According to new research, a key difference might be the choice of opponent. Whereas men typically prefer to compete against others, women often choose to compete against themselves.
(As always: be careful about oversimplifcation of gender roles. I myself am much likelier to compete against myself than others. As Todd Rose notes, averages often give us useful information about groups, but never about individuals.)
Here’s the magic question: how can teachers help motivate students?
After all, most of our students don’t lack the cognitive capacity to learn the material; instead, all too often, they lack the desire to do so.
Frankly, those of us who work in the classroom would LOVE some help from the world of psychology and neuroscience to understand what gets our kids energized…
Trinsic: In- or Ex-
For well over a decade, the field of Mind, Brain, Education has been guided and informed by the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
When I curl up with a crossword puzzle, for example, I do so for the crisp pleasure of problem solving. I don’t get anything from these puzzles, other than the joy of doing them. That’s intrinsic motivation.
Often, however, we undertake a particular activity to get something else from it. Perhaps I take a class in research methodology not because I’m fascinated by it, but because I know I need that credit to get my psychology degree. Or, I take it because my parents have made it a condition of helping with my college tuition. (Quirky parents, I know.)
In these cases, I’m driven by extrinsic motivation.
Of course, these motivations differ from person to person. I might go to an art museum because I love the works of Archibald Motley, Jr. (intrinsic), or because I want my boss to see me at the exhibit (extrinsic). You might go camping because the great outdoors refreshes your soul (intrinsic), or because a certain special someone might also be joining the group (extrinsic).
So, too, some of our students solve math problems because they are genuinely fascinated to discover the area under a curve; whereas others want to impress a classmate, or get a good grade, or earn admission to MIT.
The Whole is Greater than the Sum of the Parts?
What, then, do teachers do with this information? How does it help us to distinguish between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation?
At the very first Learning and the Brain conference I attended, Edward L. Deci offered one answer to that question. His answer is, in fact, the one you hear most often.
What happens, Deci wanted to know, when you add extrinsic and intrinsic motivation together? For example: if a student loves learning to spell new words for the pure pleasure of doing so (that’s intrinsic), what happens if I also give him a sticker for every ten new words he learns (that’s extrinsic)?
When Deci started exploring this question, no one had thought much about it. He remembers there was a vague sense that adding two kinds of motivation together should—common sense tells us—create even greater levels of motivation. But no one new how much, or precisely why.
Deci’s research, however, led to a surprising conclusion: extrinsic motivation undermines intrinsic motivation. That is: my enthusiastic speller will feel less enthusiastic once I start rewarding him. In Deci’s research, he is less likely to break out the dictionary on his own, and more likely to wait until I break out the sticker packs again.
How did Deci find this out?
In one well-known study [1], he had college students solve a particularly intriguing kind of puzzle—sort of an early Rubik’s cube. He then offered half of them a reward for solving more puzzles, while simply instructing the other half to do so. Third, he gave both groups some free time—and watched whether they continued to solve puzzles, or instead read magazines that he provided.
The result: the students who had been rewarded were less likely than the unrewarded group to continue solving puzzles.
That is: the extrinsic reward sapped intrinsic enthusiasm.
Classroom Implications
Deci’s remarkable finding provides a direct challenge to one of education’s most enduring traditions: grades.
When school folk try to justify grades as a useful incentive—they motivate our students!—Deci’s team can argue right back: yes, but at such a cost!
Even if grades do motivate (and, do they?), they undermine the love of learning that we want to instill. Students who once spent their free time obsessing about Civil War battlefields will now do so only for the promise of extra credit. What kind of motivation is that?
Deci and his frequent co-author Richard Ryan have an explanation for this effect. They argue that people are motivated by a desire for—among other things—autonomy. When you give me a grade for something that I already want to do, I feel that you’re trying to control me: that is, trying to reduce my autonomy.
In other words: your extrinsic rewards reduce my intrinsic drives by taking away my independence.
January 2017: Revolution
This account of motivation—and the tension between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards—has been common in the field of MBE for at least a decade. But in January, a new study came out which challenges this whole logical chain [2].
Two scholars at the University of Chicago—Goswami and Urminsky—ask this question: what if extrinsic motivation only seems to reduce intrinsic motivation because we’ve been measuring the wrong way? The problem is not in the motivation, but in our research paradigms?
Here’s their argument: when Deci gave those students another chance to solve puzzles, he measured their motivation immediately after they had completed the reward round. If their intrinsic motivation was only temporarily reduced, this research paradigm would have no way of capturing that result. After all, their desire to draw might bounce back. It might even come back more strongly than before.
To test this hypothesis, Goswami and Urminsky developed a new research method: one that gave participants multiple chances to demonstrate intrinsic desire to do something—before, during, and after a reward.
Participants in their study chose between solving a fun math puzzle (a problem that involved a little cognitive effort) and watching a short video (which involved no cognitive effort). In either case, this particular activity took only half a minute. They made this choice not a few times times (as in Deci’s study), but 30 times.
The first eight times, participants simply chose between solving a math problem and watching a video. Because the math problems were—in fact—fun to do, participants chose them almost 70% of the time.
During the next section of the study—ten more trials—half of the participants were given a small reward for choosing to do the math problem. (That is: an extrinsic reward was added to their obvious intrinsic interest.) Unsurprisingly, they now chose the math problems almost 90% of the time.
In the third round of the study—twelve more trials—the reward was removed. If, as Deci and Ryan predict, extrinsic rewards reduce intrinsic motivation, we would expect to see a persistent change. Participants should now prefer the video to the math problem, perhaps by a considerable margin.
What did Goswami and Urminsky find?
Round 3, Trial #4
Consistent with Deci’s study of college puzzle solvers, participants initially turned away from the math problems. Whereas 90% had chosen them during the reward round, only 50% did so during the next trial, and only 55-60% during the two trials after that.
But then, something remarkable happened.
Participants returned to the math. In fact, in trial #4 of the third round, more people chose math problems than those in the control group—who had never been offered a reward. In fact, for the remainder of the study—7 more trials—the participants who had been offered rewards chose math problems more often than the control group even though the reward was no longer available.
In other words: in this study, extrinsic motivation did not reduce intrinsic motivation. Instead, it (very slightly) increased intrinsic motivation.
To be sure of their results—and to test some other predictions as well—Goswami and Urminsky repeated versions of this study 4 more times, and consistently got the same answer.
Boom. Revolution.
Where Do We Go from Here? (Round 1)
Goswami and Urminsky’s study has quite literally just been published. Because their conclusions upend such widely known research, they will doubtless be debated, challenged, explored, perhaps contradicted.
In the meantime, what’s a teacher to do?
First: we can, I think, no longer say with such confidence that “extrinsic motivation reduces intrinsic motivation.” (Of course, it might—after all, lots of research suggests that conclusion.)
However, Goswami and Urminsky propose a new way of exploring this question, and I think we should admit the reasonableness of their critique and the usefulness of their methodology. We’ve got a chance to learn more, and we should take it.
For now, that means we should look frankly and honestly at the value of grades, prizes, and rewards. They might be beneficial, or harmful, or both; but we can’t be sure that their extrinsic motivation is harmful. (If you’d like some guidance in these discussions, you might look at Timothy Quinn’s book, On Grades and Grading.)
As a simple example: I’m married to someone whose interest in school was based ENTIRELY on grades, prizes, and competition. In at least this one case, grades provided an immensely useful extrinsic motivation that made up for a real lack of intrinsic motivation.
Where Do We Go from Here? (Round 2)
This research revolution might also inspire us to return to Deci and Ryan with fresh eyes and clearer understanding. Here’s what I mean:
In my experience, teachers who read up on this research often infer that students will naturally become intrinsically motivated to pursue schoolwork if we don’t get in their way. Because extrinsic motivation interferes with intrinsic motivation, the absence of extrinsic motivation will naturally produce intrinsic motivation.
But Deci and Ryan don’t say that [3]. In fact, they say quite the opposite: “it is critical to remember that intrinsic motivation will occur only for activities that hold intrinsic interest for an individual—those that have the appeal of novelty, challenge, or aesthetic value for that individual” (p. 59-60); as they say elsewhere, it is “catalyzed (rather than caused)” (p. 58).
Instead, Deci and Ryan accept that students simply aren’t intrinsically motivated to do many of the things that school asks them to do. It is not our job to cause them to be intrinsically motivated—because we can’t.
Instead, it is the teacher’s job to find healthy extrinsic motivators rather than unhealthy ones: “because many of the tasks that educators want their students to perform are not inherently interesting or enjoyable, knowing how to promote more active and volitional (versus passive and controlling) forms of extrinsic motivation becomes an essential strategy for successful teaching” (p. 55).
When they champion classrooms that foster autonomy, relatedness, and competence, Deci and Ryan are partly trying to allow intrinsic motivation to flourish. But, more often, they are trying to promote good kinds of extrinsic motivation—in which students recognize the value of the work that they are doing, and take it on willingly to benefit themselves and their world.
After all: I might not have taken that research methodology class with intrinsic enthusiasm, but the extrinsic motivation that got me through has been a great boon to my understanding of science.
If you’re a Learning and the Brain devotee, you may have heard about p-values; you may even have heard about the “p-value crisis” in the social sciences — especially psychology.
This white paper by Fredrik deBoer explains the problem, offers some useful context, and gives you several strategies to see past the muddle.
Although deBoer’s considering very technical questions here, he writes with clarity and even a bit of humor. If you like digging into stats and research methodology, this short paper is well worth your time.
(As you may know, deBoer writes frequently — and controversially — about politics. I’m neither endorsing nor criticizing those views; I just think this paper makes an abstruse topic unusually clear.)
Now that you’ve been to LaTB, we’d love to hear your story.
What did you learn? What did you try? How did it go?
If you’d like to share your experience, please send me an email with:
Please be sure to include a specific source (a speaker, a book, or an article) for the ideas that you tried. And, keep in mind that you’re writing for a blog audience—short and punchy entries are especially welcome.
We won’t be able to publish every entry, but…we hope to hear from you!
For an example, check out this early LaTB Story by Alexander Wonnell.
Robert Bjork and Elizabeth Ligon Bjork have argued that the right kind of difficulty can facilitate ultimate learning. These difficulties–“desirable difficulties”–require extra cognitive engagement, and thereby promote long-term memory formation.
Presenters at Learning and the Brain conferences often talk about “spacing,” or “interleaving,” or the “testing effect.” (In fact, Ian Kelleher has recently blogged about these strategies.) All these techniques boost learning by increasing desirable difficulty.
Nicholas Gasperlin wanted to know: is it desirable to divide students’ attention? Would that kind of difficulty enhance learning?
The short answer: No. Forcing students to focus on two things does ramp up the level of difficulty; however, it does not increase learning.
(However, it decreases learning much less than I would have predicted.)
The big news here, in my opinion, is that researchers are starting to ask this question. Up until now, we have heard a great deal about desirable difficulties, but haven’t gotten much guidance on UNdesirable ones. Now–finally–we’re starting to get research-based answers.
Imagine your son leaving for school with his homework forgotten on the kitchen table or your daughter’s soccer coach consistently giving her less playing time than you think she deserves. Jessica Lahey, middle school teacher, New York Times columnist, and mother of two, cautions parents against intervening in these and similar situations because protecting kids from their mistakes or mildly difficult circumstances can undermine their competence and autonomy. Her book, The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed, argues that overprotective parenting, which is all too common in today’s competitive culture, teaches kids that failure is bad, when really it can be a useful experience for helping children gain independence and confidence, develop grit, and maintain a love of learning. This book will help parents of toddlers to teens embrace failure in order to increase success.
Popular ideas about appropriate parent-child relationships in the U.S. have changed dramatically over the last few centuries and even in the last few decades. Most notably, Lahey argues that children have gone from being seen as “profitable to priceless” and parents are rightfully worried about the ways in which their parenting can adversely impact their children. She suggests that, to the extent possible in today’s hectic and competitive world, parents allow their children to have a childhood filled with carefree play, exploration, and indeed failure.
We all learn best, Lahey argues, when we are intrinsically motivated to learn. One notable and well-institutionalized violation of this principle is grading school work. Grades can undermine motivation and long-term learning. Parents can help counteract the damaging impact of grades by encouraging children to focus on setting and striving towards personal goals, rather than focusing primarily on grades. Small failures in school, when the stakes are relatively low, can help children avoid larger failures later. Parents can help by modeling for their children how to learn from failure and by teaching them a growth mindset, or the idea that with effort we can improve our skills and ability. They can help children understand the consequences of mistakes, provide feedback about challenging situations, provide emotional support when students encounter failure, praise effort towards addressing challenges, and make sure children know they are loved unconditionally.
The damage from protecting kids from failure is cumulative. On the other hand, when parents afford their children autonomy, the children are more likely to learn, explore, and stay focused and organized. Parents can help their children be autonomous in a number of different realms. Children should be expected to contribute to household work. Although parents can do these chores faster or better, children should understand that they are responsible for helping to maintain the place where they live. Parents should avoid interfering with children’s play and friendships as much as possible. Negotiating playground squabbles, resolving sibling disputes, and experiencing adolescent friendships grow and wane help children develop interpersonal skills that will be beneficial. Parents should avoid pressuring kids about their athletic performance or criticizing coaches and referees. Recently, parent-teacher relationships have eroded, but parents can support their children’s autonomy and learning when they show their children that they trust their teachers, have open communications with the teachers, model enthusiasm for learning (rather than drive for perfection), and encourage students to advocate for themselves to their teachers. Parents of college students should allow and require their children to be almost entirely autonomous, while they continue to show interest and support.
Two skills that undergo significant development during adolescence are executive functioning, or our ability to manage ourselves and our mental resources, and working memory, our ability to maintain and manipulate information in our mind. Parents and teachers can help shape adolescents’ environment to compensate for their not yet fully developed abilities by teaching students to notice the behaviors that proceed acting impulsively, giving students time to transition between activities, keeping a calendar, providing predictability in the teen’s life, writing instructions, setting clear expectations, teaching time management, and teaching active listening. They can also help children get sufficient sleep and remain hydrated and well-fed.
Throughout The Gift of Failure Lahey acknowledges that letting students fail can be gut-wrenching, but she maintains that it is worth it. At one point as a teacher she realized that, “all of that [student] failure, failure that nearly gave me an ulcer, resulted in a great learning experience for the students.” With the advice in this book and discipline on the part of teachers and parents to allow their children to fail, children may begin to experience more failure, more learning, and ultimately more success—hopefully with fewer parent and teacher ulcers.
Lahey, J. (2015). The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. New York, NY: Haper Collins Publishing Inc.
A recent meta-analysis of 100 years of research (you read that right — 100 years) suggests that both ability grouping and appropriate grade acceleration benefit students.
Interestingly, the authors argue that ability grouping benefits students across the academic spectrum: “Overall, high-, medium-, and low-ability students benefited equally from ability grouping” (p. 889).
The authors of this study focus on academic benefits, and don’t look at studies that focus solely on social-emotional results. When it comes to grade acceleration, however, they do see a trend: “Numerous studies have investigated the peer dimension of acceleration and generally reported not only no harm but also small to moderate social–emotional benefits of academic acceleration” (p. 853).
For these acceleration programs, selection criteria make a real difference. At least one of the studies they review finds “socio-affective benefits for students selected on the basis of academic readiness and social and emotional maturity, but also cautions that these programs may be harmful to individual students who are arbitrarily selected on the basis of IQ” (p. 892-3).
In other words: we can’t rely solely on cognitive tests to make such placement decisions.
Given the passion surrounding this debate, I wouldn’t be surprised to see zealous push-back in upcoming weeks.
