maslow

Introduction to Gamification Part 4: Motivation (R.A.M.P, Maslow, SDT and more)

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Intro to Gamification Part 4 Introduction to Gamification Part 4 Motivation R A M P Maslow SDT and more

Warning, this is one of my longest blogs ever!

Now we know a bit about what games, gamification and game-based solutions are (and are not), it’s time to start to consider some of the non-game related topics you need to understand to be good at building game-based solutions. The first of these is motivation.

In gamification we tend to look at motivation in varying depths, starting from a very simple perspective with just two options. Intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation.

The most basic way to look at this is that activities that are intrinsically motivating are those that people will do because they want to or appreciate the benefits of doing them. Activities that require rewards, extrinsic motivation, people do because there is a reward, not because they want to do it. It is not quite as black and white as that, but it is a good starting point – read on!

The Definitions

Let’s look at the “proper” definitions of these as explained by researches Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, authors of Self Determination theory (SDT) – a paper you will become familiar with as you follow these blogs.

Intrinsic Motivation: “the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfactions rather than for some separable consequence” 1

  • They identify three intrinsic motivators: competence (or mastery), autonomy and relatedness, forming the basis of their Self-Determination Theory

Extrinsic Motivation: is “a construct that pertains whenever an activity is done in order to attain some separable time” 2

  • In terms of gamification, this would be considered any reward that was given to a user as an incentive to do something, for example, badges or prizes.

Needs and Motivations

There are many theories and frameworks that look at how humans are motivated. Two of the most well-known are Maslow’s hierarchy of needs 3  and Self Determination Theory 1.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

First, let’s look at Maslow. Now, a warning. Maslow is widely taught, but there are many who say that his work is not founded in good research, so must be taken with a pinch of salt. For instance, the top tier of his pyramid of needs is “self-actualization”, but there is very little in the way of proof of what that might be or how one might truly achieve it! 4 However, the hierarchy of needs is a useful aide-mémoire so to speak, as it helps to visualise what drives humans in a simple and approachable way.

Basically, the Hierarchy of Needs shows us that there are needs that must be fulfilled before other needs can be fulfilled. Whilst the order may be slightly different depending on context, generally, we need to have our physiological needs and safety covered before love and belonging are important. Then we can think about self-esteem and finally self-actualization.

Now it isn’t that simple really, for instance for some esteem might be more important than love and belonging, but you get the idea!

Self Determination Theory

Proposed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, Self Determination Theory is the result of many years of research and presents three basic needs of humans, Relatedness, Autonomy and Competence.

R.A.M.P

Relatedness

Relatedness is experienced when people feel they are socially connected to each other in some way. It is a sense of belonging, being wanted or needed. In the “real world” this is often satisfied by friendships and family. At work, this can be satisfied by working relationships and friendships with colleagues. In the virtual world, we must rely on social networks or tools that allow people to connect to each other. For instance, if you look at many of the best multi-player games, they have ways to communicate with others, create teams and teams.

In gamification, we often look to create environments that allow for collaboration, but also team competitions.  This allows people to work together, but also to have a bit friendly challenge between teams. It is usually best to avoid one-to-one competitions, these can lead to unpleasant behaviours as individuals set out to “win” especially if there is a tangible and valuable reward on offer!

Another word on competition. You will read about how bad it can be. However, if you look at sports people, such as tennis players, they often form strong bonds with other players whom they are competing with. One of the reasons for this is that they have a shared interest. Not only this, they can relate to each other. Imagine how many people can relate to Andy Murray’s reality as a high-profile tennis player?

Autonomy

Autonomy is loosely defined as the ability to make free, independent choices without coercion, or agency. In R.A.M.P, I am using autonomy to refer the ability to make choices as well as the freedom for self-expression and creativity. If someone is fully autonomous, they are essentially free to do what they choose, when they choose, how they choose. Obviously, this is not always possible in the real world. Within a corporate setting, for instance, autonomy may look more like a lack of micro-management and the ability to choose one’s own solutions to problems. Steve Jobs famously said, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do”.

In a gamified solution, autonomy could look like several things. It could be that you create a learning experience that allows users to choose their own path through, giving them choices of how to progress. It could be that you include tools to allow the user to create an avatar, or even their own materials to share back to others (slipping into Altruistic Purpose a little).

Mastery (Competence)

Master, or competence as it is referred to in SDT (but RACP did not have as nice a ring to it as RAMP…), in motivational terms is the desire to be good at something, to overcome challenges, learn and improve and eventually master it. It is easy to imagine how this might work in education, be it school or corporate. There is an obvious learning objective! Anywhere you are learning a new skill are acquiring knowledge can fit within a path to mastery.

In games and gamification, the path to mastery is well laid out to the user. There are specific goals that they must achieve. As the user progresses, they are presented with new skills to learn, opportunities to practice their skills and usually a final test where they will be challenged to prove they have mastered those skills.  In games this is often a “Boss Battle”, in education this will be an exam!

A key to making this enjoyable and accessible is to ensure that the learning objectives increase in their level of challenge as the users skill increases (Flow 5). If the challenges are too hard, the user will become frustrated. If they are too easy, they will become bored very quickly.

Purpose

So, now we know where Relatedness, Autonomy and Mastery have come from. But, why did I add purpose? Well, there are two answers, the first is because I saw it in Dan Pink’s drive6 where he used Purpose and ditched Relatedness. In his book purpose was focused on what I would define as meaningful purpose. This is a person’s need to feel that what they are doing fulfils a purpose in some way. It could be that they need to understand how the cog they make affects the overall system, it could be to know that adding that extra line to Wikipedia somehow improves human knowledge. There is a hideous phrase in gamification that covers this “Epic Meaning”. Deci and Ryan explain that for them, meaning is ingrained in all of the three needs defined in Self Determination Theory, not a separate need or motivation 7.

In RAMP I am focusing on Altruistic purpose. Altruism, the act of giving selflessly of oneself, in SDT is contained in Relatedness. However, my approach to this has always been related to making a usable set of tools that can help me create solutions for clients, trying to avoid the philosophical and focus on the practical.  For this reason, I chose to separate Altruistic Purpose as the strategies to encourage altruism are slightly different to just those used to create social connectedness.

R.A.M.P

 

Overjustification Effect


It is important to understand that neither intrinsic motivation nor extrinsic motivation is better than the other when used in balance and harmony. It is often viewed that intrinsic motivation is the good guy and extrinsic rewards are the bad guy. However, you often need a bit of both. It is important to remember that something that appears to be an intrinsic motivation, applied in the wrong way will be viewed as an extrinsic reward. For example, social recognition. It is often viewed as intrinsically motivating to be given an elevated social status for achievement. However, if the person who is being elevated is only doing an activity because they know it will bring them greater status, it is an extrinsic motivator! If the social status is bestowed upon them as unintended consequences of excellent achievement, then it is more intrinsic.

This is where something called “Overjustification” 8 effect needs to be considered. If an extrinsic reward overrides a person’s intrinsic desire to do something, then they are experiencing Overjustification effect.

For instance, if you enjoy painting and do it in your spare time, you are intrinsically motivated to paint. If you are creating art just for money, then you are extrinsically motivated. Studies have shown that this often leads to a poorer quality of work. 8

With this being the case, we often say that extrinsic rewards are great in a situation where RAMP cannot be utilised well. If your job is to stamp a hole in a piece of metal 10,000 times a day, it is hard to do much with intrinsic motivation! However, if you want people to produce high-quality content, paying them based on nothing more than how many words they write is not going to work very well. You will just get one word repeated a million times! You need to create review mechanisms and hook into autonomy and purpose as well as mastery (and potentially relatedness with peer reviewing).

Three Layers of Motivation

By way of a final summary, I have created the Three Layers of Motivation.

Three Layers of Motivation

This includes elements of RAMP, SDT and Maslow.

Base Needs

Based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the Base layer considers physiological and safety needs. This includes needs such as health welfare, security, shelter, food and the like. I also include money, which whilst it seems a bit odd when that is obviously an extrinsic motivator, in the modern world it encompasses so much more! To be secure, to have a house, to provide for one’s family, you need money! We no longer hunt for food and live in caves after all.

Money leads to security. It provides you shelter, it keeps your family safe, it provides food for you all. Before money, jobs, and the like, this was all much more primal. You secured your family by physically protecting them. You hunted for food and you built shelters. For most, this is now taken care of by earning money. We do not need to hunt for food or build huts for shelter; we now buy all those things. To get money, we normally need a job. Whilst many enjoy their jobs, they are unlikely to say, “If I wasn’t paid, I’d still work here”.

Emotional / Intrinsic

Once our base needs and motivations are satisfied, we can focus on the other more emotional motivations. I describe these as our need for relatedness, autonomy, mastery and purpose (RAMP).

I will go into much more detail in the next section. These needs are referred to as intrinsic motivations and are much more important to our feeling of satisfaction than pure rewards can be.

Trivial / Extrinsic

A lot of gamification efforts sit in this area – often referred to as PBL gamification (Points, Badges and Leaderboards) 9. They have their place and I will be explaining a lot more about them as we go along.

For now, it is enough to understand that these types of incentives are only truly effective when the first two layers of motivation and needs are satisfied. We will cover a lot more of this later!

Key Learning Points

  • A person is intrinsically motivated when they are doing something without the need for extrinsic rewards such as money.
  • Extrinsic rewards are those rewards that are given to a person to encourage them to do an activity.
  • It is not that simple!
  • We are all different and have different needs – it takes time and research to understand how to motivate large groups towards a single goal!

 

References

  1. Ryan RM, Deci EL. Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. Am Psychol. 2000;55:68-78. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68.
  2. Ryan RM, Deci EL. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions. Contemp Educ Psychol. 2000;25(1):54-67. doi:10.1006/ceps.1999.1020.
  3. Maslow AH. A THEORY OF HUMAN MOTIVATION. Psychol Rev. 1943;50(4):370-396. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0054346.
  4. McLeofd S. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs | Simply Psychology. Simplypsychology.org. doi:10.1007/s11693-012-9098-7.
  5. Csikszentmihalyi M. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Performance.; 1990.
  6. Pink DH. Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us. Canongate; 2009. doi:10.1002/casp.
  7. Ryan RM, Deci EL. The Darker and Brighter Sides of Human Existence: Basic Psychological Needs as a Unifying Concept. Psychol Inq. 2000. doi:10.1207/S15327965PLI1104_03.
  8. Lepper MR, Greene D, Nisbett RE. Undermining children’s intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the “overjustification” hypothesis. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1973;28(1):129-137. doi:10.1037/h0035519.
  9. Werbach K, Hunter D. For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business. Wharton Digital Press; 2012. http://www.amazon.co.uk/For-Win-Thinking-Revolutionize-Business/dp/1613630239. Accessed May 29, 2015.

 

The Intrinsic Motivation Fallacy

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“All you need is autonomy to be happy in work”

This is a quote I have heard on more than one occasion in my life as a gamification consultant. I have even had a friend quote his boss to me saying the following:

“You don’t need a pay rise, I read a book that siad money isn’t a motivator. So with that, I will give you more autonomy and purpose in your role.”

This idea that intrinsic motivation is an alternative to money comes from a misunderstanding of several studies and pop psychology books around motivation.  A key book that is often cited is that of Drive by Dan Pink. I have mentioned it in the past and when I first started in gamification it was a great jumping off point for me. In the book, he describes three intrinsic motivations that all people need to be happy in their lives and work: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. This is based on the work of Deci and Ryan around motivation called Self Determination Theory [1] – another text I have referenced often and of course the basis for my RAMP framework.

Now, the misunderstanding relates to how intrinsic motivation works. There is a general understanding that money is not a motivator for creative works, but that reward can dramatically increase productivity around more mundane, rote tasks. This has been shown in many studies. It forms the basis of Over Justification Effect [2], [3], where the reward becomes more important than the task, which kills creativity and the love of the process itself in many cases.

Firstly, there are many things that drive us beyond those mentioned here as well as many alternative theories on motivation: Hertzberg’s Two-Factor Theory [4], Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs [5], Expectancy Theory [6] and much more. So, it is good to keep in mind that these three or four motivations are not all there is!

The second issue is that people misunderstand the difference between motivation in general.  It works on many levels and in many ways. At a basic level, there are base motivations and emotional motivations. A base motivation is something that one must have to function correctly: food, water, money etc. Emotional motivation is more about one’s desires ultimately leading to quality of life rather than mere existence.

The Three Layers of Motivation

This is where the issue of money comes in and why Dan Pink often gets quoted out of context. The managers that say, “Money is not a motivator, you don’t need more” are not considering other things that Pink has said, crucially this from his Flip Manifesto [7],

“… often the best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table—so that people can focus on the work rather than on the cash.”

In other words, all the intrinsic motivation in the world will not be enough to keep an employee happy if they are worried about money. People have the need to feel secure. In fact, Pink suggests that you pay over the odds! [8]

“And so I think you got to pay people enough. I would argue, pay people more than enough”

This is the big fallacy of intrinsic motivation and one that many people criticise gamification for. They seem to feel that the aim is to replace paying people fairly, which just is not the case. Good gamification is there to lower barriers, improve experiences, enhance learning and ultimately elevate engagement.

If I am not getting paid enough to cover bills and live in a way that I feel comfortable, then money will be my key need and thought. Adding gamification or other behavioural techniques to try and motivate me is likely to insult me more than motivate me! It is almost the opposite of Overjustification effect, a kind of underjustifcation effect if you will. It is not the fact that the desire for money has crowded out and lowered the intrinsic motivation it is that the need for reward/money is more important than any immediate intrinsic/emotional motivation!

That is not to say that just paying well will keep people in a boring dead end job. There comes a point where they do need to be intrinsically motivated as well, but you have to cover the base needs first. Intrinsic motivation is not a magic bullet, people need to feel secure and that requires fair pay before any other behaviour focused interventions can work. Once that is covered, intrinsic motivation and gamification hand in hand can do a great deal to improve happiness, engagement and ultimately performance – done right.

Intrinsic motivation, like gamification, does not replace the need to be paid  and feel you are comfortable, appreciated and valued and never should be used as such!

Refrences

[1]        R. M. Ryan and E. L. Deci, “Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being.,” Am. Psychol., vol. 55, pp. 68–78, 2000.

[2]        M. R. Lepper, D. Greene, and R. E. Nisbett, “Undermining children’s intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the ‘overjustification’ hypothesis.,” J. Pers. Soc. Psychol., vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 129–137, 1973.

[3]        E. L. Deci, R. Koestner, and R. M. Ryan, “A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation,” Psychol. Bull., vol. 125, pp. 627-668-700, 1999.

[4]        F. Herzberg, B. Mausner, and B. B. Snyderman, The Motivation to Work, vol. 51 (4), no. 1. 1959.

[5]        C. S. Dweck and E. L. Leggett, “A social^cognitive approach to motivation and personality.,” Psychol. Rev., vol. 95, pp. 256–273, 1988.

[6]        R. L. Oliver, “Expectancy theory predictions of salesmen’s performance,” J. Mark. Res., vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 243–253, 1974.

[7]        Daniel Pink, “Flip Manifesto | Daniel H. Pink.” [Online]. Available: http://www.danpink.com/resource/flip-manifesto/. [Accessed: 14-Aug-2017].

[8]        Katherine Bell, “What Motivates Us?,” Harvard Business Review, 2010. [Online]. Available: https://hbr.org/2010/02/what-motivates-us. [Accessed: 14-Aug-2017].

 

 

 

3 Layers of Motivation (Updated for 2018)

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The more I consider motivation, the more I realise it is one of those things we in gamification use as a catch-all. It’s a bit like how we treat the term “game mechanics” and, well, gamification!

Generally speaking, you will hear the terms intrinsic and extrinsic when motivation is spoken about. You will hear Deci & Ryan, Dan Pink, Maslow and more spoken about. However, when it comes down to it our argument is always the same. Intrinsic motivation is always better than extrinsic rewards. At times you will also hear a further comment that a balance of extrinsic rewards and intrinsic motivation will yield the best results.

I myself bang on about RAMP; relatedness, autonomy, mastery and purpose. I talk about supporting these motivators with well planned and thought out extrinsic rewards and nudges. However, It seems to me that motivation has several layers and we only seem to speak about one or two of them. There is a more fundamental and base level of motivation that we all seem to ignore. I have spoken about it before here, but I wanted to make my case more clearly!

Base

Let’s think about your job for a moment. Most go to work for one reason, to earn money. Money leads to security. It provides you shelter, it keeps your family safe, it provides food for you all. Before money and jobs and the like, this was all much more primal. You secured your family by physically protecting them. You hunted for food and you built shelters. Now, this is all handled for most by getting money. We don’t need to hunt or build huts for ourselves, we buy all of those things. If we extrapolate that and take a look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs again, we see the most base motivations for humans are physiological needs and safety/security.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Having just shown that in this day and age, money is what provides the majority of security (including food) for most, it stands to reason that money is actually now one of our most base needs. I am not talking about being rich – rather having enough to guarantee physiological needs and safety.

Many people enjoy their job, which is great. But even those who say “I would work here if they didn’t pay me” are generally talking bollocks. You need to survive and in our world work gives you that opportunity.

Emotional/Intrinsic

Once these base needs and motivations are satisfied, then we can focus on the other more emotional motivations, which this is where RAMP starts to come in. Our need for relatedness, autonomy, mastery, purpose, status, friendship etc.

Trivial/Extrinsic

Finally, we can look at the trivial things. More money than we need to survive, bonuses and other types of extrinsic rewards. In gamification things like points, badges, leaderboards, competitions, prizes etc.

Adding Some Clarity (2018 Update)

As linear as this all seems, satisfy the bottom layer, then the middle, then use gamification, it isn’t that simple. Short term engagement using extrinsic gamification can work fine, whatever the other needs may be, but it will have no sustainability. Also, what one person finds extrinsically motivating, others may find much more intrinsic.

The other key one to look at is Money in the base layer and Excess Bonuses being in the trivial/extrinsic section. Money is a base need these days, it is what helps us to guarantee security. Having more than we need is also not a terrible thing, money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy a lot of stuff that can go towards making you happy! However, there is a point where money is no longer the biggest interest. In a job you hate, you don’t tend to leave because of the money, it is other factors. If you are then offered more money, it rarely makes you change your mind as the rest of the environment is the same! If you have enough money to be at least comfortable, then excess bonuses are not going to provide long-term motivation to do good work.

Excess bouses can also lead to terrible behaviour, with overjustification effect being a massive issue. If you are just working for the money, quality can be affected as can decision making. Did you make the decision because it was best for the customer, or because it helped you get your bonus?

Anyway, if you are going to use my 3 Layers of Motivation, please use this image from now on 🙂

Using this in Gamification

The question becomes, how can we benefit from this knowledge in gamification? The answer is, by understanding what people actually need. Forget motivation for a moment, and look at base needs. If a person feels they cannot support themselves and guarantee the security and safety of their family – no amount of emotional or trivial motivation is going to actually motivate them, at least not in the way you are probably hoping it will.

This is obviously focused on Enterprise gamification. It is not the job of an advertising company using gamification to sell a product, to ensure the base needs of their target audience. This is the job of the individual and their employer. However, if their target audience does not feel they have their base needs satisfied by work or other means, it is pretty unlikely that the advertising will work on them, gamified or otherwise!

In the enterprise, be aware that if your employees are struggling financially and it is perceived that you could improve this, gamification could seriously backfire. The money you spend on that could be seen to be spent on improving the lives of the employees at a base level rather than a trivial one!

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