How to improve Intrinsic Motivation

It has been suggested by Bakar (20014) that motivation is seen as a highly complex aspect of human behavior and that directly influences how individuals choose to invest their time along with how much energy they exert in any given task, how they think and feel about the task, and how long they persist in the task. By Bakar’s (2014) suggestion, Guay et al (2010) mention that motivation is reflected in a students’ choices of learning tasks, the time and effort they devote to them, their persistence on learning tasks, and in coping with the obstacles they encounter in the learning process. Guay et al (2010) refer to this as “the reasons underlying behavior’’ with Luthans (2012) stating that motivation is a process that starts with physiological or psychological deficiency or needs that activates a behavior or drive which is aimed at a goal or incentives. One theory that addresses the psychological deficiency is the Cognitive Evaluation Theory (Ryan and Deci, 2000). Cognitive Evaluation Theory addresses the social and environmental factors and points to three significant psychological needs; competence, autonomy, and relatedness that must be present in the individual to facilitate motivation (Riley, 2016). Pink (2009) added components to those of Ryan and Dec, (2000) those being mastery and purpose. According to Gredler, Broussard, and Garrison (2004) motivation are the attribute that moves us to do or not to do something and comes initially from an internal impetus or drive to do a specific action or behavior. This drive, according to Iyengar and Lepper (1999) is linked to the intrinsic motivation of choice, self-direction which navigate through competence, autonomy, and relatedness of the individual and task (Ryan and Deci, 2000). According to Deci and Ryan (1985), a sense of competence comes from successful experiences and overall positive feelings about an activity. Deci and Ryan (1985) suggest that for intrinsic motivation to be facilitated there must be autonomy to any situation or task as when an individual is given a sense of choice and the opportunity as well self-expression and self-discovery intrinsic satisfaction are enhanced. Finally, Deci and Ryan (1985) suggest that for relatedness to be achieved individuals must have experienced and experienced a sense of belonging and attachment to other people and the task being carried out. Pink (2009) spoke of mastery as being the urge to get better skilled and purpose as the desire to do something that has meaning and is important. However, even though facilitation in a Cognitive Evaluation class creates a different forum for learning that takes away the process of learning for a grade or the recognition (Cogan, 2010) towards a process where students begin to learn because they want to (Lei, 2010), the curriculum and time constraints seen in education makes this problematic. According to Akey (2006), curiosity and engagement are important and are seen as essential to academic success however many educational institutions seem to rely on the use of rewards and/or incentives to enhance student performance and motivation (Cameron et al, 2005). Lei (2010) maintained this stance and highlighted that many educators agree that extrinsic motivators may work more “quickly and powerfully than intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is a complex cognitive, affective, and behavioral phenomenon that is likely mediated by multiple neural structures and processes (Panksepp and Biven, 2012) with dopamine being highly suggested as being a key substrate of intrinsic motivation (Kringelbach and Berridge, 2016). Dopamine neurons are suggested to originate in the midbrain (Grace, 1991). and have two modes of activity, tonic and phasic (Alcaro and Panksepp, 2011). In the tonic mode, Alcaro and Panksepp (2011) suggest that the neurons exhibit a steady baseline rate of firing in which dopamine is steadily released to target structures wherein the phasic mode, dopamine neurons exhibit short bursts of activity or inactivity in response to specific events, resulting in an increase or decrease of dopamine in target structures lasting several seconds. It is the result of tonic activity that promotes the functioning of three dopamine functions in ration to intrinsic motivation. Firstly, dopamine is instrumental in the seeking system, which can be thought of as the system responsible for our motivated actions about survival and our desires (Panksepp and Biven, 2012). Second, 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). Third, research by 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. According to Akioka and Gilmore (2013), there is a strong relationship in the research between the links of growth mindset and intrinsic motivation in learning with the constructs of mindset and motivation have been important foci among educators seeking to positively impact student learning and outcomes. Much of the correlational research among growth mindset and intrinsic motivation have identified that the Anterior cingulate cortex, the region of frontal midline cortex that is related to learning and control, empathy, impulse control, emotion, and decision-making is also related to the ventral and dorsal striatal, the region of the brain that controls motor functions, emotion and learning as well as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, whose functions are decision making, novelty detection, working memory, conflict management, mood regulation, theory of mind processing, and timing (Myers et al 2016). According to Hughes and Zaki (2014) growth mindset relates to brain processes, and brain processes relate to motivated behaviors, likewise, motivated behaviors can affect cognition as motivation shapes what and how people think. Hughes and Zaki (2014) also suggest that b understanding the underlying mechanism of intrinsic motivation, teachers as well as students alike can apply self-regulatory strategies of intrinsic motivation when performing a task at work or within their educational environment all to improve competence, autonomy, and relatedness (Ryan and Deci, 2000) and mastery and purpose (Pink, 2009).