; the AI in turn is believed to integrate this information with incoming sensory inputs from both the external environment and the viscera for the bottom-up detection of contextually important events. Through its reciprocal connections with the dACC, a key structure for executive control, the AI is believed to selectively amplify neural signals of important events for the effective deployment of cognitive resources.

Little is presently known about the specific role of dopamine in the functioning of the salience network. However, AI does receive inputs from the amygdala, the likely source of the motivational salience signals sent to dopamine neurons in the midbrain, from the ventral striatum, which receives dopaminergic projections from the midbrain, and from the SN and the VTA, the midbrain regions from which dopamine neurons originate (Bromberg-Martin et al., 2010 ; Menon and Uddin, 2010 ; Menon, 2015 ). Additionally, the AI has reciprocal connections with the dACC, which likely receives direct input from both value- and salience-coding dopamine neurons (Bromberg-Martin et al., 2010 ). These connections imply that the AI may play a role in contextualizing the signals of motivational significance transmitted by both value- and salience-coding dopamine neurons. Most relevant in this regard is the suggestion that the AI functions as a dynamic hub for modulating the activity of two other large-scale brain networks (Menon and Uddin, 2010 ; Menon, 2015 ). The first, known as the default mode network , has major nodes in the MPFC and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). These regions show high levels of activity during passive resting states (Gusnard and Raichle, 2001 ), tasks involving internally-focused, self-referential cognition (Northoff et al., 2006 ), and mind-wandering (Mason et al., 2007 ). The second, known as the central executive network , includes the DLPFC and the posterior parietal cortex (PPC). The regions of this network, which are important substrates of working memory and executive functions, typically show elevated activity during cognitively demanding, externally-focused tasks. Importantly, activity across the default mode and central executive networks often fluctuates in an antagonistic manner, such that activity in one is often accompanied by suppressed activity in the other.

The antagonistic dynamic between the default mode and central executive networks, along with the role of the salience-mediating switching instigated by the AI, may inform three characteristics of intrinsic motivation. First, in its most experientially abundant state, intrinsic motivation entails cognitive absorption and non-self-conscious enjoyment of an activity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990 ; Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2014 ). This phenomenology suggests diminished activity within regions of the default mode network, which are commonly activated during self-focused mental activity (e.g., self-reflection, rumination) and mind-wandering, and heightened activity within the central executive network, which is engaged during bouts of externally focused attention. Second, intrinsic motivation is reliably associated with enhanced performance, cognitive flexibility, and deeper conceptual learning (e.g., Grolnick and Ryan, 1987 ). This relation between intrinsic motivation and enhanced task performance is consistent with, and may be partly explained by, greater mobilization of the central executive network during intrinsically motivating tasks (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ). Third, classic perspectives that describe autonomy or authenticity as a state of “organismic congruence” (e.g., Rogers, 1961 ) characterize it as an embodied cognitive process whereby sensory and visceral information is permitted to access and direct one’s attention, in a bottom-up manner, to events of subjective importance and meaning (also see Peterson, 1999 ). The salience network, and the AI most specifically, with its receipt of sensory and visceral input and its interoceptive functions (Craig, 2009 ; Menon and Uddin, 2010 ; Menon, 2015 ), would seem well-suited to support this aspect of autonomy, especially during intrinsic motivation when people orient themselves to stimuli that spontaneously grip their attention and interest.

Neuroimaging studies have reported patterns of neural activity consistent with the idea that intrinsic motivation recruits the salience and central executive networks, while suppressing the default mode network. In the aforementioned study by Murayama et al. ( 2010 ), the undermining of intrinsic motivation was associated with decreases in lateral PFC activity in response to task onset cues. The study by Murayama et al. ( 2015 ) found increased activity within the midbrain, ACC, and bilateral insula in response to free-choice (autonomy) cues relative to forced-choice cues at the onset of task trials. The curiosity studies by Kang et al. ( 2009 ) and Gruber et al. ( 2014 ) found greater activity within the lateral PFC during curiosity-inducing questions. More recently, Marsden et al. ( 2015 ) observed neural activations within several structures that comprise the SN. Specifically, their study found participants who spent more free-choice time solving remote-associate word problems (i.e., a behavioral marker of intrinsic motivation) showed greater activity in the ACC, amygdala, anterior and posterior insula, PHG, and caudate nucleus after trial onsets that immediately followed negative feedback for preceding trials. Jepma et al. ( 2012 ) examined the neural correlates of perceptual curiosity. Participants viewed blurry images of otherwise easily recognizable objects that induced feelings of curiosity, and were subsequently shown clear images of the objects to satisfy their curiosity. Results indicated that induction of curiosity was associated with significant activations within the AI and ACC, the core regions of the salience network, and significant deactivations within regions associated with the default mode network. Additionally, this study found that the resolution of perceptual curiosity was associated with activity within the left caudate, putamen, and NAcc, regions that comprise the core of the dopaminergic system.

A set of studies (Lee et al., 2012 ; Lee and Reeve, 2013 ) examined the neural correlates of intrinsic motivation by comparing patterns of neural activity when undergraduate students imagined themselves performing intrinsically motivating activities (e.g., “writing an enjoyable article”) and extrinsically motivating activities (e.g., “writing an extra-credit article”). Most prominently, these studies found preferential activity within insular regions when participants imagined the enactment of intrinsically motivating activities. Building on this initial work, Lee ( 2016 ) more recently described the results of an fMRI study that examined functional connectivity between striatal regions and the AI when participants attempted trivia questions and anagrams. Results indicated that when participants worked on intrinsically motivating problems (curiosity inducing-questions and competence-enabling anagrams) they evidenced greater activity and functional connectivity between these regions.

Klasen et al. ( 2012 ) examined the neural correlates of flow using fMRI recordings obtained during free play of a video game. The authors developed an objective coding system for examining different components of the flow experience based on player-generated video game contents. Consistent with the idea that intrinsic motivation is associated with dopaminergic signaling, optimal challenge was associated greater activity within the caudate, putamen, and NAcc. Consistent with the idea that intrinsic motivation is associated with suppressed activity in default mode regions, concentrated focus and goal clarity were associated with reduced activity within the orbitofrontal cortex and ACC. Additionally, task-related failure was associated with increased activity within the cuneus, a structure included within the default mode network.

In another fMRI study, Ulrich et al. ( 2014 ) examined the neural correlates of flow by asking participants to work on mental arithmetic task and comparing experimentally challenging levels with boredom and overload conditions. Results indicated that flow states were associated with increased activity in the left putamen and left IFG, again implicating core regions of both the dopaminergic system and the central executive network. Results also indicated that flow was associated with deactivations within the MPFC, suggesting suppressed default mode network activity. In another study, Yoshida et al. ( 2014 ) used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine the time course of neural activations within the prefrontal cortex during states of flow and boredom when participants played Tetris ® . Again, consistent with the idea that intrinsically motivated states recruit central executive regions, results indicated increasing bilateral activity within lateral PFC regions during flow. However, a subsequent fNIRS study by Harmat et al. ( 2015 ) that compared prefrontal activity across easy, optimally challenging, and difficult levels of Tetris did not any differences. Despite these mixed findings, the results of existing studies altogether suggest that future research would benefit by explicitly testing the proposition that intrinsic motivation is associated with patterns of activity across the salience, central executive, and default mode networks.

Recent years have witnessed an emerging interest in the neurobiological systems that support intrinsic motivational processes. Although this area of inquiry is young, conceptual and empirical evidence points to the role of dopaminergic systems in supporting intrinsically motivated behaviors. Across different mammalian species, there appear to be linkages between dopamine and the positive experiences associated with exploration, new learning and interest in one’s environment (Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ). Building on Bromberg-Martin et al.’s ( 2010 ) distinction between dopaminergic value- and salience-coding and on previous work respectively mapping these systems onto the phenomenology of competence (Tricomi and DePasque, 2016 ) and interest (DeYoung, 2013 ), we propose that intrinsic motivation entails both types dopaminergic transmission. Because these dopamine systems entail distinct neural structures, future neuroimaging studies have a strong conceptual basis for specifying distinct a priori regions of interest. Beyond that, evidence suggests that intrinsic motivation involves alterations between the neural networks of salience detection, attentional control, and self-referential cognition (Menon and Uddin, 2010 ; Menon, 2015 ). Better understanding of these large-scale neural dynamics may provide greater resolution of the processes that support high quality learning and performance.

Despite the clear conceptual relationship between intrinsic motivation and dopaminergic transmission, only two existing studies provide direct evidence of an association between these two processes (de Manzano et al., 2013 ; Gyurkovics et al., 2016 ). The bulk of existing research provides indirect support to the hypothesis that dopamine is a substrate of intrinsic motivation in that the core regions innervated by dopamine neurons are activated during intrinsic motivation. Pharmacological manipulations of dopamine thus represent an important new research direction. Indeed, such manipulations have already been fruitfully applied in the study of dispositional traits (e.g., Wacker and Smillie, 2015 ) and their application in the study of motivational states would seem a natural extension. Pharmacological manipulations of dopamine may, for example, allow researchers to more precisely decode the neural mechanisms that mediate the undermining effect of externally contingent rewards on intrinsic motivation.

The link between dopaminergic systems and intrinsic motivation may also prove useful for developmental roboticists for whom the topic of intrinsic motivation has recently fallen into purview (e.g., Gottlieb et al., 2013 , 2016 ). The stated goal of developmental robotics is to design embodied agents that self-organize their development by constructing sensorimotor, cognitive, and social skills over the course of their interactions with the environment. Roboticists have proposed that in order for embodied agents to be capable of intrinsic motivation, they must not only be outfitted with computational systems that orient them toward novel, surprising, or uncertain stimuli, but also with meta-monitoring processes that track their learning progress in their investigation of such stimuli (Gottlieb et al., 2013 , 2016 ). Without meta-monitoring processes that track learning, agents will likely get trapped investigating stimuli that are random or otherwise unlearnable, precluding the possibility for self-directed development. The existence of salience- and value-coding dopaminergic systems, respectively capable of tracking novelty and rewarding feedback, may partially represent an organic instantiation of the type of computational system that Gottlieb et al. ( 2013 , 2016 ) hypothesize to be a requirement for intrinsic motivation. We believe that roboticists are well-positioned to discover the types of computational problems that need to be solved for a full understanding of the neural substrates of intrinsic motivation. We thus hope that some of the present ideas will help to spur robotics research on intrinsic motivation.

Future studies are also needed to directly test the hypothesis that intrinsically motivated states entail dynamic switching between the salience, central executive and default mode networks. Beyond traditional fMRI analyses comparing activity in a priori regions across intrinsically and non-intrinsically motivated states, this hypothesis specifically encourages the use of connectivity analyses and the adoption of chronometric techniques that can provide information about the dynamics and directionality of activity across large-scale networks (e.g., Sridharan et al., 2008 ). This research direction may help to not only elucidate the neural basis of intrinsic motivation but also to identify the neural mechanisms through which intrinsic motivation enhances learning and performance outcomes, especially on tasks that require depth of processing and high-quality engagement.

Beyond Exploration, Curiosity and Mastery: Intrinsically Motivated Social Play

SDT uses intrinsic motivation as a broad term for diversity of activities that are inherently rewarding and growth promoting (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). This is a large class of behaviors, minimally including curious exploration and mastery tendencies, on the one hand, and social play, on the other (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ). To date, human neuroscience studies have focused on intrinsic motivation associated with curious exploration and mastery, rather than social play, and we accordingly based our review on this subset of intrinsically motivated behaviors. Yet, comparative affective neuroscience suggests that exploration and social play have both distinct and overlapping neurobiological and phenomenological underpinnings, the former being subserved by the SEEKING system and the latter by the PLAY system (Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ). The subcortical PLAY system governs the rough-and-tumble (R&T) interactions of mammals, energizing them to develop and refine their physical, emotional, and social competencies in a safe context (Panksepp, 1998 ; Pellis and Pellis, 2007 ; Trezza et al., 2010 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ). In early mammalian development, R&T play constitutes a type of embodied social cognition that provides a basis for cooperation and the adaptive self-regulation of aggression (Peterson and Flanders, 2005 ). Humans are of course also capable of more sophisticated forms of play beyond R&T such as common playground games, sports play and friendly humor, but such human play may be nonetheless organized around basic PLAY motivations (Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ).

We might therefore regard play as intrinsically motivated socialization (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ), an expression of people’s complementary tendencies toward autonomy and sociality in development (Ryan, 1995 ; Ryan et al., 1997 ). Indeed, research in SDT suggests that in addition to competence and autonomy, people have a basic psychological need for relatedness , the sense of feeling meaningfully connected with others (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). Whereas strong associations between exploratory intrinsic motivations and satisfactions of competence and autonomy have been clearly demonstrated, relatedness is usually seen to play a more distal role in the expression of these intrinsic motivations. Specifically, relatedness satisfactions provide people (especially children) with a sense of safety, a secure base from which their exploratory tendencies can be more robustly expressed (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). Recognition of social PLAY signifies the centrality of the need for relatedness in some intrinsically motivated activities.

Interest in the overlaps and contrasts between intrinsically motivated exploration and play is thus an important agenda for future studies and both are relevant to intrinsic motivation as it is studied within SDT (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ). Behavioral models of human intrinsic motivation have generally conflated exploration and play because these activities share common features such as an internal perceived locus of causality and perceived competence or mastery. Indeed, functional distinctions between intrinsically motivated exploration and object or manipulative play are subtle and suggest that, for many activities recognized as “playful”, the conflation is appropriate and productive. For example, Wilson ( 2000 ) suggested that “In passing from exploration to play, the animal or child changes its emphasis from ‘What does this object do?’ to ‘What can I do with this object?”’ (p.165). In fact, intrinsically motivated object play, manipulative play, and solitary gaming likely arise from the activity of the SEEKING system (Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ). Clearly, more empirical work is needed to differentiate these types of intrinsic motivation in humans.

Methodological Suggestions

Our principal intent in this review article, is to stimulate increasing integration between social behavioral research on intrinsic motivation and the neuroscience of motivation. We see many new and promising pathways opening up. At the same time, methodological issues persist that warrant serious considerations. We list but a few of these.

First, intrinsic motivation and the associated undermining effect of rewards on these behaviors pertain only to tasks that are interesting and enjoyable in the first place. Thus, researchers should pilot test target activities to ensure that the activities are suitable for examining the undermining effect. This is especially important in neuroscience, where contemporary methods such as fMRI often involve procedures that limit how interesting experimental tasks can be. Researchers should also use multi-method assessments of intrinsic motivation to validate their measures and to ensure that the correct behavioral phenomena are being tapped. For example, in an attempted (and failed) replication and extension of Murayama et al.’s ( 2010 ) fMRI study on the undermining effect, Albrecht et al.’s ( 2014 ) utilized a picture-discrimination task for which participants may not have been intrinsically motivated in the first place (pilot testing was not reported) and for which free-choice behavior was not examined as a dependent variable. In the absence of these important design characteristics, it is difficult to draw decisive conclusions from their experiment. Incidentally, we note that Albrecht et al.’s ( 2014 ) study did show that competence feedback increased participants’ self-reported fun and that it was also associated with increased activations within the midbrain, striatum, and lateral PFC, findings that are consistent with the idea that competence is associated with dopamine-related activity.

Second, replicability is a central concern, as it is throughout the social and personality neurosciences (Allen and DeYoung, 2016 ). Most studies to date have been small-sample investigations, and larger samples are needed if we are to derive foundational conclusions. A priori hypotheses concerning regions of interest will also add confidence to the interpretation of findings. Toward that end, the present review ought to provide future studies with a useful reference for making clear predictions about the neural basis of intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation is a topic of interest within both basic behavioral science and applied translational studies and interventions (Ryan and Deci, 2000 , 2017 ). Yet important to the progress of empirical research on intrinsic motivation is integrating what is known from phenomenological and behavioral studies with neuroscience studies. As we suggested at the outset, neuroscience holds potential for testing existing models of the situational and social determinants of intrinsic motivation as well as for providing greater resolution on the affective and cognitive processes that underpin such activities. Movement toward consilience is a central concern to SDT and our hope is that the current synthesis provides some broad stoke encouragement for that agenda.

Author Contributions

SID conceptualized and wrote the manuscript. RMR assisted in conceptualizing and writing the manuscript.

SID was supported in this research by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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RCV Academy

Educating For Excellence! Making You Job Ready!

Research Motivation – Motivational factors for opting research

In this article, let us understand the research motivation or what are the key motivational factors for students who opt for research.

Research Motivation Reasons

The research motivation may be either due to one or more of the following reasons:

• The desire to get a research degree along with its significance.
• The desire to face challenges in solving the unsolved problems. For example, concern over practical problem initiates research.
• The desire to get the intellectual joy of doing some creative work.
• The desire to be finding solutions which service to society.
• The aspiration to get respectability.

However, this is not an exhaustive list of research motivation factors for people to undertake research studies.

Many more factors such as government directives, employment conditions, curiosity about new things, social thinking and awakening may as well motivate people to perform research operations.

Objectives of Research

The purpose of the research is to know the answers to questions through the application of scientific procedures.

The main aim is to find out the truth or to know the answer which has not be known yet.

Every research study has its own purpose, and research objectives can be classified into following broad groupings.

• To get familiar with a phenomenon or to achieve new insights into it (study with this object is termed as exploratory or formulative.
• To put accurately the characteristics of a particular individual, situation or a group (study with this object is known as descriptive research study).
• To determine the occurrence of which something happens or association with something else (study with this object is known as diagnostic research study).
• To test a hypothesis of a causal relationship between variables (the study is known as hypothesis-testing research studies).

Significance of Research

In the context of Hudson Maxim. Progress is possible with increased amounts of research.

Research instructs scientific and inductive thinking, and it promotes the development of logical habits of thinking and organization.

The increasingly sophisticated nature of business and government has focused their attention on the use of research in solving operational problems.

Nowadays, our economic system highly relies on the research to formulate the government policies.

For example, the budget of any country requires the analysis of people’s needs with expected expenditure required to meet those needs. In such conditions, research is heavily required to equate the cost of probable revenues to cover the cost of meeting people’s needs.

Research Process – Importance of knowing the process

Research methodology gives a student the necessary training in gathering material and arranging that information.

It also helps a student for participation in the field work whenever required.

It also trains in techniques for the collection of data which is appropriate to particular problems,

The research process also helps in the course of using statistics, questionnaires, controlled experimentation, recording evidence, sorting it out and interpreting it.

Importance of knowing the research methodology or how research is carried stems from the following considerations:

• The knowledge of methodology provides proper training especially to the new research worker and enables him to do better research.
• The methodology also helps the researcher to develop disciplined thinking or to observe the field objectively.
• Knowledge of how to do research will instruct the ability to estimate and use research results with reasonable confidence.
• Research methodology knowledge enables the consumers of research results to evaluate them and make rational decisions.

Motivation Research

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Motivational Research

Motivational research is a type of marketing research that attempts to explain why consumers behave as they do.

Motivational research seeks to discover and comprehend what consumers do not fully understand about themselves. Implicitly, motivational research assumes the existence of underlying or unconscious motives that influence consumer behavior. Motivational research attempts to identify forces and influences that consumers may not be aware of (e.g., cultural factors, sociological forces). Typically, these unconscious motives (or beyond-awareness reasons) are intertwined with and complicated by conscious motives, cultural biases, economic variables, and fashion trends (broadly defined). Motivational research attempts to sift through all of these influences and factors to unravel the mystery of consumer behavior as it relates to a specific product or service, so that the marketer better understands the target audience and how to influence that audience.

Motivational research is most valuable when powerful underlying motives are suspected of exerting influence upon consumer behavior. Products and services that relate, or might relate, to attraction of the opposite sex, to personal adornment, to status or self-esteem, to power, to death, to fears, or to social taboos are all likely candidates for motivational research. For example, why do women tend to increase their expenditures on clothing and personal adornment products as they approach the age of 50 to 55? The reasons relate to the loss of youth’s beauty and the loss of fertility, and to related fears of losing their husbands' love. It is also a time of life when discretionary incomes are rising (the children are leaving the nest). Other motives are at work as well (women are complicated creatures), but a standard marketing research survey would never reveal these motives, because most women are not really aware of why their interest in expensive adornments increases at this particular point in their lives.

Even benign, or low-involvement, product categories can often benefit from the insights provided by motivational research. Typically, in low-involvement product categories, perception variables and cultural influences are most important. Our culture is a system of rules and “regulations” that simplify and optimize our existence. Cultural rules govern how we squeeze a tube of toothpaste, how we open packages, how we use a bath towel, who does what work, etc. Most of us are relatively unaware of these cultural rules. Understanding how these cultural rules influence a particular product can be extremely valuable information for the marketer.

The Major Techniques

The three major motivational research techniques are observation, focus groups, and depth interviews. Observation can be a fruitful method of deriving hypotheses about human motives. Anthropologists have pioneered the development of this technique. All of us are familiar with anthropologists living with the “natives” to understand their behavior. This same systematic observation can produce equally insightful results about consumer behavior. Observation can be accomplished in-person or sometimes through the convenience of video. Usually, personal observation is simply too expensive, and most consumers don’t want an anthropologist living in their household for a month or two.

It is easier to observe consumers in buying situations than in their homes, and here the observation can be in-person or by video cameras. Generally, video cameras are less intrusive than an in-person observer. Finding a representative set of cooperative stores, however, is not an easy task, and the installation and maintenance of video cameras is not without its difficulties. In-store observers can be used as well, so long as they have some “cover” that makes their presence less obvious. But, observation by video or human eye cannot answer every question. Generally, observation must be supplemented by focus groups or depth interviews to fully understand why consumers are doing what they do.

The Focus Group

The focus group in the hands of a skilled moderator can be a valuable motivational research technique. To reach its full motivational potential, the group interview must be largely nondirective in style, and the group must achieve spontaneous interaction. It is the mutual reinforcement within the group (the group excitement and spontaneity) that produces the revelations and behaviors that reveal underlying motives. A focus group discussion dominated by the moderator will rarely produce any motivational insights. A focus group actively led by the moderator with much direct questioning of respondents will seldom yield motivational understanding. But the focus group is a legitimate motivational technique.

The Depth Interview

The heart and soul of motivational research is the depth interview, a lengthy (one to two hours), one-on-one, personal interview, conducted directly by the motivational researcher. Much of the power of the depth interview is dependent upon the insight, sensitivity, and skill of the motivational researcher. The interviewing task cannot be delegated to traditional marketing research interviewers—who have no training in motivational techniques.

During the personal interview, the motivational researcher strives to create an empathic relationship with each respondent, a feeling of rapport, mutual trust, and understanding. The researcher creates a climate in which the respondent feels free to express his feelings and his thoughts, without fear of embarrassment or rejection. The researcher conveys a feeling that the respondent and his opinions are important and worthwhile, no matter what those opinions are. The motivational researcher is accepting, nonthreatening, and supportive. The emotional empathy between motivational researcher and respondent is the single most important determinant of an effective interview.

The motivational researcher relies heavily upon nondirective interviewing techniques. Her goal is to get the respondent to talk, and keep talking. The researcher tends to introduce general topics, rather than ask direct questions. She probes by raising her eyebrows, by a questioning look upon her face, by paraphrasing what the respondent has said, or by reflecting the respondent’s own words back to the respondent in a questioning tone. Nondirective techniques are the least threatening (and the least biasing) to the respondent.

Projective techniques can play an important role in motivational research. Sometimes a respondent can see in others what he cannot see—or will not admit—about himself. The motivational researcher often asks the respondent to tell a story, play a role, draw a picture, complete a sentence, or associate words with a stimulus. Photographs, product samples, packages, and advertisements can also be used as stimuli to evoke additional feelings, imagery, and comment.

During the interview, the researcher watches for clues that might indicate that a “sensitive nerve” has been touched. Long pauses by the respondent, slips of the tongue, fidgeting, variations in voice pitch, strong emotions, facial expressions, eye movements, avoidance of a question, fixation on an issue, and body language are some of the clues the motivational researcher keys on. These “sensitive” topics and issues are then the focus of additional inquiry and exploration later in the interview.

Each interview is tape-recorded and transcribed. A typical motivational study, consisting of 30 to 50 depth interviews, yields 1,000 to 2,000 pages of typed verbatim dialogue. During the interview, the motivational researcher makes notes about the respondent’s behavior, mannerisms, physical appearance, personality characteristics, and nonverbal communication. These notes become a road map to help the researcher understand and interpret the verbatim transcript of the interview.

The Analysis

The motivational researcher reads and rereads the hundreds of pages of verbatim respondent dialogue. As she reads, the researcher looks for systematic patterns of response. She identifies logical inconsistencies or apparent contradictions. She compares direct responses against projective responses. She notes the consistent use of unusual words or phrases. She studies the explicit content of the interview and contemplates its meaning in relation to the implicit content. She searches for what is not said as diligently as she does for what is said. Like a detective, she sifts through the clues and the evidence to deduce the forces and motives influencing consumer behavior. No one clue or piece of evidence is treated as being very important. It is the convergence of evidence and facts that leads to significant conclusions. In the scientific tradition, empiricism and logic must come together and make sense.

The analysis begins at the cultural level. Cultural values and influences are the ocean in which we all swim and, of which, most of us are completely unaware. What we eat, the way we eat, how we dress, what we think and feel, and the language we speak are dimensions of our culture. These taken-for-granted cultural dimensions are the basic building blocks that begin the motivational researcher’s analysis. The culture is the context that must be understood before the behavior of individuals within the context can be understood. Every product has cultural values and rules that influence its perception and its usage.

Once the cultural context is reasonably well understood, the next analytic step is the exploration of the unique motivations that relate to the product category. What psychological needs does the product fulfill? Does the product have any social overtones or anthropological significance? Does the product relate to one’s status aspirations, to competitive drives, to feelings of self-esteem, to security needs? Are masochistic motives involved? Does the product have deep symbolic significance? And so on. Some of these motives must be inferred since respondents are often unaware of why they do what they do. But the analysis is not complete.

The last major dimension that must be understood is the business environment, including competitive forces, brand perceptions and images, relative market shares, the role of advertising in the category, and trends in the marketplace. Only part of this business environment knowledge can come from the respondent, of course, but understanding the business context is crucial to the interpretation of consumer motives in a way that will lead to useful results. Understanding the consumer’s motives is worthless unless somehow that knowledge can be translated into actionable marketing and advertising recommendations.

Sometimes a motivational study is followed by quantitative surveys to confirm the motivational hypotheses as well as to measure the relative extent of those motives in the general population. But many times motivational studies cannot be proved or disproved by survey research, especially when completely unconscious motives are involved. In these cases, the final evaluation of the hypothesized motives is by the testing of concepts (or advertising alternatives) that address the different motives, or by other types of contrived experiments.

One final note is relevant to the successful conduct of motivational research. It is critically important that the motivational researcher not be overly theoretical. An eclectic, wide ranging, and open-minded philosophical perspective is best. The researcher should not formulate any “cast in stone” hypotheses before she conducts the motivational study. Strongly held hypotheses, or rigid adherence to theory, will doom a motivational study to failure. Too often we see what we set out to see, or find that for which we search, whether it exists or not. An objective, open, unfettered mind is the motivational researcher’s greatest asset.

Jerry W. Thomas

Chief Executive Officer

Jerry is deeply involved in the firm’s development of new research methods and techniques and in the design of new software systems. He plays a key role in the development of Decision Analyst’s proprietary research services and related mathematical models.

Jerry describes himself as a student of marketing strategy, new product development, mathematical modeling, business survival, and economic growth. In his spare time, he likes to work on his farm in East Texas where he grows grapes, apples, pears, pecans, plums, and peaches; a forest of native trees, grasses, and insects; and wild plants of many types.

He graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington, earned his MBA at the University of Texas at Austin, and studied graduate economics at SMU.

Copyright © 2008 by Decision Analyst, Inc. This posting may not be copied, published, or used in any way without written permission of Decision Analyst.

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The impact of intrinsic motivation on the sustainable extra-role performance with the mediating role of job engagement.

1. Introduction

• How does the internal motivation of employees affect their engagement in the workplace?
• Does intrinsic motivation have a direct impact on employee performance?
• How does employee engagement act as a mediating variable between intrinsic motivation and job performance?
• What are the specific sub-dimensions of intrinsic motivation that have the greatest impact on employee engagement and performance in the energy sector in Kosovo?

2. Literature Review

2.1. intrinsic motivation, 2.2. job performance, 2.3. work engagement, 2.4. research hypotheses, 2.5. intrinsic motivation and job performance, 2.6. work motivation and job engagement, 2.7. job engagement and work performance, 2.8. mediating role of job engagement, 3. methodology, 3.1. participants, 3.2. procedure, 3.3. instruments, 3.3.1. intrinsic motivation scale, 3.3.2. work engagement scale, 3.3.3. job performance scale, 4.1. correlation analysis, 4.2. regression analysis, 4.3. mediation analysis, 5. discussion, 6. conclusions, 6.1. theoretical implication, 6.2. practical implication, 6.3. limitations of the study, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Hoxha, S.; Ramadani, R. The Impact of Intrinsic Motivation on the Sustainable Extra-Role Performance with the Mediating Role of Job Engagement. Sustainability 2024 , 16 , 7643. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177643

Hoxha S, Ramadani R. The Impact of Intrinsic Motivation on the Sustainable Extra-Role Performance with the Mediating Role of Job Engagement. Sustainability . 2024; 16(17):7643. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177643

Hoxha, Sejdi, and Riad Ramadani. 2024. "The Impact of Intrinsic Motivation on the Sustainable Extra-Role Performance with the Mediating Role of Job Engagement" Sustainability 16, no. 17: 7643. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177643

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A study of the effect of viewing online health popular science information on users' willingness to change health behaviors – based on the psychological distance perspective

• Published: 05 September 2024

Cite this article

• Jingfang Liu 1 &
• Shiqi Wang 1  

Along with increased health awareness and the advent of the information age, online health popular science information (OHPSI) has received more attention. However, it is unknown how the lots of online health information influences users to change unhealthy behavioral habits. Therefore, based on the psychological distance perspective, our research investigated the effect of viewing online health information on users' willingness to change their health behaviors in the future. In addition, this study also introduced the protection motivation theory to further investigate the mediating effect of protection motivation in the mechanisms of psychological distance in online health information. The data of the study were obtained by the research method of questionnaire survey and the proposed hypotheses were validated using Smartpls software. 87.28% of the respondents in this study's survey sample were aged 18–40 years old, and people in this age group have higher pressure from study and work, and live a fast-paced life with less free time, which makes them more likely to pay attention to OHPSI to improve their health. Therefore, the age group of the sample of this study is in line with the research purpose of this paper, which is conducive to enhancing the authenticity and reliability of the conclusions of this study. The conclusions of the study showed that the temporal, social, hypothetical and experiential distances in psychological distance can positively influence users' self-protection motivation. And protection motivation has a positive effect on users' willingness to change health behaviors. In addition, protection motivation can completely mediate the influence of psychological distance on users' willingness to change health behaviors after viewing online health information. The research not only expands the scope of application of construal level theory and protection motivation theory, but also has significant impact for creators of OHPSI and public health departments.

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Abbreviations

• Online health popular science information
• Construal level theory

Protection motivation theory

Temporal distance

Social distance

Hypothetical distance

Experiential distance

• Protection motivation

Willingness to change health behaviors

Partial least squares

Composite reliability

Average variance extracted

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Conceptualization, J.L. and S.W.; methodology, J.L. and S.W.; software, S.W.; validation, S.W.; formal analysis and S.W.; investigation, S.W.; resources, S.W.; data curation, S.W.; writing—original draft preparation, S.W.; writing—review and editing, S.W.; visualization, S.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Liu, J., Wang, S. A study of the effect of viewing online health popular science information on users' willingness to change health behaviors – based on the psychological distance perspective. Curr Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06582-5

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06582-5

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