What motivates us - An Introduction

Why do people do what they do? What moves you, what drives you, what makes you act in a particular way? What is motivation? Basically it is a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a certain way. Motivation is a major component of gamification and to understand why people are motivated to do what they do, let’s have a closer look at the psychology of motivation.

Let me start by telling you, just as complex und rationally irrational humans are, the concept of motivation is very complex (somewhat more rational then humans though). Where to begin? What motivates me, won’t motivate you or the lady sitting opposite of me in the train. There are triggers such as rewards (as in I wrote 5 blog posts about the anatomy of baby Pterodactyls, now l deserve a cigarette), external pressure (mom told me to do it), simply cause it’s fun (yay I love writing about baby Pterodactyls), or maybe you are motivated to do something for a larger cause (Let’s revolutionize the education system through gamification and the power of baby Pterodactyls).

Behaviorism

There are different ways of finding out what motivates people, one being the concept of Behaviorism. The “art” of figuring out what externally motivates people. How people respond to external stimuli. Let me summarize this in a (tiny) nutshell: It’s not about what is happening in our brains, but what is happening around us and how you can influence behavior through the use of stimuli.

Classical Conditioning

Ever heard of Pavlovs Dog? You ring a bell and feed your dog, repeat and repeat and after a while when ringing the bell your dog starts drooling, even when he doesn’t get a food (mean right?). Meaning the dog is conditioned to react (drool) to an external stimulus (bell). This is called classical conditioning and together with operant conditioning is an integral part of behaviorism.

Operant Conditioning

Now lets look at Skinner? Not principle Skinner from The Simpsons, but the famous B.F. Skinner who invented the operant conditioning chamber, or "Skinner Box," in which subjects such as pigeons and rats were isolated and could be exposed to carefully controlled stimuli. Types of stimuli included giving food each time a particular action was performed. Actions for example were, pressing a lever or pecking a disk. Operant conditioning follows the notion of consequences with positive or negative reinforcements. You take an action and either something “good” or “bad” happens and as a result of seeing these consequences over and over again you adapt your behavior / your are conditioned / you LEARN something.

The bottom line is, when looking at behaviorism, we take a closer look at WHAT people do, as opposed to WHY people do something. For example:

(1) Loss Aversion:

Humans are a funny bunch, we will take more steps to avoid a loss, than to actually gain something. Losses even being twice as powerful. A powerful mechanism widely used in marketing, by reminding customers that they could lose out if they don’t act now (Hurry, only 3 more baby Pterodactyls left).

(2) Power of Defaults:

It gets even funnier, humans will stay with a default option presented to them, rather than deviating from the default option, as this actually requires making a decision, and humans are simply scared to make the wrong decision. (Tick this box to get a free Pterodactyl, vs. box states, you won’t receive a baby Pterodactyl if you keep box ticked. In the latter case there will be less baby Pterodactyls given out for free)

(3) Confirmation Bias:

Another very funny one, humans will search for, interpret and favor information that confirms their own beliefs, while giving less consideration to alternate possibilities. This is where Murphy’s Law is an interesting concept. When you wake up and think everything that happens will go wrong, you actually tend to likely only see all the things that are going wrong. (Can’t think of a Pterodactyl-related example here)

I encourage you to have a look at this beautifully fun TedEd lesson about The difference between Classical and Operant Conditiong.

#gamification #motivation #behaviorism #conditioning #classicalcondition #operantconditioning #lossaversion #powerofdefault #confirmationbias