Behavior: Basic Psychology of the User - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 112

attention on that reward, which facilitates the behavior that the reward encourages,
and generally damps other related behavior. Extrinsic rewards may work up to a
point, but beyond that, performance can start to decrease. Similarly, if people are
focused on the extrinsic reward and it is then withdrawn, this can also lead to a
reduction in performance.
The problem lies in achieving the right balance between extrinsic and intrinsic
rewards. Pink suggests one way is to increase basic payments and reduce or even
eliminate bonus payments. His claim is that people will continue to increase
performance if they are intrinsically motivated. In other words, they do the task
because they like doing it, or they feel a sense of altruism when they do it (Toms
Shoes in California, for example, donates a pair of shoes to needy children for
every pair that it sells), or they are given autonomy in what they do (Google, for
example, allows employees to spend 20% of their work hours on something new).
Based on his analysis of studies from psychology and behavioral economics,
Pink identifies three elements of intrinsic motivation:
• Autonomy—the ability to choose what to work on, how to work on it, who to
work with, and when to work on it. If you allow people to make these sorts of
decisions they become more productive. Pink argues that autonomy leads to
engagement, and engagement leads to mastery. It is not possible for every type
of situation, however, so some of the attributes are less mutable than others. If
someone is operating a safety critical system in a nuclear power plant, for
example, you really do want them to follow the rules about how they work.
• Mastery—the desire to understand a process or task and to get better at per-
forming it. Achieving mastery is most enjoyable when the task provides the right
level of challenge: too easy and it can become boring; too hard and it can create
anxiety. The balancing of knowledge to work requirements is what Vygotsky
(e.g., Chaiklin 2003 ) calls appropriate scaffolding or the Zone of Proximal
Development, and Csíkszentmihályi ( 1990 ) calls flow. It is not always easy to
operationalize these concepts, particularly in social settings, such as a classroom
with multiple learners. The desire to achieve mastery can be a powerful drive,
although it is not universal. Users who want to become experts will want to
understand the task and develop the skills needed to do it well. This drive can also
be exploited for boring and difficult tasks as long as the user understands the need
for repeated drill exercises, or how the difficult tasks fit into the whole task.
• Purpose—this is really the desire to improve things; most people are at least
partly purpose-driven. Under Pink's Motivation 2.0 the purpose is related to the
extrinsic motivation. In Motivation 3.0, however, the purpose is related to
intrinsic motivation: people know why the task is important, and may even do it
free of charge. Emphasizing the goal of the task and its purpose can drastically
influence performance. Working for the good of the company, your town, your
nation, or the planet in this way can be more motivating than working for
money.