Promoting Motivation, Health, and Excellence: Ed Deci at TEDxFlourCity

[Music] [Music] [Applause] I love love motivation it's given me a good life and every place I look I see motivation or lack thereof so what is this thing I love this thing called motivation it's the energy for action it's what gets you up in the morning and mov moves you through the day traditionally psychologists economists people on the street have thought about motivation as a unitary concept that is they see it as something that differs only in amount you can have less motivation or more motivation and of of course our teachers our bosses our parents

want us to have more motivation for the behaviors they want us to do it's a simple and straightforward way of thinking about motivation and I have no doubt that if you measured the amount of a person's motivation you could predict the amount of that person's Behavior but I've never believed that the amount of behavior was the most important thing what I think is the important thing actually is the quality of behavior not the quantity and you can't get to that by looking at the quantity of motivation let me give you an example to illustrate the

point you have two women who work for you recently you found a bunch of new material that seemed very relevant to your work so you give the material to both of these women and you ask them to spend two hours learning it they do and they both put in considerable effort the first person goes through the material and then through it again and through it again and during the 2 hours she memorizes every single fact that's contained within it she did a lot of learning but the second person reads it and she's looking for the

themes that are emerging she's addressing it in a more conceptual way trying to understand the big picture what is this really about and along the way she learns a few facts but she's interested in knowing how the facts fit together and how they relate to the big picture the quality of their learning even though it may have been exactly the same amount was very different and you can't explain that with the amount of motivation for more than 30 years my best friend Rich Ryan and I have been working on a theory of motivation that we

call self-determination theory sdt for short and one of the central tenants of sdt is that you have to differentiate types of motivation and the distinction that is most important for us is between controlled motivation and autonomous motivation controlled motivation is essentially the carrot and stick when you're controlled in your motivation you've either been seduced into behaving perhaps by a offer of a reward or coerced into behaving perhaps by threat of punishment but in either of those cases you feel a lot of pressure and within you is a sense of tension and anxiety and all of

those things have negative consequences for your performance and well-being there's another thing about controlled motivation that's interesting and that is that when you're motivation is controlled you tend to take the shortest path to the desired outcomes remember [Music] Enron the directors of that company had the goal of making the company stronger and more productive so they gave stock options to the top managers as a way of motivating them to achieve the goals well those managers were pretty clever fellows and it didn't take them long to realize that the shortest path to the outcome of making

gazillions of dollars from their stock options was to artificially inflate the value of the company's stock and we all know how well that worked out in contrast we have autonomous motivation when you're autonomously motivated you will experience a full set of volition willingness and choice about what you're doing at the moment you're doing it you you're endorsing the doing of that behavior autonomous motivation comes in two flavors the first has to do with interest and enjoyment if you're interested in some activity and you enjoy doing it the motivation is right there inside you ready to

come out and move you into action have you ever watched a 2-year-old play 2-year-olds love to play and when was the last time you heard a parent ask how do I motivate my 2-year-old to play it's a silly question the motivation is right there when you're interested and enjoy the activity the other type of um autonomous motivation has to do with your deeply held values and beliefs if you really have something that's important to you something that you truly value you're perfectly willing to engage in the behaviors that are consistent with that so both of

these things these two types of autonomous motivation are all about being fully willing to behave there are literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds now of scientific investigations that have shown when you're autonomously motivated your behavior will be more creative you'll be a better Problem Solver when you encounter obstacles you'll be able to think outside the box and figure out what to do about them your performance will be better particularly euristic activities and your emotions will be much more positive and very importantly autonomous motivation is associated with both physical and psychological health so I'm arguing that

autonomous motivation is a much more effective motivation than the carrot and stick the controlled motivation so what does autonomy support mean which is the way of getting people to be more autonomously motivated You Begin by taking their perspective if you're dealing with a child with an employee whoever it happens to be can you begin by trying to understand how that person sees the situation what is the internal frame of reference and if you do do that you're in a position to move forward from there to do whatever it is that needs to be done it

also involves providing people with Choice allowing them to be engaged in the decisionmaking process it means supporting their exploration letting them try new ways encouraging them to be self-initiating to be a selfstarter if you will and very importantly if you're asking somebody to do something you need to provide them with a meaningful rationale because that way they will understand the importance and they may actually internalize it and make it a part of their value system so what happens when people are autonomously motivated when teachers are autonomously motivated their students learn in a deeper more conceptual

way the students enjoy learning more and they feel more confident and competent about themselves when doctors are autonomy supportive their patients live healthier lives they take their medications more reliably they eat healthier diets and they exercise on a more regular basis when coaches are more autonomy supportive the research shows their athletes persist longer at the activity they feel better about themselves while doing it and they work together better as a team when bosses are more autonomy supportive their subordinates perform better at the job they also are better adjusted in the workplace which has important implications

in terms of absenteeism turnover and so forth and when parents are more autonomy supportive their children have stronger mental health they do better in school and they cooperate more around the house now all of these relationships that I've been talking about so far have an implicit differential in terms of authority but many of our relationships aren't like that we have relationships with peers relationships that are more Mutual our romantic relationships our best friends there are people that argue that in order to have a high quality relationship you have to relinquish your autonomy in the service

of the diet but in fact the research shows that you won't have a high quality relation reltionship if you don't feel autonomous within it what does that mean then in terms of your close relationships let me ask you this are you really interested in your partners do you give to them freely are you clear about your your own needs and the relationship so they're out there on the table and do you negotiate in good faith and then importantly do you do all those things fully willingly if not may I suggest you try it and see

what happens so what am I trying to say in all this the take-home message is don't ask how you can motivate other people that's the wrong way to think about it instead ask how can you create the conditions within which other people will motivate themselves and the answer quite simply is autonomy support thank you very much [Music]