2

Conceptualizations of Intrinsic·
Motivation and Self-Determination

The human organism is inherently active,.and there is perhaps no place.

where this is more evident than in little children. They pick things up,
shake them, smell them, taste them, throw them across the room, and
keep asking, "What's this?" They are unendingly curious, and they want
to see the effects of their actions. Children are intrinsically motivated to
learn, to undertake challenges, and to solve problems. Adults are also
intrinsically motivated to do a variety of things. They spend large amounts
of time painting pictures, building furniture, playing sports, whittling
wood, climbing mountains, and doing countless other things for which
there are no obvious or appreciable external rewards. The rewards are
inherent in the activity, and even though there may be secondary gains,
the primary motivators are the spontaneous, internal experiences that
accompany the behavior.
Intrinsic motivation is the energy source that is central to the active
nature of the organism. Its recognition highlighted the important points
that not all behaviors are drive-based, nor are they a function of external
controls. These points have raised the important problems of how to
conceptualize this new energy source and how to integrate it into psy-
chological theory. In this book we describe various attempts to clarify
the issues and resolve the problems, beginning with a historical discus-
sion of the emergence of the concept of intrinsic motivation in the empir-
ical and psychodynamic traditions of psychology.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

As early as 1890, William James, one of the important forerunners

of empirical psychology, had discussed aspects of motivation. His asser-
tion that interest plays an important role in directing attention, and thus

E. L. Deci et al., Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior 11

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 1985
12 CHAPTER 2

behavior, is similar to the current belief that, when intrinsically moti-

vated, one follows one's interests. Woodworth (1918) was the first psy-
chologist to outline a theory that directly addressed the issue of
intrinsically motivated behavior. Woodworth proposed that an activity
can be initiated by an extrinsic motive but that "only when it is running
by its own drive ... can [it] run freely and effectively" (1918, p. 70).
This notion, that an activity, regardless of its initiating motive, can become
intrinsically motivated, was given the name functional autonomy by All-
port (1937). Clearly, in Woodworth's work we see an active organism.
"It may at least be said to be part of the native equipment to be active
in a motor way, as well, indeed, as in the way of exploration" (1918,
p.50).
Because Woodworth's theory appeared at about the same time that
the .nonmotivational viewpoints of Thorndike (1913) and Watson (1913)
were having a dramatic impact on the nature of empirical theorizing,
Woodworth's motivational hypotheses received relatively little sustained
attention. The small amount of motivational research that was done in
the following decades focused on the nature of drives and laid the
groundwork for the 1943 publication of Hull's drive theory.

Empirical Drive Theory

According to Hull all behaviors are based in four primary drives:

hunger, thirst, sex, and the avoidance of pain. These drives, which are
non-nervous-system tissue deficits, activate consummatory behaviors
that have previously been successful in reducing drives. Any behavior
that results in the reduction of a drive is strengthened by virtue of its
becoming more firmly bonded to a drive stimulus. According to this
view, drives provide the energy for behavior, whereas the associative
bonds that develop between drive stimuli and behaviors through the
process of drive reduction provide the direction for behavior.
Of course not all behaviors were said to be motivated directly by
primary drive stimuli; some were said to be motivated by derivative
sources. Secondary reinforcement was the process through which the
derivation was said to occur. This process involves the pairing of a
neutral stimulus with a primary reinforcer such that the neutral stimulus
acquires the reinforcing potential of the primary reinforcer. For example,
if an animal were continually fed out of the same dish, the dish could
gradually become a reinforcer in its own right and could strengthen
various responses that led the animal to be in the presence of the dish.
To maintain its reinforcing potential, however, the dish would need,
from time to time, to be re-paired with a primary reinforcer, namely the
food.