The Science of Workplace Motivation: Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Explained
“Tumble out of bed and I stumble to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of ambition, and yawn and stretch and try to come to life!”
Dolly Parton - 9 to 5
Just like Dolly in the quote above, we have all had days where we need to try to “come to life.”
Other days, our feet hit the floor and we’re immediately ready for action.
You’ll be itching to get things done at work on Monday and stare at the clock every five minutes on Thursday to see if it is 5 PM yet.
Why does this happen?
The answer is motivation.
Unfortunately, being motivated is not as simple as drinking a cup of coffee.
If it were, I’m pretty sure I could fly like Superman at this point given the copious amounts of coffee I consume.
Let’s take a deep dive into the science to find out all about this complex human behavior.
What is Motivation?
Motivation is the direction, intensity, and perpetuity of action.
In other words, motivation is:
What you do
How much effort and attention you give to what you’re doing
And how long you do it for
Motivation is somewhat fleeting, and how motivated you feel can change from day to day and from task to task.
I am usually motivated to write and teach.
I am rarely motivated to fold laundry or do plumbing work.
At a high level, there are two main types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic.
Extrinsic Motivation
Extrinsic motivation is fueled by factors that are outside of an individual’s emotions.
These are things like money, power, status, job titles, paid trips, and other rewards.
While there are certainly emotions pertaining to these items, they are not emotions in and of themselves.
There is nothing inherently wrong with being extrinsically motivated by rewards. Having an important, cool job title feels good.
Getting rewarded with a free trip for being a boss salesman is awesome!
All of us like to, and need to, get paid for our work as a basic means of survival.
Side Note: If you want to read about the personality traits of said “boss” salesman, you read my article on personality.
However, these types of rewards are not the be-all and end-all of being motivated at work.
If you are only motivated by seeing that direct deposit hit every other week, then you don’t have much to fall back on when your job gets tough.
Long term, it is difficult to stay at a job where you’re only motivation is to have money to pay bills.
You may be thinking, “Jacob, why the hell else would I go to work? There’s no other reason for me to go to that damn place!”
Fair point.
But if you don’t actually get fulfillment and feel proud of some part of your job, it is almost impossible to stay there long-term.
Chances are, there are some aspects of your day to day work that bring you joy and make you feel proud. Hence, you still work there (for now).
Let me ask you this: Have you or someone you know taken a pay cut to go to a job with better work-life balance or because they enjoyed the work a lot more?
I know of several people that have done this and I have done it myself.
When I left the big tech consulting world for being a professor at a small teaching university, I took a pretty hefty pay cut. I still do well and can’t complain, but it is a fact that this happened.
So why did I choose to do this?
The answer lies in intrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic Motivation
Intrinsic motivation is driven by actions that make you feel good and that you enjoy doing.
We usually associate these types of actions with hobbies and interests, but this type of motivation is critical in the workplace.
In the long run, intrinsic motivation is far more powerful for job performance and job satisfaction than external rewards.
If you don’t do work that makes you feel fulfilled and proud, you’re not going to give it your best effort.
You also will not be happy in that job.
I am always intrinsically motivated to write, teach, and eat burritos. (I haven’t figured out how to make that last one pay the bills yet).
I love doing these things and have a true passion for them! This is why I voluntarily took a pay cut to become a professor: for the type of work I get to do!
I honestly wake up every day and can’t believe I get paid to do this!
You may be thinking, “Well, high five to you Dr. Positivity, but I don’t like my job that much.”
Another fair point.
However, in your job there are certainly things that you do enjoy doing on a regular basis.
You feel satisfied when you give your all writing a piece of software and your client is thankful and happy when you deliver it.
You feel your cup is filled after you help a customer solve a problem they were fretting over. You feel proud that you were able to help them out and see them leave calm.
You feel empowered and hopeful when you get selected to work with top-notch colleagues on a new, high-profile project.
There are a million little things that go on in our daily work lives that make us happy and fulfilled in our careers.
Now, there are a multitude of ways that we achieve this intrinsic motivation.
Let’s dive into the science of how and why this occurs.
The Science of Intrinsic Motivation
Let me say now that there are myriad of theories on human motivation. Covering them all is outside the scope of this article.
If you want to read a comprehensive account of these theories, see Kanfer, Frese, & Johnson (2017).
I will focus on two of the most popular and widely-accepted theories of workplace motivation: Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and Regulatory Focus Theory (RFT).
Goal Setting Theory is another massively important piece of this puzzle, but I will save that one for a later article.
I chose these two theories because:
I think they’re the coolest.
They’re drastically different.
They highlight the awesomeness of how different things can happen in the brain to achieve the same end goal of being intrinsically motivated.
Self-Determination Theory
Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is a theory of motivation based on the three innate needs of Competence, Autonomy, and Relatedness.
This theory was first brough about by Richard Ryan and Edward Deci in their 2000 paper “Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being”.
Competence
This is exactly what it sounds like: how well do you know how to do a certain task?
We are intrinsically motivated to do what we are good at because it feels good to be great at something.
Doing things we suck at does not.
Over time, however, one does get better at a certain task with practice.
In doing so, we gain a ton of competence and self-confidence, and we start to want to do this particular thing more often.
Then, to be truly intrinsically motivated to do this task, we must fully internalize it and do it autonomously.
Autonomy
Autonomy refers to how one views their amount of control over task performance.
If we are good at something, we don’t want anyone breathing down our necks telling us how it is done.
This makes us cringe and tell said micromanager, “Well why don’t you just do it, then!”
No bueno for intrinsic motivation.
Instead, we want the freedom and flexibility to accomplish things we are good at in the way we see fit.
Doing so makes us feel accomplished and confident and leads us to want to seek out these feelings over and over.
Over time, our intrinsic motivation to perform certain tasks skyrockets when you have competence and autonomy.
However, this tripod of innate needs is not complete without relatedness.
Relatedness
Relatedness is the feeling that one belongs to and is accepted in a group.
Sure, you can be isolated and still feel competent and have autonomy to do your work.
But does that won’t get you as motivated as being a part of something greater than yourself.
When we can identify with a group, it feels satisfying to know that we can contribute to and help those we like to work with.
This makes us feel proud for “doing our part”, thus increasing intrinsic motivation.
Extrinsic to Intrinsic
SDT also states that tasks you perform for extrinsic reasons can become intrinsic over time.
While we may do a task because the boss tells us to, we still may feel internal pressure to give it our all.
Eventually, we start to enjoy a certain task and do it just because it makes us feel good.
So that’s Self-Determination Theory, folks. Let’s move on to our next theory of intrinsic motivation.
Regulatory Focus Theory
Regulatory Focus Theory (RFT) describes how we regulate our own actions to achieve an end goal.
Columbia University’s E. Tory Higgins is credited with forming this theory in the late 90s.
It is based on the idea that we as humans perform actions to either seek pleasure or to avoid pain.
RFT posits that we do this through two distinct mechanisms: Promotion Focus and Prevention Focus.
Promotion Focus
Promotion focus is a mechanism of self regulation in which we take actions to seek success.
If you perform a task with a promotion focus, you are only focused on knocking it out of the park and doing an incredible job.
You are only focused on being successful to gain a sense of accomplishment.
Prevention Focus
On the other hand, prevention focus allows us to regulate our actions to avoid pain.
In this case, you perform a task with only thinking about not failing.
You aren’t thinking about success, you’re only thinking about not dropping the ball.
That’s a subtle shift in words from promotion focus, but a huge difference in mindset.
Which is Better?
The answer is neither.
Let’s take Joe, who is very prevention focused and Jane who is very promotion focused, and have them work on a new software implementation.
Joe will be very cautious in how he goes about this work.
He will take actions and make decisions that will ensure that the project will not fail.
Joe will likely seek approvals at various stages to make sure management likes the direction.
This looks much different from the promotion-focused Jane.
Jane will probably want to suplex Joe for moving so methodically with all of his checks and balances.
She is only worried about crushing it, and is willing to take more risks in how she controls her part of the implementation.
She wants to move fast and make things happen. She isn’t worried about time-consuming approval processes.
She wants to smoke this task quickly so she can move on to the next one.
In the end, both Joe and Jane can end up with the same awesome work and be very successful in this implementation.
They just took different actions and thought about risk differently along the way.
Chronic Focus vs. Fit
We all tend to be either more promotion or prevention focused most of the time.
However, this can change depending on the task.
Ole’ Joe from the previous paragraph was very prevention focused during this software implementation.
However, Joe idolizes John Daly and eats, drinks, and sleeps golf. (See Exhibit A)
Exhibit A: the man, they myth, the legend
When the company asked Joe to plan a golf tournament fundraiser, he jumped at the opportunity with a promotion focus like no other.
This happens to all of us.
We may operate under a chronic regulatory foci most of the time.
But, we can definitely regulate our actions differently depending on the task at hand.
Conclusion
As you can see, there is way more to motivation than simply “drinking a cup of ambition” as Dolly proposed.
Both SDT and RFT explain how we are intrinsically motivated to do things, but do so in very different ways.
To me, this is so cool, and one of the reasons I love science.
I hope this has enlightened you and makes you think about which type of work is intrinsically motivating to you and when.
And if you aren’t motivated to think about that right now…
…just keep working 9 to 5 for “service and devotion” and let that direct deposit hit!
REFERENCES
Crowe, E., & Higgins, E. T. (1997). Regulatory focus and strategic inclinations: Promotion and prevention in decision-making. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 69(2), 117-132.
Johnson, P. D., Smith, M. B., Wallace, J. C., Hill, A. D., & Baron, R. A. (2015). A review of multilevel regulatory focus in organizations. Journal of Management, 41(5), 1501-1529.
Kanfer, R., Frese, M., & Johnson, R. E. (2017). Motivation related to work: A century of progress. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 338.
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2019). The development of goal setting theory: A half century retrospective. Motivation Science, 5(2), 93.
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American psychologist, 55(1), 68.
