Personal Motivations

On Monday, we briefly discussed that those from lower income and education families are often proven to be exposed to less in their childhoods, possibly making it more difficult for them to be motivated or molded into experts. When I was born, I was part of a lower education and income home, so this struck close to home(though probably not quite as low as we are discussing). Although most of the years that my family spent in a cramped apartment were years that I don't remember as a baby, I know that it happened. And even when things got better, my parents consistently engraved in me that I would have to make up for the lack of exposure to the museums, books, or sight-seeing vacations that other children had. What I did have going for me, was motivation. Later in my life I realize that yes, these experiences are what caused me to be more intrinsically motivated. Seeing that it's possible to move up the ladder in America and watching my parents go through college as a middle school-er was definitely motivating in knowing that anything is possible. However, in this post, I am going to somewhat defend the external motivation position because I think it's what we all start off with Kohlberg's Developmental Stages

Being brought up in a household without as many perks, is where one would think I was more likely to be intrinsically motivated because I wasn't rewarded with dollar bills for my A's. Maybe my standards were just lower, because I was perfectly happy with the "external" reward of the grade A. Growing up, there was never a subject that I felt innately good at. There was never a subject that I felt like I didn't have to study for. Things didn't come easy for me, and I did have to study. luckily, I did, because I wanted the A. What motivated me was that shining gold star, the bright red A. These external motivations may not have been the best for my learning, but for me, they were necessary to start off with. After being the first one to count to 1000 in kindergarten, I took things as a race to be the first one to count to 10,000. I would take recess and write in my numbers-chart to achieve my status as the quickest counter (oops...is this cheating?).

SO, this whole study-work-and get good grades thing worked out great for me...until *gasp* I was at risk for getting a B! I think internal motivation occurs when we fail at achieving. Because when we fail at achieving the rewards we desire, the only thing that we have left to motivate is ourselves. The need for change occurs with failure--this is shown in our examples of Micro Financing, Better, "Double Loop Learning", etc. No one is going to change if they are receiving positive feedback, and it's the same with motivation. When I was going to receive my first B, I realized that even a 100% on the final wouldn't cut it for me to get an A. I could have slacked and still gotten a B, or study hard for the final and...still get a B. I guess this is when I realized that there was more to school than grades, and I did want to do well for me--for my reputation, for my relationships with teachers, and for my development as a student and individual.

It seems we have dissected the quote, “experts are made, not born”. Should we instead be dissecting whether motivation is made (external) or born (intrinsic)? Are there people that cannot be conditioned to be intrinsically motivated? Personally, I think it is completely possible to go through life without intrinsic motivation. In fact, I don't even think external motivations are bad at all, if you're able to succeed with just that. Many of us need intrinsic motivation to succeed because at some point, we will fail. My experiences have shown that the external helped me to develop the internal. However, I think that it is even possible for experts to be more extrinsically than intrinsically motivated. Grades may be the primary external motivation tactic for us now, but as we enter out professional lives, it's money. There are definitely executives that become very engrossed in the money and rewards and motivated by that. Weren't they still successful, though? Enron. (at least until their downfall...)