An attempt to model motivation

Abstract

This attempt to model motivation as understood today started off by reading about current developments in the theories of motivation. Some of the studies that caught the attention were regarding the relation between intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, and how their combination adds up to total motivation function. Previous studiesi have been made in depth into various aspects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and about how much of influence monetary/ extrinsic motivators can make in impacting the overall motivation compared to intrinsic motivators. In particular, it was observedii that performance in tasks that required nonmechanical work decreased with increased extrinsic motivators, and the explanations to this was that extrinsic motivators or money is important only till the point people satisfy their needs, or in other words, till the point where people care about it. After this certain point, performance was seen to be more enhanced when there was a presence of an intrinsic motivator – Autonomy, mastery, and/or purpose. Here we turn to utility functions, and look at extrinsic and intrinsic motivators separately, to figure out what could be the characteristics of these utility functions so as to satisfy these observations. We also look at any more observations regarding these functions that might be able to take us to interesting results. In the report, due to time and monetary constraints, a number of assumptions are made out of intuition and consultation with a limited close group of people. These assumptions include mainly the behaviour or intrinsic motivation and figuring out an economic equivalent for them, which is very lightly documented in previous literature.