What motivates our behaviour?
This is the most important question for behavioural scientists as motivation drives engagement and sustained behaviour change.
Think about a time you have tried to do something that....
•You are ambivalent about •That you don’t believe is really worth doing •That isn’t rewarding •That you don’t have a want for, or a need for
And think about when you’ve tried to motivate someone else to do something without understanding what their real motivation was, or how to target it.
For example at work your manager may say to themselves
“I know what will motivate my employees to do their best work- it’s exciting trips together where they can bond and learn and have new experiences!”
But is this really going to motivate you...
You hear about the trip and say to yourself
“I don’t know how to tell my manager that what really motivates me to achieve my work goals is knowing that I will get home from work in time to read bedtime stories with my seven-year-old.”
Understanding what drives the motivation of your customers and employees is essential and we need good models and theories to help us design to increase this motivation (if of course motivation is the barrier - remember we need to always look holistically at behavior)
So what can help us understand and design for motivation?
Well, in our work we use among others the Prime Theory of Motivation -
As Robert West and Susan Michie from UCL wrote
"The PRIME Theory of Motivation brings into a single model theories of:
1) ‘reflective motivation’ (involving deliberate decisions to behave in a particular way)
2) ‘automatic motivation’ (involving emotional, habitual and instinctive processes).
Unlike some other theories of motivation it proposes that reflective motivation must act through automatic motivation to influence behaviour. Thus, a decision to do something will not result in action unless it generates the desire to do it at the relevant moment and that desire creates a sufficiently strong impulse to act"
Prime fits within the COM-B model, which is a model we use in our work and one that I have talked about previously.
So what makes up Prime
Plans: Consciously articulated specific plans to carry out behaviours
Evaluations: (Beliefs about) •Whether behaviour change is possible •Whether the behaviour fits with identity •Beliefs about the behaviour and its consequences for themselves and others
Motives: At any given moment, what does the person want and need to do?
Impulses and inhibitions: (What are the forces driving behaviour?) •Basic human drives, hunger and thirst •Emotions: Is this making the person feel good or bad? •Habits: Automatic behavioural routines triggered by the environment and performed without thinking
Responses
Hardwired or physiological tendencies shaping behaviour at an unconscious level.
If you are designing for motivation, these are the things you should be thinking about!