research paper on motivation

A literature review on motivation

• Theoretical articles
• Published: 14 November 2013
• Volume 1 , pages 471–487, ( 2013 )

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• Chandra Sekhar 1 ,
• Manoj Patwardhan 2 &
• Rohit Kr. Singh 3  

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Research on motivation has attracted academic and corporate entities over the last two decades. In the present study, authors have reviewed the intense literature to extract all possible dimensions of motivation, having direct and indirect impact on motivation techniques. This has examined the multidimensionality of motivation from the existing literature and present a conceptual framework based on it, and it is experienced that various motivation techniques (discussed in this study) are having a positive impact on both employee satisfaction and the quality of performance in the organization; however, the model needs to be validated using quantitative measures. In order to study the various issues highlighted in this paper related to employee motivation, a large body of literature mainly from different journals have been incorporated. To make the study more current only those studies were included which were published in the last two decades. In past research papers few dimensions of motivation were used to explain the different models motivation theory which has direct influence on employee motivation. The novelty of this study lies in its theoretical framework where authors have made an attempt to come up with a construct having dimensions that directly or indirectly influences employee motivation.

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Introduction

The ingredients of motivation lie within all and the internalized drive toward the dominant thought of the moment (Rabby 2001 ). Motivation directly links to individual performance that gain to organization performance and as a catalyzer for all individual employees working for an organization to enhance their working performance or to complete task in much better way than they usually do. Organization runs because of people working for it, and each person contributes toward achieving the ultimate goal of an organization. Panagiotakopoulos ( 2013 ) concluded that factors affecting staff motivation at a period where the financial rewards are kept to the least leads to stimulate employee performance. So, management personnel’s responsibility to motivate their employees to work as per the expectation to enhance the organization’s performance. Similarly Dysvik and Kuvaas ( 2010 ) concluded that intrinsic motivation was the strongest predictor of turnover intention and relationship between mastery-approach goals and turnover intention was only positive for employees, low in intrinsic motivation. The only thing organization needs to do is to give employees with ample resources and platform to do. As per Kuo ( 2013 ) a successful organization must combine the strengths and motivations of internal employees and respond to external changes and demands promptly to show the organization’s value. In this paper, we have taken various techniques of motivation from existing literature, and managed to make flow of motivation from young-age employees to old-age employees. From organization perspective managers need to understand the flow of motivation, it helps them to create a culture where employees always get motivated to do better. Barney and Steven Elias ( 2010 ) found that with extrinsic motivation there exist a significant interaction between job stress, flex time, and country of residence. Leaders know that at the heart of every productive and successful business lies a thriving organizational culture and hardworking people collaborate passionately to produce great results (Gignac and Palmer 2011 ). In the body of literature, various frameworks are used by the researchers based on theory of motivation, with only few dimensions of motivation.

Literature review

In a complex and dynamic environment, leader of the organization used to create the environment in which employee feel trusted and are empowered to take decisions in the organization which leads to enhance motivation level of employee and ultimately organizational performance are enhanced. Smith and Rupp ( 2003 ) stated that performance is a role of individual motivation; organizational strategy, and structure and resistance to change, is an empirical role relating motivation in the organization. Likewise, Luthans and Stajkovic ( 1999 ) concluded that advancement of human resources through rewards, monetary incentives, and organizational behavior modification has generated a large volume of debate in the human resource and sales performance field. According to Orpen ( 1997 ) better the relationship between mentors and mentees in the formal mentoring program, the more mentees are motivated to work hard and committed to their organization. Likewise, Malina and Selto ( 2001 ) conducted a case study in one corporate setting by using balance score card (BSC) method and found out that organizational outcomes would be greater if employees are provided with positive motivation. The establishment of operations-based targets will help the provision of strategic feedback by allowing the evaluation of actual performance against the operations-based targets. Goal-directed behavior and strategic feedback are expected to enhance organizational performance (Chenhall 2005 ). Kunz and Pfaff ( 2002 ) stated no substantive reason to fear an undermining effect of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Decoene and Bruggeman ( 2006 ) in their study developed and illustrated a model of the relationship between strategic alignment, motivation and organizational performance in a BSC context and find that effective strategic alignment empowers and motivates working executives. Leaders motivate people to follow a participative design of work in which they are responsible and get it together, which make them responsible for their performance. Aguinis et al. ( 2013 ) stated that monetary rewards can be a very powerful determinant of employee motivation and achievement which, in turn, can advance to important returns in terms of firm-level performance. Garg and Rastogi ( 2006 ) identified the key issues of job design research and practice to motivate employees’ performance and concluded that a dynamic managerial learning framework is required to enhance employees’ performance to meet global challenges. Vuori and Okkonen ( 2012 ) stated that motivation helps to share knowledge through an intra-organizational social media platform which can help the organization to reach its goals and objectives. Den and Verburg ( 2004 ) found the impact of high performing work systems, also called human resource practices, on perceptual measures of firm performance. Ashmos and Duchon ( 2000 ) recognizes that employees have both a mind and a spirit and seek to find meaning and purpose in their work, and an aspiration to be part of a community, hence making their jobs worthwhile and motivating them to do at a high level with a view to personal and social development.

Methodology

The primary objective to write this review is to highlight the flow of motivation and reveals what motivation technique works more efficiently in different stages of life. This study provides useful managerial implication for employee motivation in an organization. The dimensions are made fit into a model that can benefit organization to enhance their performance; however, the model needs to validate through case study or quantitative study. To study the various issues highlighted in this study related to employee motivation, this study reviews a large body of literature mainly in different journals. Once all the issues have been identified, each issue is used as a keyword to search the relevant literature. To make the study more current only those studies are included which are published in the last two decades, while priority is given to studies which are published in the last decade. Table  1 shows that the number of articles or reviews published on motivation in the last two decades (Table  2 ).

Dimensions of motivation

Training refers to ‘‘the systematic accretion of skills, command, concepts or mindset leads to improve performance’’ (Lazazzara and Bombelli 2011 ). Baldwin et al. ( 1991 ) indicates that individuals with higher pre-training motivation on the basis of their willingness to attend training have greater learning outcomes as compared to individuals heaving lower pre-training motivation. Commeiras et al. ( 2013 ) point out that traineeship is continuing to grow. In business, context training basically refers to action of teaching employees and providing proper knowledge and skills to make themselves job fit as well as organization fit. Training teaches employees how to work and enhance their skills, hence motivate them to achieve the common goal of organization as well as of employee. In the today’s competitive world, every organization wants to achieve competitive edge over their competitors and be impossible to achieve without employee involvement, which forces management to motivate their employees by different means.

Monetary incentives

As summarized by Park ( 2010 ), monetary incentive acts as a stimulus for greater action and inculcates zeal and enthusiasm toward work, it helps an employee in recognition of achievement. Likewise, Beretti et al. ( 2013 ) discussed that monetary incentives used to build a positive environment and maintain a job interest, which is consistent among the employee and offer a spur or zeal in the employees for better performance. For reason, monetary incentive motivate employees and enhance commitment in work performance, and psychologically satisfy a person and leads to job satisfaction, and shape the behavior or outlook of subordinate toward work in the organization.

Job transfer

The work of Azizi and Liang ( 2013 ) indicated that workforce flexibility can be achieved by cross-training and improved via job rotation. In the same way, Eguchi ( 2004 ) concluded that job transfer plays a significant role in preventing workers from performing influence activities for private help. As summarized by Asensio-Cuesta et al. ( 2012 ) job rotation provides benefits to both workers and management in an organization and prevents musculoskeletal disorders, cast out fatigue and increases job satisfaction and morale. As a result, job transfer gives the opportunity to learn multiple skills and outlooks to the workers. It avoids the dullness caused by monotonous jobs and simultaneously brings smoothness in technological job with the help of handling different circumstances at different levels and it leads to effective learning of many aspects in the organization.

Job satisfaction

In ( 2011 ), Parvin and Kabir studied the tested factors affecting job satisfaction for pharmaceutical companies and described job satisfaction as how content an individual is with his or her job, and viewed job satisfaction is not the same as motivation, although clearly linked. Similarly, Pantouvakis and Bouranta ( 201 3) indicated job satisfaction as a consequence of physical features and as an antecedent of interactive features. Wickramasinghe ( 2009 ) investigated that gender and tenure are significant in job satisfaction measurement. So here it can be said that job satisfaction is often determined by how well outcome meet or exceed expectations. For example, a good work environment and good work conditions can increase employee job satisfaction and the employees will try to give their best which can increase the employee work performance.

A study by García et al. ( 2012 ) identified that perceptions of promotion systems affect organizational justice and job satisfaction. Likewise, Koch and Nafziger ( 2012 ) specified that promotions are desirable for most employees, only because they work harder to compensate for their “incompetence.” As a result, promotion at regular interval of time has an optimistic approach behind and they are generally given to satisfy the psychological requirements of employees in the organization.

Achievement

The work of Hunter et al. ( 2012 ) defines that achievement is a unique and specialized form of organizational performance. As per Satyawadi and Ghosh ( 2012 ), employees are motivated to a greater extent by achievement and self-control. Now this can be understood: an employee who is achievement motivated seeks achievement, bringing realistic but challenging goals, and betterment in the job. There is a strong need for feedback from the higher officials in the organization as to achievement and progress, and a need for a sense of attainment.

Working conditions

In ( 2012 ), Jung and Kim stated that good work environment and good work conditions can increase employee job satisfaction and an employee organizational commitment. So the employees will try to give their best which can increase the employee work performance. Similarly, Cheng et al. ( 2013 ) concluded that there were evidences of moderating effects of age on the associations between psychosocial work conditions and health. Now the importance and the need of working condition is so describing or defining the physical environment by identifying those elements or dimensions of the physical environment. Employees having poor working conditions will only provoke negative performance, since their jobs are mentally and physically demanding, they need good working conditions.

Appreciation

A study by Mahazril et al. ( 2012 ) organizations had the duty to appreciate the employee from time to time and offer other form of benefits such as payment, which will help in employee motivation. Likewise, Kingira and Mescib ( 2010 ) define appreciation as the abstract of immaterial incentives; “employees giving immaterial incentives (appreciation, respect etc.) as much as materiel incentives with working department” shows employees do not agree with this behavioral statement. With this result, it can be stated that employees being employed in different parts can take their different opinions at different levels. Among the variable of responsibility and being appreciated, it is understood that “success of employers always be appreciated with education.” The more effective quality and practicality of education employees had, the more contribution they will have to businesses.

Job security

As per Yamamoto ( 2013 ) if an employee perceives they will be getting rewards for good work and their job is a secured one, the performance will automatically be better. Similarly, Zhang and Wu ( 2004 ) indicated that with Job security, an employee gets confident with the future career and they put their most efforts to achieve the objectives of the organization. So we can say job satisfaction is the most influential tool of motivation and put the employee very far off from mental tension and he gives his best to the organization, ultimately it leads to profit maximization.

Recognition

According to Candi et al. ( 2013 ), a growing recognition of the opportunities of innovation is through experience staging. Mahazril et al. ( 2012 ) concluded that rewards and recognition and communication may motivate them to work. Recognition enhances the level of productivity and performance at job whether it is a first time performance or a repeated action at the job in a progressive way and ultimately reinforces the behavior of employee.

Social opportunities

In ( 2013 ), Harvey indicated that an employee is accepted as part of the social group or team. Most staff has an acute need that their contribution is worthwhile, appreciated, and acknowledged. Organizations need to look beyond the traditional economic incentives of career opportunities and salaries to other social and lifestyle factors outside the workplace. Similarly, Kingira and Mescib ( 2010 ) concluded that, different opinions between the employees in terms of behavioral statements which can be “Social opportunities providing at the highest level with working period leads the employee to achieve their goals of the organization.” Therefore, a social opportunity for the employee is used to boost their motivation level and ultimately helps in achieving the goals and objectives of the organization.

Figure  1 explains how motivation works in different stages of life, and motivation dimension plays a vital role in enhancing individual performance in different stages of life of human being. In the developed and developing nations around the world people experiencing the phenomenon of population aging i.e., participation of worker in their late career stage is low in the labor market. Levinson’s ( 1986 ) life stage model pointed out that adult life is characterized by a consecution of stages, such as early, middle, and late career stage, divided into various sub-stages and concerned with career development (comparable to the career stage model of Super (1984)). Here we have considered early career stage between 20 and 40; middle career stages between 40 and 54, and late career stage 55 and above. In an effort to set a threshold to define the older worker category, as anyone over age 55 (Finkelstein et al. 1995 ; Koc-Menard 2009 ).

Flow of motivation

In the early and middle stage of life, money is important to goal setting because offering such incentives bring person being more willing to expand effort to meet a given goal level than not offering the incentives. Given the willingness to expand effort, a goal tells the individual during different career stages where to expand effort, how much effort to exert, and how long to exert the effort. For example, younger employees early in their careers may have a propensity for higher immediate compensation and benefits, such as fully paid family medical plans or maternity/paternity leaves; because employees in later career stages might prefer stock options or most company contributions to their retirement plans. Wiley ( 1997 ) concluded that good pay is an important motivator regardless of age.

Figure  2 explains how motivation dimensions influence individual and organization performance. In this competitive environment, organizations works harder to integrate its workforce and to keep the coordination among employees to enhance the working as well as employee productivity. The positive impact of motivation works toward enhancing individual responsiveness toward work. Individual enhanced responsiveness help organization working that directly links toward increase in profit and increase in organization responsiveness. Customer will be more satisfied if organization shows fast response toward his/her queries and if organization takes responsibility to fulfill his demand.

Theoretical construct of research dimensions

If we talk the motivation dimension that enhances organization performance, training used to enhance the skills, efficiency, and knowledge of employees for doing a particular job during their earlier career stage because it familiarizes them with the organizations goals, rules, and regulations and the working conditions in one hand since updates and amendments take place in technology, purchasing a new equipment, changes in technique of production, and computer impartment. The employees are trained for use of new equipments and work methods. Training molds the thinking of employees and leads to quality performance of employees. Supervisors believe that older workers are less motivated to learn, less flexible, and do not want to take part in training programs. So, companies do not invest in training or development opportunities for older people. In turn, older workers become less self-confident due to the lack of support in terms of training and their skills rapidly become outdated (Maurer 2001 ; Van Vianen et al. 2011 ).

Giving a job security to an employee makes him more responsible toward job. Job security can be explained as, affirmation that an employee has for the continuity of gainful employment for his or her job. It is more essential for younger employee during different career stages of life (job) because it arises from the terms of contract of employment, labor legislation that results in prevention of arbitrary termination, layoffs, and lockout. Likewise, Pravin and Kabir ( 2011 ) indicated that with job security in pharmaceutical companies employee is “neither happy nor unhappy” and hence influence job satisfaction in pharmaceutical companies. Job security has been considered from several theoretical perspectives, including as a motivational precursor to job performance.

Employee recognition is used to fulfill the inherent need to appreciate as well as work to be validated by the employee contribution. During the early and later stage of life of the employee, the most important tool to motivate the employee by recognizing positive behavior from employees means that those desired behaviors that drive business success will be reciprocated. Recognition is essential to an outstanding workplace because people want to be respected and valued for their contribution. Recognizing employee for their good work sends an extremely powerful message to the recipient, their work team, and other employees through formal and informal communication channels. Employee recognition is a dynamic communication technique to improve employee performance which leads to enhance organizational performance.

In an organization, it is important to make the employees valued and appreciated, because of which they get motivated and they work harder and be more loyal toward the organization. During the early and middle career stage of the job employee want more appreciation from his next boss in the organization. Many ways of appreciating employee are news for companies looking for inexpensive ways to show appreciation to employees who made an appreciative effort, to thank employees several times a week, often through notes mailed to their homes and admits an employee-of-the-month program, the least time-consuming way to make sure his staff continued to appreciate.

In an organization employees have the opportunity to transfer to another job if they are moving or have the want to switch occupations. It brings positive energy among the early career stage employee to work in a new environment, which gives workers the opportunity to learn multiple skills and outlooks. When employees continue working at the same tasks for an extended time, they are likely to build tight relationships with particular individuals and companies, which can yield help to the employees, and to the organization.

In the early stage of the employee, they used to seek the working environment and aspects of an employee’s terms and conditions of employment. This includes the employee payment, organization of work, and work activities; training, skills, and employability; amenities, physical environment, health, safety, and well-being; and working time and work–life balance. These used to motivate the employee to do better and achieve the organizational goals and objectives. Changes in working conditions and other aspects of the employment relationship can generate serious industrial relations problems.

Williams et al. ( 2003 ) argues that the job satisfaction works toward making good relationships with staff and colleagues, control of time off, enough resources, and bring autonomy for employee in the organization. It is essential in the stages of employment i.e., early, middle, and late career stage of life because it brings any combination of physiological, psychological, satisfaction that invokes a person truthfully to say I am satisfied with my current job and it leads to employee motivation to achieve goals of the organization. Job satisfaction refers doing a job one enjoys, and being rewarded for one’s accomplishment. It is the key ingredient that leads to recognition, income, promotion, and the achievement of other goals that lead to a feeling of fulfillment of the desired goals and objectives (Kaliski 2007 ).

In the middle and late career stages of their employment, employees have an opportunity to showcase their achievements with pride. Employees work in organizations not just to make a living, but to make a life. It encourages heightened ownership at work. Tangible benefits (salary) and intangible benefits (achievements of the knowledge) and other perks are necessary to engage employees, and motivate them to do their personal best. Mehta et al. ( 2000 ) pointed out that four most highly ranked rewards for sales managers in the late career stage have mean values that exceed 6.0, which includes achievement of market goals, retaining respect of salespeople, opportunities for promotion, and bonus.

A motivated and dedicated employee in the middle career stage of their job in the organization is an asset for any organization and proves instrumental in building a high-performance culture that drives organizational advancement. Promotion is always employee’s ultimate wish for the service rendered by him in the organization and this is the only way for an employee career development. Promotion is the ultimate motivating for any employee because it moves employee forward in hierarchy of concern organization added with other responsibility, higher respect, honors, with increase in grade pay and allowances. It stimulates self-development and creates interest in the job in one hand and minimizes discontent and unrest.

In the late career stage of their employment social opportunities for employees to get involved in leveraging the core competencies of the organization to create business value and positive social change can increase employee motivation and job satisfaction and help workers to more effectively manage job stress. This can lead to positive gains for the organization by enhancing organizational effectiveness and improving work quality, as well as by helping the organization attract and keep top-quality employees, which can bring growth and development to the organizations and can improve the quality of their employees’ work experience and realize the benefits of developing workers to their full potential.

Concluding remarks

Motivation works as a catalyzer for individual employees working for an organization to enhance their working performance or to complete task in much better way than they usually do. In this paper, authors identified the key motivation techniques from existing literature and linked it through organization performance. These motivation techniques has long been acknowledged as an important personnel work with the potential to improve employee motivation and hence performance, and to deliver management with the control needed to achieve organizational objectives. Authors made flow of motivation from early career motivation techniques to late career motivation techniques and reached on a conclusion: if employees are provided with right motivation technique at right time, their morale and confidence goes up and had a direct positive impact in individual performance and organizational performance. It is indicative of the above discussion, most of the motivation dimensions viz. training, monetary incentives, promotion, and working conditions has been met and for reason the efforts made to motivate are bound to succeed. This conclusion is built on the emphasis made by earlier researchers to motivate people, organizations need to first have the baseline in place; in the absence of the baseline, motivation is not possible to achieve. The study has shown success in intrinsic motivators and extrinsic motivators to improve performance in the organization.

The major limitation of this study is that the proposed framework is designed on basis of extensive literature review and so needs to be confirmed using quantitative measures. This framework is not been implemented in specific industry, due to its generality in nature. Although extensive research is reviewed and every possible dimensions of motivation are studied, it cannot be stated explicitly that these dimensions will be able to create the baseline which will motivate the employees through the motivators. Thus, they create a dilemma as to whether these motivation dimensions are enough to create a solid baseline which has an impact on the motivators.

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Employee motivation and job performance: a study of basic school teachers in Ghana

• Joseph Ato Forson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5997-5713 1 ,
• Eric Ofosu-Dwamena 2 ,
• Rosemary Afrakomah Opoku 3 &
• Samuel Evergreen Adjavon   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2713-3327 4  

Future Business Journal volume  7 , Article number:  30 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Motivation as a meaningful construct is a desire to satisfy a certain want and is a central pillar at the workplace. Thus, motivating employees adequately is a challenge as it has what it takes to define employee satisfaction at the workplace. In this study, we examine the relationship between job motivation factors and performance among teachers of basic schools in Ghana. The study employs a quantitative approach on a sample of 254 teachers from a population of 678 in the Effutu Municipality of Ghana, of which 159 questionnaires were duly answered and returned (representing 62.6% return rate). Using multiple regression and ANOVA, the study finds compensation package, job design and environment and performance management system as significant factors in determining teacher’s motivation in the municipality. Thus, these motivation factors were significant predictors on performance when regressed at a decomposed and aggregated levels. These findings support the self-determination theory, more specifically on the explanations advanced under the controlled and autonomous motivation factors. Significant differences were also observed in teachers’ performance among one of the age cohorts. The study urges the municipal directorate of education to make more room for young teacher trainees and interns who are at the formative stage of their careers to be engaged to augment the experienced staff strength. More should be done to make the profession attain some level of autonomy in the discharge of duty to breed the next genre of innovative educators in the municipality.

Introduction

Motivation as a meaningful construct is a central pillar at the workplace. Thus, motivating employees adequately is a challenge as it has what it takes to define employee satisfaction at the workplace. Quite a number of studies have been devoted to the link between motivation and its constituent factors and employee performance in different organizations [ 7 , 46 ]. Our study draws inspiration from the self-determination theory (SDT) advanced by Deci et al. [ 14 ] as a framework that can be applied to teachers motivation and performance in basic schools in Ghana. It is worth noting that SDT differentiates between controlled motivation and autonomous motivation. The latter is evident when individuals are faced with pressure and control. The former on the other hand emphasizes on the volitional nature of the behavior of individuals. The SDT provides evidence that suggests that motivation fuels performance [ 14 , 57 ].

In Ghana, the subject of motivation has always been at the apex of national agenda and is evident in the number of strike actions in the public service. In the early part of the 2000s, teachers were part of the public servants whose agitation for improved condition of service did not go unnoticed. Forson and Opoku [ 16 ] had stated that teachers’ emolument accounted for less than 35% of the public service wage bill although teachers were perceived to be in the majority in terms of numbers. This phenomenon did spark a wave of attrition of trained teachers to other sectors of the Ghanaian economy. The teaching profession as a matter of fact became a launched pad for the youth. It should be said that the nature of the school setting is basically a function of internal management and leadership. The head teacher or director of education as the Chief Executive needs to appreciate and recognize that results can be obtained through people. In today’s world, organizations are concerned with what should be done to achieve sustained high level of performance through people who are innovative thinkers [ 4 , 17 , 41 ]. These include paying more attention to how individuals can best be motivated and provision of an atmosphere that helps individuals to deliver on their mandates in accordance with the expectations of management [ 25 ]. This means that an educational manager or an individual engaged as a teacher cannot do this job without knowing what motivates people. The building of motivating factors into organizational roles and the entire process of leading people should be contingent on knowledge of motivation. Koontz and Weinrich [ 25 ] agree that the educational managers’ job is not to manipulate people but rather to recognize what motivates people.

A national debate ensued on the significant role played by teachers in nation building and the need to address the shortfall in the condition of service of teachers to motivate them to perform. Wider consultative meetings were held with stakeholders in the teaching fraternity and the outcome and the panacea was the introduction of a uniform pay structure based on qualification. The legislative arm of government passed Act 737 in 2007 that saw the birth of the Fair Wages Salary Commission (FWSC). The mandate of the commission was to ensure a fair and systematic implementation of government pay policy [ 18 ]. Although this has stabilized the teaching profession in terms of the level of attrition, concerns on how this inducement translate into teacher’s performance seem to dominate national discourse especially in the face of fallen standard of education in Ghana. Such concerns have raised questions such as the following: (1) Does pay rise correlate with performance? (2) Are there other factors that ought to be considered in the nexus between motivation and performance? (3) Are there any significant differences in the level of performance among various age cohorts (4) Do educational background motivate teachers to perform better? These and other questions are addressed in this study.

The objective of this paper is to examine the link between job motivation factors and performance among basic school teachers in Ghana. This is against the backdrop that teachers have for some time now complained about condition of service and with the passage of FWSC bill, one would have thought that would have impacted on performance of teachers as it has been proven that motivation leads to satisfaction and ultimately to high performance. The standard of education continues to be a major concern in the educational setup of Ghana.

We organize the paper as follows: section one is the introduction that sets the tone for the paper. The problem is defined in this section, and the necessary questions that warrant redress are asked. We continue with a brief literature review on the concept of motivation, leading to the development of a conceptual framework and hypothesis based on the self-determination theory (SDT). Section two focuses on the method deployed, with emphasis on the aim, design and setting of the study. The theoretical equation for the multiple regression is brought to the fore here. Section three is the results and discussion, and section four concludes with policy implications.

The concept of motivation and self-determination theory (SDT)

Maslow [ 33 ] is credited for being part of the early contributors of human motivation concept. Maslow classifies human needs that motivate them into two: (1) homeostasis and (2) finding that appetites (preferential choices among foods). The former refers to the body’s automatic efforts to maintain a constant, normal state of the blood stream. The latter concept, on the other hand, is of the view that if the body lacks some chemical, the individual will tend (in an imperfect way) to develop a specific appetite or partial hunger for that missing food element. Thus, Maslow was of the view that any of the physiological needs and the consummatory behavior involved with them serve as channels for all sorts of other needs. Relating this assertion to teachers and the need for a salary pay rise, it should be pointed out that a person who thinks he is hungry may actually be seeking more for comfort, or dependence and managers in the educational sector ought to know this. Contemporary researches have expanded on the theory of motivation as advanced by Maslow [ 33 , 34 ]. For an organization to thrive and be efficient, certain conditions ought to be available in order for managers to get the best out of its human resources (workers/employees). Employees of an organization are the greatest asset in a dynamic and competitive environment [ 49 ]. In the words of Martin [ 32 ], if an organization wants to be effective and aims to sustain the success for a longer period of time, it is important for it to have a motivated workforce made up of employees ready to learn. The last three decades have witnessed an avalanche of studies that emphasizes on the point that employee motivation is essential for the success of a business [ 2 ].

In exploring further on this connection, Mifflin [ 35 ] delved into the fundamental meaning of the word “motivation” and pointed out that it is a Latin word which means to move. Therefore, it is near impossible to move peoples’ behavior in an organization unless such move is triggered by certain incentives. Robins and Coulter [ 49 ] explained the term motivation as the desire and willingness to exert high level of inspiration to reach organizational goals, conditioned by the efforts ability to satisfy some individual need. In this study, we define motivation simply as the act of moving people triggered by the provision of some incentives to achieve a desired goal.

In the words of Deci and Ryan [ 13 ], the SDT focuses on human beings inherent desire to bring change and progress as they advance to their fullest potential. Several studies have applied the SDT in various research areas that includes education, medicine and other organizational context. The SDT is of the view that individuals are by nature active entities who will do everything possible to be integrated into the wider social environment in an attempt to be responsive to the behavior consistent with existing self. The theory according to Trépanier et al. [ 57 ] defines social context as the workplace which facilitate or frustrate ones striving toward self-determination.

The SDT theory has two major forms of motivation which may be differentiated on the basis of its nature and quality according to Howard et al. [ 22 ]. When employees engage in interesting activities or in pursuance of their needs, such a form of motivation is ascribed as autonomous motivation. Such a form of motivation facilitates employees’ vitality and energy including satisfaction and well-being [ 14 ]. When employees engage in activities out of pressure as a result of external factors such as attaining rewards including threat of being punished, or even endogenous sources of such pressure as maintaining self-esteem, want of approval, image management or avoiding guilt, such a form of motivation can be ascribed as controlled motivation. Gillet et al. [ 20 ] explain that people with controlled motivational behavior do so out of reason as long as these contingencies exist and thus it predicts maladaptive work outcomes (e.g., exhaustion of personal energy) and turnover intentions.

SDT and job performance

According to Motowildo et al. [ 38 ], job performance is a construct that elicits behavior related to achievement with evaluative components. Most studies on this relationship have emphasized on the role of autonomous and intrinsic motivation on performance with the argument that individuals autonomously motivated have certain inherent values and behaviors and thus give off optimal performance. The theory of self-determination explains that autonomous motivation should be the necessary ingredient for better performance. That is, when individuals are better informed about the purpose of their job and have a sense of ownership and the degree of freedom to operate (autonomy), the possibility of they performing better at work may be high. The source of such motivation according to Deci et al. [ 14 ] may be from one’s interest and values. It is purpose-driven, amplifies energy, enjoyable and provides enough rationalization for tasks to be accomplished effectively. Moreover, the intrinsic component of autonomous motivation has been linked with job performance in related literature and types of performance [ 7 ].

Empirically, there are evidence to suggest that autonomous motivation is linked with performance. Evidence pertaining to controlled motivation is less dispositive. Proponents of the SDT have argued that controlled motivation (e.g., performance management systems) could reduce employee functioning because action derived from personal values and interest may be disconnected, therefore leading to negative effects on performance [ 48 ]. Counter argument posits that controlled motivation may foster employee willingness to complete tasks in an attempt to avoid guilt or punishment or to earn external reward which may come in the form of compensation package [ 27 ]. In this study, we focus on both the controlled and autonomous motivational factors. More specifically, we focus on Herzberg et al. [ 21 ] motivators validated by Harvard Business Review in 2003 which were made up of two motivators: (1) intrinsic factors such as achievement, recognition for achievement, the work itself, growth, responsibility and advancement, and (2) extrinsic factors such as supervision, working conditions, payment, interpersonal relationship, appreciation and company policy. Therefore, the bundle of motivators used in this study are similar to the aforementioned ones and may include performance management systems, external rewards that come in the form of compensation packages, job environment and training and development [ 30 ]. We explain these constructs further with the empirical evidence leading to the development of the conceptual framework.

• Compensation package

Rasheed et al. [ 44 ] posit that package of compensation offered to teachers in institutions of higher learning has to be made based on several factors that may include the experience that underpins the abilities of the teacher, qualifications and perhaps market rates. This is supported by Bohlander et al. [ 6 ] who argued that teachers compensation ought to be the most central concern for managers and administrators of schools in stimulating them. Most of these research studies are premised on the fact that compensation should be designed to meet the needs of teachers and has be fashioned in the form of tangible rewards. In corroborating this assertion, Marlow et al. [ 31 ] observed that low condition of service defined by salary creates stress among teachers in schools. Thus, teachers’ condition of service should be market competitive in order to get higher motivation and to maintain them. Other studies have found that salary levels have been the main challenge for education managers and are the reason for the high attrition and that education planners and managers should pay attention to the design of compensation packages.

Job design and working environment

The needs of teachers on the job ought to be planned properly. The workload on teachers should not be such that it will de-motivate [ 44 ], p. 103. Teachers at all levels should have a learning environment, and educational administrators should make a point to treat existing human resource (teachers) with maximum respect devoid of any discrimination.

Nowadays, job design is the central focus of managers and human resource researchers. Thus, a well-designed job has what it takes in getting interest of employees. On the contrary, poorly designed job breeds boredom among employees. Davidson [ 12 ] makes an important observation and remarked in his research that when teachers are overloaded and burdened with so many non-teaching activities, it portends as a hindrance in the job design. Other scholars such as Clarke and Keating [ 9 ] have argued that the working environment of an educational institution affects teachers’ motivation. Clarke and Keating [ 9 ] found students to be the main reason why teachers are motivated in schools. His emphasis was on talented and hardworking students who boost the morale of teachers. Students who do not produce the desired results, on the other hand, de-motivate teachers. Moreover, class size is another important consideration in motivating teachers. Other variants of the job design and environment are captured in Ofoegbu [ 39 ] research in which he argued that institutions provide support in the form of resources to the teachers in the form of computers with Internet connections. Moreover, other factors such as the provision of e-libraries and research equipment, and other logistics for students may also serve as an effective motivator for teachers.

Performance management system

Management of teachers and educational administrators in all levels of education should focus on implementing basic performance management systems to continually appraise teachers’ accomplishments. For instance, the use of a so-called 360-degree feedback system is important where students’ feedback is attended to with the attention it deserves.

Stafyarakis [ 53 ] corroborated this and asserted that ‘Annual Confidential Reports’ have become obsolete. Yet there has been an emergence of a scientific approach on the field of performance management as time goes on. In discussing this further, Milliman [ 37 ] is of the view that although there are many practices available in this field, but a performance management system based on 360-degree feedback approach is the most effective.

Contrary to the norm that teachers are most motivated by the intrinsic factors and least motivated by the monetary aspects of teaching, Rao [ 43 ] demonstrates that poor appraisal systems, lack of recognition and lack of respect from the head and other co-workers are some common reasons of distress and de-motivation among teachers in educational institutions. The lack of recognition from supervisors is one of the many reasons why teachers would want to leave the teaching profession Stafyarakis [ 53 ].

Moreover, Rasheed et al. [ 45 ] points out that teachers are much concerned about students’ feedback; hence, feedback from the students should be given a proper weightage and in appraising and managing teachers’ performance in the institutions of higher education. Jordan [ 23 ] stressed that the feedback of students is a major issue of that motivates teachers and therefore teachers should be given feedback from their students in scientific manners.

Training and development

It is of significance that educational administrators focus on training activities as an essential means of both motivating employees and sustaining the survival of that organization according to Photanan [ 42 ] and Bohlander et al. [ 6 ]. Leslie [ 28 ] identified professional growth as basic motivator for teachers. He stressed that the professional learning platform available to a teacher is the basic path of his/her career development [ 29 ].

Conceptual framework and hypothesis development

In this section, the study harmonizes the components of the SDT theory into a conceptual framework on motivation and performance connection. The framework developed in this research may be useful as a guide by academicians and practitioners in understanding the mechanisms through which motivational factors affect job performance among teachers in the Effutu Municipality of Ghana. On elucidating on what a framework is, Chinn and Kramer [ 8 ] explained that a framework can be seen as a complex mental formulation of experience. Further clarification was given to distinguish conceptual framework from a theoretical framework. They assert that while theoretical framework is the theory on which the study is based, the conceptual framework deals with the operationalization of the theory. Put in another way, it represents the position of the researcher on the problem at hand and at the same time gives direction to the study. It may be entirely new, or an adoption of, or adaptation of, a model used in previous research with modification to fit the context of the inquiry [ 8 ].

The framework developed in this research has three components: the first component looks at the factors necessary to induce motivation among teachers. The second component focuses on motivation as a concept. The last component which is on job performance looks at the link between the aggregate motivational factors and performance. The extant literature survey on motivational factors and performance provides all the necessary ingredients for the construction of the framework. First, the extant literature shows that motivation as a concept is simply the act of moving people triggered by the provision of some incentives to achieve a desired goal. The triggers of motivation may include such factors such as compensation packages, job design and working environment, performance management system and training and development which are controlled and autonomous factors as crucial elements for motivation.

The second component of the framework is the aggregate motivation, which is the interaction of the controlled and autonomous factors of motivation. Motivation according to Reeve (2001) refers to the excitement level, the determination and the way a person works hard at his work setting. Ricks et al. [ 47 ] explicating on the thesis of motivation was of the view that motivation is an internal aspiration of a man that compels him to reach an objective or the goal set for him.

The third component of the framework is performance. According to Culture IQ [ 11 ] and Motowildo et al. [ 38 ], job performance is the assessment of whether an employee has done their job well. It is an individual evaluation (one measured based on a single person’s effort). In the words of Viswesvaran and Ones [ 58 ], p. 216, the term job performance is used in reference to actions that are scalable, behavior and outcomes that employees engage in or bring about that are linked with and contribute to the goals of an organization. It is linked to both employee- and organizational-level outcomes. A distinctive feature of the framework developed in this research is that it shows the interaction between autonomous and controlled factors and motivation and how it affects the performance of teachers in Fig.  1 .

Source : Created by the authors

A Conceptual model of the relationship between Motivation and Teachers’ Performance.

It can be visibly seen from the framework that teachers motivation may be defined by both controlled and intrinsic motivational factors that may include those that fall under compensation packages, working environment, performance management system and training and development of teachers [ 44 ]. Yet the performance of teachers in itself motivates management and policy makers to institute compensation packages, improved psychological aura through enhanced working environment and job design and implementing appropriate performance management policy for a continued performance enhancement. It should also be emphasized here that these job satisfaction factors may pass as job motivational factors and theorize that a highly motivated teacher may be related to the level of satisfaction.

Scholars such as Thus Milda et al. [ 36 ] and Spector [ 52 ] collectively share the opinion that teachers differ from typical employees in various ways. Therefore, instruments that usually measure such job satisfaction and motivation dimensions as appreciation, communication, coworkers, fringe benefits, job conditions, nature of work, organization itself, organizations’ policies and procedures, pay, personal growth, promotion opportunities, recognition, security, supervision may not always match with teachers’ motivation aspects on the teaching field. However, some of these factors according to some researchers can be used in understanding motivation and performance among teachers. The consensus on these dimensions is especially on supervision, work itself, promotion and recognition being important dimensions of teachers’ motivation at work [ 50 , 51 , 56 ]. In addition, several researchers have used the same measurement or dimension but with different wording (synonym). For instance, Kreitner and Kinici [ 26 ] define job satisfaction with the synonym “motivation” which they argue contains “those psychological processes that cause the arousal, direction and persistence of voluntary actions that are goal directed” Motivation depends on certain intrinsic, as well as extrinsic factors which in collaboration results in fully committed employees. Based on this relationship, we hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 1

Teachers’ compensation package, job environment and design, performance management systems, training and development significantly affect teachers’ motivation.

In a similar manner, Board [ 5 ] asserted that tangible incentives are effective in increasing performance for task not done before, to encourage “thinking smarter” and to support both quality and quantity to achieve goals. Incentives, rewards and recognitions are the prime factors that impact on employee motivation. Aarabi et al. [ 1 ] confirmed this assertion by making use of factors such as payment, job security, promotion, freedom, friendly environment, and training and employee job performance to measure the term organizational motivation with positive relationship found on these factors. On rewards (which comes in various forms, e.g., income/pay, bonus, fringe benefits among others ) and recognition/appreciation, according to other researchers keep high spirit among employees which boost employee’s morale which may have a direct impact on performance and output. The study hypothesizes that:

Hypothesis 2

Teacher’s motivation positively affects their performance.

The aim, design and setting of the study

The paper aims to examine the link between motivation factors and performance among basic school teachers in Ghana. Data for this study were collected from primary. Primary data were sourced from the field of study through questionnaire administration. The researchers sought for permission from the municipal directorate of education to engage with teachers within the municipality. A written permission was granted, and questionnaires were administered to all basic schools’ teachers in the municipality.

At the preparatory stage, the questionnaires designed were tested to make sure participants understood the demands of the questions in the questionnaires. Informal interviews method has been adopted to make sure that additional information that could not have been gathered through the use of questionnaires was captured. The formal interviews using questionnaires ensured that we stayed focused on the background objective that formed the basis of the study.

Sampling technique and data analysis

On the determination of the sample size, different authors have differing views, but in most cases, the recommendation is that it should be large. Stevens [ 54 ] recommends at least 15 participants per predictor for reliable equation in the case of factor analysis. Tabachnick and Fidel [ 55 ] provides a formula for calculating sample size requirements, taking into consideration the number of independent variables that one wish to use: N  > 50 + 8  m (where m  = number of independent variables). In line with these and other requirements like Yamane [ 60 ], the exact sample size will be determined and questionnaires distributed accordingly to the selected public and private schools in the Effutu Municipality.

The human resource unit of the educational directorate of education in the municipality has indicated that there are over 678 teachers teaching at various levels in the municipality [ 15 ]. Thus, the 678 teachers become the population in the municipality. Using Yamane [ 60 ] and validating with other sampling size technique, a sample size of 254 has been adopted with a 0.5 level of precision. Thus, 254 questionnaires were distributed among the various schools, but 159 were filled and returned (representing 62.6% return rate).

Quantitative data are analyzed by means of a software called Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 20). This is necessitated by the fact that the analyzed quantitative data ought to be presented by graphs to give quick visual impression of what it entails.

The scale measurement of the questionnaires included nominal scale, ordinal and intervals. Questionnaires used were segmented to capture the demographic characteristics of the respondents and the constructs that feeds into the multi-level latent variables using a five-point Likert scale (see [ 19 , 24 ]). A verification was done to assess the suitability of the data for factor analysis with the expectation that Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy ( \({\mathrm{i.e}}., {\rm KMo}\ge 0.6)\) and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity value are significant ( p  = 0.05), which was the case for our sample data. In measuring some of the latent variables, the study developed a 9-scale item on compensation package with the following loadings (e.g., how high is your qualification and pay ( \(\alpha =0.72)\) , “is your experience linked to your current pay?” ( \(\alpha =0.80)\) , “are you satisfied with the market premium” ( \(\alpha =0.75)\) etc.). All items were rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = “not important” to 5 = “very important.” A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) indicates that the hypothesized correlated 3-factor structure fits well with the responds of the participants ( \({\chi }^{2}/df = 2.01, {\rm RMR}=0.05,{\rm RMSEA}=0.06,{\rm TLC}=0.94,{\rm CFI}=0.94)\) .

Job design and working environment was measured by a 7-item scale based on questions such as “how do you perceive your workload” ( \(\alpha =0.88)\) , “does your work type offer learning environment?” ( \(\alpha =0.83),\) “Are you inspired by your working environment?” ( \(\alpha =0.87)\) , “Talented student boost morale” ( \(\alpha =0.84)\) etc. Similarly, all items were rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = “not important” to 5 = “very important.” A confirmatory factor analysis reveals that the hypothesized one-factor structure fits well with the data ( \({\chi }^{2}/df = 3.06, {\rm RMR}=0.05,{\rm RMSEA}=0.06,{\rm TLC}=0.94,{\rm CFI}=0.94)\) .

Performance management system was assessed using a 9-item scale based on these inferences (e.g., “number of times supervisor visits” ( \(\alpha =0.69)\) , “how often are you visited by the municipal director of education” ( \(\alpha =0.78)\) , “work recognition” ( \(\alpha =0.72)\) , etc.). All constructs were rated as 1 = “not important” to 5 = “very important.” A confirmatory factor analysis reveals that the hypothesized two-factor structure was in line with the data ( \({\chi }^{2}/df=2.86, {\rm RMR}=0.05,{\rm RMSEA}=0.06,{\rm TLC}=0.94,{\rm CFI}=0.94)\) .

The last but not the least concept explored was job performance. It was assessed on a 12-item scale based on the inferences such as (e.g., “are pupils treated with respect?” ( \(\alpha\) =0.77), “do you help pupils work on their social-emotional skills?” ( \(\alpha\) = 0.69), “are you fair and consistent with pupils” ( \(\alpha\) = 0.87), etc.). All items were rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = “not important” to 5 = “very important.” A confirmatory factor analysis reveals that the hypothesized two-factor structure was in line with the data ( \({\chi }^{2}/df = 2.06, {\rm RMR} = 0.05,{\rm RMSEA} = 0.06,{\rm TLC} = 0.94,{\rm CFI} = 0.93)\) . The study proceeds to make use of the proposed measurement models to assess the relationship outlined in the conceptual model in Fig.  1 .

Hypothesized theoretical equation

Based on the conceptual model in Fig.  1 , the study makes a number of hypothesis on the relation between motivational factors and motivation itself and subsequently the link between motivation and performance. Consequently, the study model leads to two structural equations as presented below:

where JM = job motivation, CP = compensation package, JDWE = job design and working environment, PMS = performance management system, TD = training and development, JP = job performance.

Results and discussion

The study begins with a frequency distribution and descriptive statistics to capture the responses of teachers regarding the itemized construct identified in the conceptual model. Beginning with these two is borne out of the fact that the data category used in the study included categorical, ordinal and nominal variables which may be difficult to have a summary descriptive statistic.

With the understanding that every statistical approach is guided by certain principles or in most cases what has come to be known as assumptions, a diagnostic check was undertaken. Multicollinearity and singularity, for instance, look at the relationship among the independent variables. Thus, multicollinearity exists when the independent variables are highly correlated (r = 0.5 and above). The study was particular about these assumptions because multiple regression abhors them (singularity and multicollinearity). Issues concerning outliers (i.e., very high and low scores) was dealt with given the fact that multiple regression is sensitive to them. On normality, the results of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov statics were used to assess the distribution of scores. The test result was insignificant (i.e., sig. value of more than 0.05), which pointed to normality. Having done these, the study was sure there were no errors in the data and that the descriptive phase of the data used can begin.

Consistent with the general distribution of gender in the demographic characteristics of Ghana, about 63 of the teachers were female (39.6%) with 59.1% made up of male and 1.3% being transgender. The transgender teachers were foreign teachers who were here on an exchange program. Most of the teachers in the sample taught at the primary level (46.5%), followed by junior high level (43.4%) and kindergarten (8.8%), respectively. About 34.6% of the respondent responded they have taught between 6 and 10 years and 22.0% had spent between 11 and 20 years teaching. In terms of educational background, about 50.3% of the respondent have had first degree, with the remaining 49.7% being holders of teachers Cert. A or Diploma from the training colleges, and master’s degree of the returned samples. The average number of years participants have taught was observed to be 2.34 years with a corresponding standard deviation of 1.010. We present the demographic characteristics of our participants in Table 1 .

As shown in Table 2 , the compensation package scale has good internal consistency, with a Cronbach alpha coefficient reported to be around 0.725. According to Pallant [ 40 ], Cronbach alpha values above 0.7 are considered acceptable; however, values above 0.8 are preferable. Therefore, the threshold value of 0.725 means our scale is internally consistent and acceptable. Similarly, the job design and working environment scale recorded a Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.793.

Performance management on the other hand had a Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.70, yet training and development recorded a lower Cronbach alpha of 0.53, which meant it lacked internal consistency. The study had to drop training and development as factor for job motivation and proceed with the others. Job performance, however conspicuously recorded a Cronbach alpha of 0.83. In terms of the output from the correlation matrix, it can be visibly seen that the scales computed were not highly correlated and fallen below the threshold of 0.8 as recommended (see [ 40 ], p. 56). Both the assumption of singularity and multicollinearity by extension have not been violated (see Durbin Watson results) and thus the study can proceed to run the regression as per the set objectives and the conceptual model.

We go further to examine the causal effect of the factors identified as triggers of motivation on teachers’ level of motivation using ordinary least square method with multiple regression as the exact approach. Having gained credence from the test of reliability and validity, examining the causal effect becomes imperative. Using the baseline model in Eq. ( 1 ), the study concurrently runs the regression with the output shown in Tables 2 , 3 and 4 .

In model one, the study regresses compensation package with the dependent variable without controlling for other related factors. By implication what the results in model (1) seeks to explain is that, as the value of compensation package for teachers increases by 73 percentage points in the municipality, the mean of job motivation increases by that same margin. The high compensation is evidenced by government of Ghana reform in salary structure and bolstered by the effort of the Member of Parliament (MP) through the sharing of teaching and learning materials (TLMs) in the municipality. By this gesture by the MP, teachers feel appreciated and derive high motivation. Moreover, the presence of a university (University of Education, Winneba) has helped to deepen the level of motivation. The model has cross-variable variance of 52 percentage and with close to about 48 percentage unexplained as inferred from the coefficients of both coefficient of determination ( R 2 ) and adjusted coefficient of determination. Generally, the model is jointly significant ( F  = 170, p  < 0.01) with a corresponding tolerance and variable inflationary factor (VIF) of 1.

In model (2), the study varies the variables used with the inclusion of job design and working environment to examine how well the model can be through it cross-variable variance. Controlling for job design and environment shows a significant drop in the coefficient of compensation package from 0.73 to 0.53 although highly significant. Job design and environment recorded a coefficient of 0.49 which meant this indicator increases teachers’ satisfaction and thus motivation by 49 percentage points. In explaining this phenomenon, one would say that jobs that are rich in positive behavioral essentials such as autonomy, task significance and identity and feedback contribute to employees’ motivation. Government has since the introduction of its flagship program on free senior high education emphasized the significance of education across all the strata. The autonomy of heads of unit was by this directive curtailed. Heads of unit were barred from initiating policies to ease their operations. This finding is supported in the literature [ 7 , 30 , 46 ] and is aligned with the SDT. For example, head teachers who had levied pupils with printing fees were sanctioned for such initiative. Thus, by this gesture, the autonomy of the profession was in doubt and this explains why the level of motivation when this parameter is mentioned is low. With this addition, model (2) marginally sees an improvement of 0.73 in the cross-variable variance which is a significant. Model (2) was jointly significant ( F  = 170, p  < 0.01).

All the identified job motivation variables are concurrently used in model (3) to infer whether there was going to be a significant increase in the coefficient of determination and a drop in the residue. As a confirmation to the priori assumption, there was a marginal improvement of the explanatory strength of the model (R 2  = 0.88). However, the model witnessed significant drop in the coefficients. Thus, compensation package dropped further from 0.53 to 0.42 and job design and environment from 0.49 to 0.34.

It is important to note that the value of Durbin Watson test results when all the identified factors are brought together in model (3) indicate a no autocorrelation in the model which validates the earlier point of having dealt with critical assumptions that borders on autocorrelation. Moreover, both our VIF and tolerance were within the acceptable level. For instance, models (1)–(3) had a VIF score less than or equal to 1, which meant there were no issues concerning a possibility of high multicollinearity. For tolerance, there are no clear-cut cut-off point, but there is a suggestion of a tolerance greater than 0.40 according to Allison [ 3 ]. Yet Weisburd and Britt [ 59 ] are of the view that anything below 0.2 is an indication of serious multicollinearity. Inferring from these, it therefore goes to suggest that the tolerance levels of above 1 meant no multicollinearity.

In examining the relationship between the aggregated motivational factors and performance, the study brings to the fore the following findings as shown in Table 3 . The study presents four (4) different models on the relationship between motivation and performance. Model (1) regresses the aggregate motivational factors on job performance, and the findings are quite interesting to note. The job performance indicator is increased by 46% for every unit increase in motivation. This relationship can further be explained to mean a teacher within the municipality with a sense of satisfaction with his/her teaching job may feel more inclined to be at post no matter what the prevailing circumstances are. The snowball effect of this phenomenon is the reduction in absenteeism with a corresponding curb on teachers’ turnover. Although the coefficient of determination which explains the cross-variable variance is by far lower than expected ( R 2  = 0.214), the model is jointly significant ( F  = 41.44, p  < 0.01). The VIF and tolerance levels are within acceptable threshold with a Durbin Watson of 2.04 that signals a no concern of autocorrelation in the model.

Models (2)–(4) regress the decomposed job motivation factors on performance to ascertain their level of significance, and indeed, as theorized, these factors were positively significant except with lower coefficient of determinations ( R 2 ). To explain the relation in model (2), it is important to note that compensation is the output and the benefit that a teacher within the municipality receives in the form of pay, or even any form of exchanges (in kind or in cash) to increase performance. The Member of Parliament for the area as part of effort to ensure teachers are well compensated shared over 700 laptops to teachers within the municipality for effective teaching and learning. This certainly explains why the attrition rate in the municipality is low vis-à-vis high morale of teachers which largely explains the level of motivation and satisfaction.

Model (3) touches on the psychological state the teacher finds him or herself owed to the nature and state of the job. This may include the job environment and the degree of specialization. Yet in model (4), there is an exponential increase in the coefficient of performance management systems as it increases job performance within the municipality by 51 percentage point. It should be noted that performance management sets expectations for teachers’ performance and thus motivates them to work harder in ways expected by the municipal directorate of education under GES. The results in model (5) confirm earlier ones, but the inclusion of the other variables as control seems to have increased the coefficients of the various motivational factors. This partly explains the performance of the municipality in the central region in successive BECE.

Further investigation is made to understand which of the age groups is responsible for the ensuing level of performance in the municipality. To do this, the study relies on one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Here, the mean scores of more than two groups are compared using a continuous variable as the dependent variable. Having transformed the ordinal variables to continuous, it makes it quite straightforward to do this. Using the categorical independent variable of age which has more than three categories and the job performance variable which we have transformed to be continuous variable, the study undertakes a one-way between groups ANOVA with post hoc tests. Teachers were divided into four groups according to their ages (group 1: 20–30 yrs.; group 2: 31–40 yrs.; group 3: 41–50 yrs.; group 4: above 51 yrs.). There was a statistically significant difference at the \(p<0.10\) level in job performance scores for the four age groups: F (4, 159) = 0.042, p  = 0.10. Despite reaching statistical significance for one of the groups, the actual difference in mean scores between the groups was quite small. The effect size was calculated using eta squared (eta squared = 179.1/8513 = 0.02) which in Cohen’s ([ 10 ], pp. 248–7) terms is considered far too small a size. Note should be taking that Cohen categorizes 0.01 as a small effect, 0.06 as a medium effect and 0.14 as a large effect. Post hoc comparisons using the Tukey HSD test indicated that the mean score for group 1 (56.12, SD = 4.26) is significantly different from the other three groups which were insignificant. The result has theoretical soundness. Group 1 was made up of young teachers who had either returned from training colleges after completion or on internship and thus had cause to perform for a possibility of being retained or given a very good report since internship supervision forms part of the trainees’ assessment.

In this study, we examined among a host of autonomous and controlled motivational factors and their relationship to performance among basic schools’ teachers in the Effutu Municipality of Ghana. A conceptual model was developed with the necessary hypotheses formulated. Using multiple regression and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), the causal effect as shown in the model is tested.

The study finds compensation package, job design and environment and performance management system to be positively significant factors in explaining teacher’s motivation in the municipality. These job motivation factors were significant predictors on job performance. The aggregated job motivation indicator when regressed on job performance reveals a positive and significant effect. Based on the results from the ANOVA, the study recommends the municipal directorate of education to make more room for young teacher trainees who are at the formative stage of their career to be engaged to augment the experienced staff strength. More should be done to make the profession attain some level of autonomy in the discharge of duty to breed the next genre of innovative educators in the municipality. A limitation of the study is its inability to treat job motivation as a mediatory variable as captured in the framework. The study recommends future research to explore this connection.

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Abbreviations

Analysis of variance

Self-determination theory

Single spine salary structure

Fair wages salary commission

Teaching and learning materials

Member of parliament

Job motivation

Job performance

Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin

Confirmatory factor analysis

Standardized root mean square residual

Root mean square error of approximation

Statistical package for social science

Variable inflationary factor

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the Effutu Directorate of Education, particularly the Municipal Director of Education for the support during the data collection stage. We thank all the basic school teachers in the municipality who devoted time to fill and return questionnaires sent to them. We are also grateful to the Directorate for the secondary materials given to the team.

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JAF contributed 50%, EOD contributed 25%, RAO contributed 20%, and SEA contributed 5%, respectively. All authors have read and approved the manuscript.

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Forson, J.A., Ofosu-Dwamena, E., Opoku, R.A. et al. Employee motivation and job performance: a study of basic school teachers in Ghana. Futur Bus J 7 , 30 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43093-021-00077-6

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The Emerging Neuroscience of Intrinsic Motivation: A New Frontier in Self-Determination Research

Stefano i. di domenico.

1 Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University, Strathfield, NSW, Australia

Richard M. Ryan

2 Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA

Intrinsic motivation refers to people’s spontaneous tendencies to be curious and interested, to seek out challenges and to exercise and develop their skills and knowledge, even in the absence of operationally separable rewards. Over the past four decades, experimental and field research guided by self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan and Deci, 2017 ) has found intrinsic motivation to predict enhanced learning, performance, creativity, optimal development and psychological wellness. Only recently, however, have studies begun to examine the neurobiological substrates of intrinsic motivation. In the present article, we trace the history of intrinsic motivation research, compare and contrast intrinsic motivation to closely related topics (flow, curiosity, trait plasticity), link intrinsic motivation to key findings in the comparative affective neurosciences, and review burgeoning neuroscience research on intrinsic motivation. We review converging evidence suggesting that intrinsically motivated exploratory and mastery behaviors are phylogenetically ancient tendencies that are subserved by dopaminergic systems. Studies also suggest that intrinsic motivation is associated with patterns of activity across large-scale neural networks, namely, those that support salience detection, attentional control and self-referential cognition. We suggest novel research directions and offer recommendations for the application of neuroscience methods in the study of intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation refers to the spontaneous tendency “to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise one’s capacity, to explore, and to learn” (Ryan and Deci, 2000 , p.70). When intrinsically motivated, people engage in an activity because they find it interesting and inherently satisfying. By contrast, when extrinsically motivated, people engage in an activity to obtain some instrumentally separable consequence, such as the attainment of a reward, the avoidance of a punishment, or the achievement of some valued outcome. Early evidence for the distinction between these types of motivation came from experimental studies demonstrating that tangible rewards can undermine intrinsic motivation (Deci, 1971 ). That is, contrary to the ideas that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are additive or synergistically positive (e.g., Atkinson, 1964 ; Porter and Lawler, 1968 ), studies show that people experience less interest and exhibit less spontaneous engagement with activities for which they were initially intrinsically motivated after receiving tangible rewards for performing the activities (Deci et al., 1999 ).

Self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan and Deci, 2000 , 2017 ) has emerged as the principle framework for the study of intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is frequently assessed behaviorally in terms of freely pursued activities, and experientially through self-report questionnaires that probe the reasons for one’s engagement with activities, as well as specific affective states such as interest, curiosity and fun. Intrinsic motivation has also been assessed in the laboratory through the coding of specific exploratory and manipulatory behaviors and facial displays of interested engagement (Reeve and Nix, 1997 ). Since the earliest demonstrations of the undermining effect, many experimental and field studies have found intrinsic motivation to be associated with enhanced learning, performance, creativity, and affective experience. Further, a large body of research within SDT has examined the situational factors (e.g., types of rewards, feedback, communication styles) that undermine or facilitate the expression of intrinsic motivation (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). These studies have made it clear that although intrinsic motivation is a lifelong psychological growth function, by no means is its expression automatic; rather, intrinsic motivation depends on ambient supports for basic psychological needs, especially those for competence (feeling effective) and autonomy (feeling volitional).

Despite being a longstanding topic within the field of motivation, only recently have researchers begun to use neuroscience methods to examine intrinsic motivational processes (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ). The use of neuroscience methods is an important new frontier for intrinsic motivation research for at least three interrelated reasons. First, to state the obvious, experience and behavior are mediated by the brain and a complete account of intrinsic motivation therefore requires an understanding of the neural systems that support it. Second, neuroscience affords the examination of internal processes that are not accessible by self-reports of experience or behavioral observations. A neuroscience of intrinsic motivation therefore promises new insights that introspective and behavioral methods alone cannot afford. Finally, neuroscience methods can be used to investigate motivational processes at a higher level of resolution than experiential and behavioral methods. Neuroscience methods therefore have the potential to refine conceptual accounts of intrinsic motivation by articulating the granular processes that comprise it. In a relevant discussion, Ochsner ( 2007 ; p.51) stated that, “The combination of multiple streams of data allows researchers to converge on theoretical explanations that are robust and flexible and are not tied to a single specific experimental methodology”. Intrinsic motivation would seem to be an especially ripe topic for neuroscience precisely because of the large body of empirical data that has already been garnered at the experiential and behavioral levels of analysis.

Our purpose of this review article is to survey the progress of neuroscience research on intrinsic motivation. Because intrinsic motivation is not a uniquely human capacity (Harlow, 1953 ; Wilson, 2000 ; Ryan and Deci, 2017 ) we review conceptual developments in the comparative affective neurosciences (Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ) that inform the concept of intrinsic motivation. Such considerations are essential for appreciating intrinsic motivation as a basic organismic capacity and for helping to clarify its unique components in humans (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ). Building upon these insights, we map the phenomenology of intrinsic motivation onto the neural substrates of motivational processes that are encompassed by intrinsic motivation. Against the backdrop of these preliminary ideas, we then review recent studies that have examined the neural correlates of intrinsic motivation. To anticipate our main conclusions, affective neuroscience suggests that human intrinsic motivation is based in ancient mammalian systems that govern exploration and play. Neuroimaging studies, which have up to now focused on curiosity and mastery tendencies, indicate that intrinsically motivated states are subserved by neural regions that are central to dopamine systems. These studies also hint at the possible role of dynamic switching between large-scale brain networks involved in salience detection, attentional control and self-referential cognition. On the basis of these ideas, we suggest novel research directions and offer recommendations for the application of neuroscience methods in the study of intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic Motivation: An Organismic Growth Process

Long before Deci’s ( 1971 ) experiments concerning intrinsic motivation in humans and its undermining by rewards, Harlow ( 1950 ) documented this effect in rhesus monkeys. He coined the term intrinsic motivation to describe his observation that these primates would persist in playing with mechanical puzzles even in the absence of external rewards. Indeed, he observed that the introduction of rewards for playing led these primates to decrease their spontaneous manipulative explorations, relative to those not exposed to external rewards. These and related observations of spontaneous exploratory and play behaviors defied some behaviorist views that intentional behaviors are invariably controlled by reinforcement contingencies within the environment (e.g., Skinner, 1953 ).

Early work with both primates and rats also exposed some limitations of empirical drive theory (Hull, 1943 ), which asserted that motivated behaviors aim to reduce internal drives that stem from physiological need deficits. Because intrinsic motivation often ensues in the absence and, on occasion, independent of such deprivations, it was poorly explained by traditional drive reduction accounts (White, 1959 ). Early attempts to amend drive theory led researchers to postulate the existence of various exploratory drives as the basis for seemingly spontaneous curiosity, exploratory and manipulatory behaviors (e.g., Butler, 1953 ; Harlow, 1953 ; Montgomery, 1954 ; Myers and Miller, 1954 ). Apart from its lack of parsimony, this “drive-naming” approach could not be reconciled with the observations that exploratory activities do not resemble consummatory responses and that animals often behave to increase rather than decrease such exploratory drives (White, 1959 ; Deci and Ryan, 1985 ). As we shall see, these points are respectively echoed in the contemporary research on the role of dopamine in motivation, particularly by Berridge ( 2007 ) distinction between incentive “wanting” and consummatory “liking” and by Panksepp’s ( 1998 ) work on the mammalian SEEKING system.

Variants of psychodynamic drive theory (Freud, 1927/1960 ) proved similarly inadequate. For example, Fenichel ( 1945 ) proposed that exploratory and mastery behaviors are driven by the desire to reduce anxiety in the face of novel stimuli. A revision of this hypothesis may be approximated from the perspective of Gray and McNaughton’s ( 2000 ) septo-hippocampal theory of anxiety. An extensive program of research has established that novel stimuli—on an a priori basis—represent potential sources of both punishment and reward, elicit tendencies for both avoidance and approach, and therefore often arouse anxious uncertainty and prompt cautious investigatory behaviors. The investigatory behaviors instigated by the septo-hippocampal system include risk assessment and scanning the environment and one’s memory to resolve the motivational conflict, that is, to compute whether approach or avoidance should predominate.

Intrinsically motivated curiosity, exploration and mastery behaviors, however, pertain to specific types of novel stimuli, namely, those that present optimal challenges or optimal inconsistencies with one’s extant knowledge and that accordingly energize tendencies to approach (White, 1959 ; Csikszentmihalyi, 1990 ; Loewenstein, 1994 ; Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). Consistent with the work of Gray and McNaughton ( 2000 ) intrinsic motivation researchers have long noted that whereas too much novelty relative to a person’s skill and knowledge produces anxiety, too little novelty produces to boredom. During intrinsic motivation, feelings of interest and positive excitement predominate over both anxiety and boredom. Indeed, such exploratory states entail searching for novelties and challenges and, moreover, acting on the world to elicit novelties and to discover new problems (Harlow, 1953 ; White, 1959 ; Deci and Ryan, 1985 ). These observations indicate that intrinsically motivated exploratory and mastery behaviors are primarily energized by interest and appetitive mastery tendencies, not anxiety reduction.

Given the shortcomings of operant behaviorism and drive theory in regards to intrinsic motivation, White ( 1959 ) proposed effectance motivation as a general behavioral and developmental propensity of many organisms. Seemingly prescient of later developments in the affective neurosciences (e.g., Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ), White ( 1959 ) argued that effectance motivation is inherent to the activity of the central nervous system and described it as “what the neuromuscular system wants to do when it is otherwise unoccupied (e.g., by strong homeostatic drives) or is gently stimulated by the environment” (p.321). According to White ( 1959 ), the satisfactions associated with the effectance motive are not tied to consummatory activities, but are instead intrinsic to the arousal and maintenance of the activities that stem from it. Along similar lines, DeCharms ( 1968 ) proposed that intrinsic motivation is based in people’s “primary propensity” to experience themselves as causal agents, that is, to experience their own actions as having an internal perceived locus of causality . DeCharms’s ( 1968 ) insightful theorizing helped set the stage for the earliest experiments on the undermining effect as it suggested that external enticements and pressures that detract one from experiencing oneself as the center of initiation of their own behaviors—that undermine autonomy—can diminish intrinsic motivation (Deci and Ryan, 1985 ).

By the mid-1980s, numerous studies had examined the effects of various situational factors on the expression of intrinsic motivation (Deci and Ryan, 1985 ). This research indicated that events like the provision of positive feedback (e.g., Fisher, 1978 ; Boggiano and Ruble, 1979 ; Ryan, 1982 ) and choice (e.g., Zuckerman et al., 1978 ) enhanced intrinsic motivation and that negative feedback (e.g., Deci and Cascio, 1972 ; Vallerand and Reid, 1984 ), deadlines (e.g., Amabile et al., 1976 ), and other external impositions (e.g., surveillance; Lepper and Greene, 1975 ) generally diminished intrinsic motivation. To account for the diversity of findings from these and other studies, Deci and Ryan ( 1985 ), drawing on the ideas of White ( 1959 ) and DeCharms ( 1968 ), proposed that intrinsic motivation is a lifelong psychological growth function that is based in the basic psychological needs for competence and autonomy. Competence refers to feelings of effectance, the sense of growing mastery in activities that are optimally challenging and that further develop one’s capacities. Autonomy refers to an experience of volition and integrity, the sense that one’s behavior is authentic and self-organized rather than internally conflicted and pressured or externally coerced. Within SDT, competence and autonomy are seen as essential elements in people’s active propensities to seek out challenges, to be curious and interested, and to develop and express their capacities: when these needs are supported, intrinsic motivation may ensue; when these needs are thwarted, intrinsic motivation is undermined (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ).

In terms of both evolution and development, intrinsic motivation confers many adaptive consequences for organisms (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). For example, intrinsic motivation exposes organisms to novel situations and therefore occasions the development of diverse skills and competencies to cope with uncertain future situations. Intrinsic motivations are particularly important for those species that have a protracted period of postnatal development and occupy complex habitats (Wilson, 2000 ). In this vein, Deci and Ryan ( 2000 , p.252) pointed out that:

If people did not experience satisfaction from learning for its own sake (but instead needed to be prompted by external reinforcements) they would be less likely to engage the domain-specific skills and capacities they inherited, to develop new potentialities for adaptive employment, or both … for instance, by aiding in the discovery of alternative food sources, mapping the complexities of game migrations, or taking interest in skills, rituals, and social rules transmitted by other group members.

Extending this evolutionary thinking, Ryan and Hawley ( 2016 ) reviewed empirical evidence that competence and autonomy satisfactions supply proximal supports for intrinsically motivated activities even when the adaptive consequences of such activities are not the phenomenal aims of the individuals enacting them.

At the level of personality functioning, intrinsic motivation provides the impetus for individuals to learn about particular subject areas and to differentiate their interests, fostering the development of personal identities that confer a sense of authenticity, meaning, and purpose (Deci and Ryan, 1985 ; Ryan and Deci, 2012 ). For example, meta-analyses and field studies point to intrinsic motivation as perhaps the most important form of motivation in school achievement (e.g., Taylor et al., 2014 ; Froiland and Worrell, 2016 ). In a related vein, Peterson ( 1999 ) argued that the dedicated and courageous pursuit of one’s interests optimizes personality development by incrementally exposing one to new ideas and challenges, thereby preventing ideological rigidity and fostering learning, growth, and meaning in life. Indeed, various scholars have proposed that intrinsically motivated self-examination plays a key role in the development of the highest human virtues, including wisdom (e.g., Habermas, 1972 ; Csikszentmihalyi and Rathmunde, 1990 ; Vervaeke and Ferraro, 2013 ).

Neuroethological Perspectives on Mammalian Exploration: A Starting Point for Conceptualizing Intrinsic Motivation in the Brain

We previously pointed out (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ) that the concept of intrinsically motivated exploration is consistent with the “affective neuroethological” perspective of Panksepp and colleagues (Panksepp, 1998 ; Ikemoto and Panksepp, 1999 ; Alcaro et al., 2007 ; Alcaro and Panksepp, 2011 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ). These researchers have argued that mammals are hardwired with a general-purpose SEEKING system that energizes many types of foraging and exploratory activities. Although the SEEKING system does service homeostatic imbalances and is responsible for energizing learned appetitive behaviors, it continuously operates to keep animals in a state of exploratory engagement with their environments. That is, the SEEKING system is believed to function as an objectless appetitive system—a “goad without a goal”—until the exploratory disposition it produces leads to the discovery and learning of useful regularities.

The SEEKING system is a spontaneous, unconditioned behavior generator that takes animals to places, actively and inquisitively, where associated learning mechanisms allow them to develop knowledge structures, to guide their foremost evolutionary action tools (inbuilt emotional systems) to create more structures—more higher mental processes—which facilitate survival (Panksepp and Biven, 2012 , p.135).

It is worth pointing out that even within radical behaviorism this inherent activity of organisms could not be fully ignored, though it was marginalized by Skinner’s concept of “the operant”. Skinner acknowledged that organisms do “operate” on their environments, but regarded such exploratory activities as random behaviors that come under the control of external reinforcement.

The core structures that comprise the SEEKING system in the rat are the ventral tegmental area (VTA), the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), and the dopaminergic projections originating from the VTA that innervate these areas (Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ). These regions are frequently called the “brain reward network” because, as Olds and Milner ( 1954 ) discovered, rats will learn to instrumentally obtain electrical stimulations in this area. However, the invigorated searching and sniffing following such electrical stimulations look like states of invigorated curious exploration rather than states of calm satiation (see White, 1959 ): “The most dramatic observation…is that animals getting this kind of brain stimulation frantically explore their environments, taking notice of all the new stimuli they encounter” (Panksepp and Biven, 2012 , p.126). These basic SEEKING urges are elaborated into more complex forms of exploration in behaviorally and cognitively sophisticated animals: our dexterity affords the manipulation and exploration of complex objects and our cognitive faculties afford interest in ideas, abstract objects and possibilities that we can explore and manipulate with our minds. The SEEKING system is thus believed to energize “many mental complexities that humans experience as persistent feelings of interest, curiosity, sensation seeking and, in the presence of a sufficiently complex cortex, the search for higher meaning” (Panksepp, 1998 , p.145).

The first experimental studies on intrinsic motivation were conducted on nonhuman animals (Harlow, 1950 ) and it is therefore fitting that the first insights on the neurobiology of intrinsic motivation have been derived in animal research. Although generalizations based on animal research must be made with caution, affective neuroscience suggests that human intrinsic motivation is an elaboration of ancient mammalian motivations for exploratory SEEKING. The affective neuroethological point of view from which this system is conceptualized dovetails the organismic perspective from which SDT developed (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). It is remarkable and telling that independent lines of research stemming from such methodologically diverse traditions should converge on similar points of view.

Related Perspectives on Intrinsic Motivation

Aspects of intrinsic motivation have also been examined from perspectives other than SDT. Because some of the empirical studies that we review in upcoming sections are based on these related topics, we briefly summarize these perspectives here to note similarities and differences with SDT. We also briefly review topics that bear important conceptual relations to intrinsic motivation and note the utility of these for helping to inform the emerging neuroscience of intrinsic motivation.

The close relation between SDT’s concept of intrinsic motivation and Csikszentmihalyi ( 1990 ) concept of flow has been noted for a long time (Deci and Ryan, 1985 , 2000 ). Flow refers to experiential states of total absorption, optimal challenge, and non-self-conscious enjoyment of an activity. Like intrinsic motivation, when people experience flow, the satisfactions they experience are inherent to the activity itself and their behavior is “autotelic” ( auto = self, telos = goal) or performed for its own sake. Like SDT, flow theory emphasizes the phenomenology of intrinsic motivation. Flow theory is particularly articulate in its description of the optimal challenges and ensuing competence satisfactions associated with intrinsic motivation. For example, Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi ( 2014 ; p.90) describe the flow state as the subjective experience of engaging “just-manageable challenges by tackling a series of goals, continuously processing feedback about progress, and adjusting action based on this feedback”. However, apart from recognizing the autotelic (i.e., intrinsically motivating) aspects of flow activities, flow theory does not formally recognize autonomy as an essential component of flow (Deci and Ryan, 2000 ).

Loewenstein ( 1994 ) proposed an “information-gap” hypothesis of curiosity according to which curiosity arises when people experience a discrepancy between what they know and what they want to know. Although this knowledge discrepancy is supposedly experienced as aversive, satisfying curiosity is pleasurable and people therefore voluntarily seek to elicit curiosity. There are some obvious links between SDT and Loewenstein’s ( 1994 ) information-gap hypothesis of curiosity. First, feelings of curiosity are regularly referenced in descriptions of intrinsic motivation within SDT and Loewenstein ( 1994 ; p.87) correspondingly described curiosity as “an intrinsically motivated desire for specific information”. Second, both intrinsic motivation and curiosity seeking are processes that describe types of self-directed learning. Finally, although Lowenstein’s theory does not formally include the concept of autonomy, his notion of what constitutes an “information-gap” is well-aligned with SDT’s notion of competence. Specifically, one way to conceptualize information-gaps in knowledge is in terms of optimal incongruities between one’s extant knowledge structures and the unknown (Deci and Ryan, 1985 ). Intrinsically motivated activities, activities that are energized by the need for competence and that entail orienting toward novel stimuli and optimal challenges, can thus be seen as a process of continually seeking and reducing information-gaps in knowledge.

Perhaps the most notable divergence between SDT and Loewenstein’s account concerns his description of curiosity as a consummatory, drive-reduction process—i.e., the closure of information gaps. A close variant of this discrepancy between organismic and drive-theory accounts of intrinsic motivation was resolved in the earliest critiques of the drive-naming approach to intrinsically motivated exploration. Both White ( 1959 ) and Deci and Ryan ( 1985 ) pointed out that while curiosity for particular objects or places may satiate the tendency to explore those particular objects or areas, the tendency to explore itself is not satiated. Thus, SDT’s organismic account of intrinsic motivation and Loewenstein’s ( 1994 ) drive-reduction account of curiosity seeking can be reconciled by recognizing that curiosity is a more delimited phenomenon subsumed by intrinsically motivated exploration. Piaget ( 1971 ), in his organismic account of cognitive development, expressed a similar view. He proposed that cognitive-behavioral schemata possess inherent functions to assimilate new information and to elaborate pre-existing skills, inherent functions that can be productively described as being intrinsically motivated (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). Piaget ( 1971 ) thus saw curiosity as a continual process that “goes through various steps, in the sense that whenever one problem is solved, new problems are opened up. These are new avenues for curiosity” (Evans, 1973 , pp.68–69).

A concept related to intrinsic motivation has also emerged within the “Five-Factor” or “Big Five” model of personality research (John et al., 2008 ; McCrae and Costa, 2008 ). Specifically, DeYoung ( 2010 , 2013 ) has argued that the higher-order trait plasticity (i.e., the shared variance of extraversion and openness/intellect) represents stable interindividual differences in people’s exploratory tendencies. Apart from the obvious difference that intrinsic motivation refers to a motivational state , whereas plasticity refers to dispositional trait , these two phenomena have some notable features in common. Like intrinsic motivation, plasticity entails being “actively engaged with the possibilities of the environment, both generating and attending to novel aspects of experience” (DeYoung, 2010 , p.27, and although plastic exploration has not been formally described using the concept of autonomy, people high in plasticity are hypothesized to “desire exploration for its own sake (i.e., they treat it as a goal in itself) and engage in it even at times when exploration will not obviously further their goals” (DeYoung, 2013 , p.8). These conceptual links between plasticity and intrinsic motivation are important because recent years have seen a marked increase in the field’s understanding of the neurobiology of plasticity, most specifically, its association with dopamine (DeYoung, 2013 ). These insights inform some of the ideas in the current presentation.

Mapping Phenomenology to Brain Function: Toward a Neurobiological Model of Human of Intrinsic Motivation

The biggest challenge facing researchers who wish to examine the neural substrates of intrinsic motivation is the absence of an overarching neurobiological framework with which to derive and test specific hypotheses. Exploratory studies, though potentially useful for advancing research in novel directions when conducted with suitably large samples, typically afford lower statistical power and are therefore prone to both Type I errors (false positives) and Type II errors (false negatives). This limitation of exploratory research is especially problematic in neuroimaging studies that do not specify a priori regions of interest and need to correct for multiple statistical tests when comparing neural activity across multiple brain regions (Allen and DeYoung, 2016 ). In the absence of a guiding theory, it is also difficult to design experimental paradigms that are optimally suited to examine specific components of intrinsic motivation.

Recognizing that even a preliminary neurobiological account of intrinsic motivation could facilitate theory-driven research and provide a useful vantage point for aligning the disparate empirical studies to date, we offer an initial iteration by mapping the phenomenology of intrinsic motivation to the neural substrates of motivational processes that are encompassed by intrinsic motivation. We organize these ideas in the form of summary propositions. Against the backdrop of these propositions, we review studies that have examined the neural correlates of intrinsic motivation.

Proposition I: Intrinsic Motivation is Supported by Dopaminergic Systems

Intrinsic motivation is a complex cognitive, affective, and behavioral phenomenon that is likely mediated by multiple neural structures and processes. For this reason, a useful point of entry for elucidating the neurobiology of intrinsic motivation is to consider the broad neurotransmitter systems that may underlie it.

Three lines of evidence suggest that dopamine is a key substrate of intrinsic motivation. First, as the review above suggests, intrinsic motivation in humans is an elaboration of the exploratory activities subserved by the mammalian SEEKING system, and dopamine is central to the neurochemistry of this system (Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ). Second, like intrinsic motivation, dopamine is associated with increased positive affect, cognitive flexibility, creativity (Ashby et al., 1999 ), behavioral persistence (Salamone and Correa, 2016 ), and exploration in the face of novelty (DeYoung, 2013 ). Importantly, the positively affective states associated with dopamine reflect energized appetitive “wanting” not consummatory “liking”, the hedonic effects of which are mediated by opioids (Berridge, 2007 ; Kringelbach and Berridge, 2016 ). Third, there is some evidence of a direct link between intrinsic motivation and dopamine. Using positron emission tomography, de Manzano et al. ( 2013 ) found that people who are disposed to experience intrinsically motivated flow states in their daily activities have greater dopamine D2-receptor availability in striatal regions, particularly the putamen. This finding suggests that people’s capacities for intrinsic motivation are associated with the number of targets within the striatum for dopamine to act upon. More recently, Gyurkovics et al. ( 2016 ) found that carriers of a genetic polymorphism that affects striatal D2-receptor availability were more prone to experience flow during study- and work-related activities. Altogether, it would thus seem reasonable to forward the initial working hypothesis that dopamine is a key substrate of intrinsic motivation.

Dopamine neurons originate in the midbrain and have two modes of activity, tonic and phasic (Grace, 1991 ). In the tonic mode, the neurons exhibit a steady baseline rate of firing in which dopamine is steadily released to target structures. This tonic activity promotes the normal functioning of relevant neural circuits (Schultz, 2007 ) and may reflect the general strength of animals’ exploratory SEEKING tendencies (Alcaro and Panksepp, 2011 ). In the phasic mode, dopamine neurons exhibit short bursts of activity or inactivity (above or below their baseline) in response to specific events, resulting in an increase or decrease of dopamine in target structures lasting several seconds. The phasic mode of dopamine transmission may “transiently activate SEEKING patterns in coincidence with specific cue- or context-dependent information, attributing to such information an incentive motivational, action-orienting effect” (Alcaro and Panksepp, 2011 , p.1810). Of course, the tonic and phasic modes of dopamine transmission likely interact in complex ways to regulate intrinsic motivation. For example, Alcaro et al. ( 2007 ) advanced the hypothesis that moderately high levels of tonic dopamine optimize the SEEKING behavior promoted by phasic dopamine release: when tonic levels of dopamine are too low, phasic signals lack the efficacy to promote exploration; but when tonic levels are too high, phasic signals lose their informational value and exploratory behavior patterns are uncoupled from relevant contextual stimuli. Given the nascent state of the field, however, questions about how the tonic and phasic modes of dopamine release interact to influence intrinsic motivation remain outside the scope of the present effort. We instead focus on making the less specific case for a general relation between dopamine and intrinsic motivation.

Bromberg-Martin et al. ( 2010 ) recently proposed a model of dopaminergic function that is based on the recognition of two types of dopamine neurons that exhibit distinct types of phasic activity: value-coding neurons and salience-coding neurons. We review the properties of these neurons and their relevance to intrinsic motivation below.

Value-coding neurons are phasically excited by unexpected rewarding events and inhibited by unexpected aversive events; events that are wholly expected elicit little or no response. Value-coding dopamine neurons are found in the ventromedial substantia nigra pars compacta (SN) and throughout the VTA. From these midbrain regions, these neurons project axons that innervate the NAcc shell, the dorsal striatum (caudate and putamen), and the VMPFC, where they send signals about the availability of rewards, evaluation of outcomes, and learning. The phasic signals emitted by value-coding neurons are classically recognized as “reward-prediction errors” within neobehaviorist theories and are believed to be an important mechanism through which animals learn about external reinforcement contingencies (Schultz, 2007 ).

However, Tricomi and DePasque ( 2016 ) recently argued that, even in the absence of external rewards, this dopaminergic pathway registers the endogenous signals of positive and negative feedback that are elicited during the performance of many activities. The types of activities that people find intrinsically motivating provide just-manageable challenges, clear proximal goals, and immediate feedback (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2014 ; Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). For example:

As people work on crossword puzzles, they get feedback from the task itself (i.e., the letters fit), and they are likely to feel a sense of joy from making progress at puzzles that challenge them…No external feedback is required, and, surely, the task-inherent positive feedback is gratifying and helps sustain interest and persistence (Ryan and Deci, 2017 , p.154).

Another way of describing this optimally challenging nature of intrinsically motivated activities is to say that the positive and negative feedback that people receive during their performance of such activities is not entirely unexpected—a performative context that suggests phasic dopaminergic signaling. Following Tricomi and DePasque ( 2016 ), we therefore propose that a high rate of dopaminergic signaling within the value system is inherent to the performance of intrinsically motivating activities.

In addition to value-coding neurons, Bromberg-Martin et al. ( 2010 ) identified salience-coding neurons. These dopamine neurons are phasically excited by both unexpected rewarding and punishing events. These neurons are found in the dorsolateral SN and medial VTA, and project to the NAcc core, the dorsal striatum, and the dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC). The regions innervated by salience-coding neurons support the orienting of attention, cognitive processing, and the invigoration of actions. Dovetailing Loewenstein’s ( 1994 ) information-gap hypothesis of curiosity, DeYoung ( 2013 ) proposed that salience-related dopaminergic activity energizes exploration “in response to the incentive value of the possibility of gaining information—that is, it drives curiosity and the desire for information” (p.4). Curiosity and interest are of course long recognized components of intrinsic motivation. For example, the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (Ryan et al., 1983 ), a self-report measure of intrinsic motivation for experimental settings that is used to predict free choice behavioral persistence, includes items such as “I found the task very interesting” and “I thought the task was very boring (reverse scored)”. These items describe the type of eager attentiveness and behavioral engagement that may be associated dopaminergic salience signaling. Thus, building on DeYoung ( 2013 ), we propose that the salience-coding system also subserves intrinsic motivation.

Apart from the aforementioned studies by de Manzano et al. ( 2013 ) and Gyurkovics et al. ( 2016 ), empirical studies have not directly examined the link between dopamine and intrinsic motivation. However, if intrinsic motivation is associated with dopaminergic transmission, then intrinsically motivated activities should be associated with activation across core regions of the dopaminergic systems identified by Bromberg-Martin et al. ( 2010 ). In the paragraphs that follow, we focus on neuroimaging findings relating intrinsic motivation to activity within regions of the dopaminergic value system. Studies relating intrinsic motivation to activity within regions of the dopaminergic salience system are reviewed separately because such findings are also consistent with the complementary proposition that intrinsic motivation is associated with patterns of activity across specific large-scale neural networks.

Murayama et al. ( 2010 ) examined the neural correlates of the undermining effect using fMRI. University undergraduates were asked to play a game-like stopwatch task in which they were asked to press a button within 50 ms of the 5 s mark. In a series of pilot tests, the authors determined that students found this task challenging and interesting, and therefore suitable for examining intrinsic motivation. Like classic studies on the undermining effect (e.g., Deci, 1971 ), participants were divided in two groups: a reward group that received performance-contingent rewards for each successful trail and a control group that received no payments. During an initial scanning session, participants in both groups evidenced greater activity in the midbrain and caudate upon the receipt of success feedback relative to failure feedback. Subsequent to the experimental manipulation, and consistent with previous behavioral studies on the undermining effect, participants in the reward group were less likely to voluntarily engage with the task during a free-choice time period relative to those in the control group. Importantly, this behavioral undermining of intrinsic motivation was paralleled by reduced activity in the caudate and midbrain during a second scanning session when monetary rewards were no longer administered to the reward group. In contrast the unrewarded group maintained its previous levels of activation. This difference in activity between the control and experimental groups is consistent with the idea that the dopaminergic value system is responsive to cues that signal task-related progress during intrinsically motivated activities.

In a more recent fMRI study, Murayama et al. ( 2015 ) had participants perform an adapted version of the stopwatch task (Murayama et al., 2010 ) in two conditions: an autonomy condition in which they were free to choose the appearance of the stopwatch according to their preferences and a forced-choice condition in which they had to proceed with the stopwatch selected by the computer. Results indicated that activity within the VMPFC (bilateral gyrus rectus and medial orbitofrontal gyrus) was greater upon the receipt of success feedback than failure feedback. However, this effect was modulated by the type of the trial conditions. On the one hand, the VMPFC exhibited similarly high levels of activity across success and failure feedback after free-choice (autonomy) trials. On the other hand, this region exhibited marked reductions in activity after forced-choice trials. Importantly, this sustained activity within the VMPFC in response to failure feedback was associated with enhanced performance within the free-choice condition. Present evidence suggests that value coding dopamine neurons in the midbrain project to the VMPFC and that this structure is involved in learning from negative reward prediction errors and updating outcome expectations during learning (Bromberg-Martin et al., 2010 ). These results are thus consistent with the idea that intrinsic motivation, and the perceived autonomy that phenomenally supports it, is associated with activity within the dopaminergic value system.

Conceptually related to these fMRI studies is research examining intrinsic motivation using electroencephalography (EEG). Two specific EEG waveforms that have been associated with intrinsic motivation are the “error-related negativity” (ERN) and the “feedback-related negativity” (FRN). Both of these waveforms are negative-going deflections in EEG recordings that arise during speeded-response tasks. Whereas the ERN appears within 100 ms following the commission of errors, the FRN appears between 200 ms and 350 ms following the receipt of negative feedback. Holroyd and Coles ( 2002 ) proposed that both the ERN and FRN arise as a consequence of phasic reductions in midbrain dopaminergic signaling to ACC, the purported neural generator of these waveforms. These phasic reductions in dopamine transmission to the ACC, and the consequent ERN and FRN, are believed to constitute a learning signal that tunes the ACC to optimize behavioral performance, an account that parallels the reward-prediction signaling of value-coding dopamine neurons (Schultz, 2007 ; Bromberg-Martin et al., 2010 ).

In a sample of school children, Fisher et al. ( 2009 ) found that intrinsic academic motivation was associated with larger ERN amplitudes during a flanker task. In a study that paralleled the design of Murayama et al. ( 2010 ), Ma et al. ( 2014 ) found that participants who had received performance-contingent monetary rewards while performing a challenging activity evidenced reduced FRN amplitudes whereas those in a control group evidenced consistently pronounced FRNs. In another study, this time paralleling the design of Meng and Ma ( 2015 ) and Murayama et al. ( 2015 ) found that having the opportunity to exercise choice during the performance of an intrinsically motivating task was associated with larger FRN amplitudes. An important caveat to these studies is their small sample sizes ( N = 17, 36 and 18, respectively), which raises uncertainty about reliability of their reported effects. To this point, Jin et al. ( 2015 ; N = 16) found lower FRN amplitudes when participants received negative feedback on a supposedly interesting task relative to a boring task. In light of these small sample sizes and diversity of findings, it is clear that more decisive larger-sample studies are required. Nevertheless, the available evidence from these EEG studies is generally consistent with the idea that intrinsic motivation is associated with dopaminergic signaling.

Other evidence of a link between intrinsic motivation and the dopaminergic system comes from studies examining the neural correlates of curiosity. Kang et al. ( 2009 ; Study 1) used fMRI to examine curiosity as it is framed by the information-gap theory of Loewenstein ( 1994 ). We previously pointed out that the information-gaps in people’s knowledge structures, and the ensuing feelings of curiosity that such gaps elicit, can be productively framed in terms of people’s orienting toward optimal challenges. Participants reflected upon a series of trivia questions (e.g., What instrument was invented to sound like a human singing?) and rated their curiosity for each one. During the presentation of the trivia questions, items that elicited greater curiosity were associated with activations in the left caudate and parahippocampal gyri (PHG). Furthermore, when trivia answers were revealed following incorrect responses, participants’ level of curiosity was associated with greater activity in the midbrain and left PHG. Although Bromberg-Martin et al. ( 2010 ) did not identify the PHG as a core component of the dopamine system, Kang et al. ( 2009 ) point out that this region is involved in successful memory encoding and its activity during states of curiosity is therefore consistent with the idea that intrinsic motivation is associated with enhanced learning.

A follow-up study by Gruber et al. ( 2014 ) more directly assessed the relation between curiosity and learning. This study used trivia questions similar to Kang et al. ( 2009 ) to examine if states of curiosity improved memory for task-relevant information and for information that was incidental to the main task. Incidental information consisted of face stimuli that were presented to participants when they anticipated trivia answers. During the presentation of trivia questions, curiosity was associated with activity in the left SN/VTA, bilateral NAcc, and bilateral dorsal striatum. Furthermore, replicating the behavioral results of Kang et al. ( 2009 ; Study 2), in both immediate and delayed memory tests, participants recalled more answers for high- relative to low-curiosity questions. Extending these previous behavioral findings, Gruber et al. ( 2014 ) also found enhanced recall of incidental face stimuli presented during high-curiosity questions. These memory effects were associated with greater activity in the SN/VTA and the hippocampus during the presentation of trivia questions and increased functional connectivity between these regions when participants anticipated answers to the trivia questions.

Proposition II: Intrinsic Motivation Entails Dynamic Switching between Brain Networks for Salience Detection, Attentional Control and Self-Referential Cognition

A complementary approach to theorizing about the neural systems that support intrinsic motivation is to map its phenomenology with the activity of large-scale neural networks (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ). Research on structural and functional brain organization has revealed multiple large-scale brain networks that support various cognitive functions (Bressler and Menon, 2010 ). Among these is the so-called salience network , which is believed to support the detection of subjectively important events and the mobilization of attentional and working memory resources in the service of goal-directed behavior (Menon and Uddin, 2010 ; Menon, 2015 ). The salience network is anchored in the anterior insula (AI) and dorsal ACC and includes major subcortical nodes in the amygdala, NAcc, the SN, and VTA. These subcortical nodes are believed to send signals about the motivational significance of stimuli to the AI; the AI in turn is believed to integrate this information with incoming sensory inputs from both the external environment and the viscera for the bottom-up detection of contextually important events. Through its reciprocal connections with the dACC, a key structure for executive control, the AI is believed to selectively amplify neural signals of important events for the effective deployment of cognitive resources.

Little is presently known about the specific role of dopamine in the functioning of the salience network. However, AI does receive inputs from the amygdala, the likely source of the motivational salience signals sent to dopamine neurons in the midbrain, from the ventral striatum, which receives dopaminergic projections from the midbrain, and from the SN and the VTA, the midbrain regions from which dopamine neurons originate (Bromberg-Martin et al., 2010 ; Menon and Uddin, 2010 ; Menon, 2015 ). Additionally, the AI has reciprocal connections with the dACC, which likely receives direct input from both value- and salience-coding dopamine neurons (Bromberg-Martin et al., 2010 ). These connections imply that the AI may play a role in contextualizing the signals of motivational significance transmitted by both value- and salience-coding dopamine neurons. Most relevant in this regard is the suggestion that the AI functions as a dynamic hub for modulating the activity of two other large-scale brain networks (Menon and Uddin, 2010 ; Menon, 2015 ). The first, known as the default mode network , has major nodes in the MPFC and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). These regions show high levels of activity during passive resting states (Gusnard and Raichle, 2001 ), tasks involving internally-focused, self-referential cognition (Northoff et al., 2006 ), and mind-wandering (Mason et al., 2007 ). The second, known as the central executive network , includes the DLPFC and the posterior parietal cortex (PPC). The regions of this network, which are important substrates of working memory and executive functions, typically show elevated activity during cognitively demanding, externally-focused tasks. Importantly, activity across the default mode and central executive networks often fluctuates in an antagonistic manner, such that activity in one is often accompanied by suppressed activity in the other.

The antagonistic dynamic between the default mode and central executive networks, along with the role of the salience-mediating switching instigated by the AI, may inform three characteristics of intrinsic motivation. First, in its most experientially abundant state, intrinsic motivation entails cognitive absorption and non-self-conscious enjoyment of an activity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990 ; Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2014 ). This phenomenology suggests diminished activity within regions of the default mode network, which are commonly activated during self-focused mental activity (e.g., self-reflection, rumination) and mind-wandering, and heightened activity within the central executive network, which is engaged during bouts of externally focused attention. Second, intrinsic motivation is reliably associated with enhanced performance, cognitive flexibility, and deeper conceptual learning (e.g., Grolnick and Ryan, 1987 ). This relation between intrinsic motivation and enhanced task performance is consistent with, and may be partly explained by, greater mobilization of the central executive network during intrinsically motivating tasks (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ). Third, classic perspectives that describe autonomy or authenticity as a state of “organismic congruence” (e.g., Rogers, 1961 ) characterize it as an embodied cognitive process whereby sensory and visceral information is permitted to access and direct one’s attention, in a bottom-up manner, to events of subjective importance and meaning (also see Peterson, 1999 ). The salience network, and the AI most specifically, with its receipt of sensory and visceral input and its interoceptive functions (Craig, 2009 ; Menon and Uddin, 2010 ; Menon, 2015 ), would seem well-suited to support this aspect of autonomy, especially during intrinsic motivation when people orient themselves to stimuli that spontaneously grip their attention and interest.

Neuroimaging studies have reported patterns of neural activity consistent with the idea that intrinsic motivation recruits the salience and central executive networks, while suppressing the default mode network. In the aforementioned study by Murayama et al. ( 2010 ), the undermining of intrinsic motivation was associated with decreases in lateral PFC activity in response to task onset cues. The study by Murayama et al. ( 2015 ) found increased activity within the midbrain, ACC, and bilateral insula in response to free-choice (autonomy) cues relative to forced-choice cues at the onset of task trials. The curiosity studies by Kang et al. ( 2009 ) and Gruber et al. ( 2014 ) found greater activity within the lateral PFC during curiosity-inducing questions. More recently, Marsden et al. ( 2015 ) observed neural activations within several structures that comprise the SN. Specifically, their study found participants who spent more free-choice time solving remote-associate word problems (i.e., a behavioral marker of intrinsic motivation) showed greater activity in the ACC, amygdala, anterior and posterior insula, PHG, and caudate nucleus after trial onsets that immediately followed negative feedback for preceding trials. Jepma et al. ( 2012 ) examined the neural correlates of perceptual curiosity. Participants viewed blurry images of otherwise easily recognizable objects that induced feelings of curiosity, and were subsequently shown clear images of the objects to satisfy their curiosity. Results indicated that induction of curiosity was associated with significant activations within the AI and ACC, the core regions of the salience network, and significant deactivations within regions associated with the default mode network. Additionally, this study found that the resolution of perceptual curiosity was associated with activity within the left caudate, putamen, and NAcc, regions that comprise the core of the dopaminergic system.

A set of studies (Lee et al., 2012 ; Lee and Reeve, 2013 ) examined the neural correlates of intrinsic motivation by comparing patterns of neural activity when undergraduate students imagined themselves performing intrinsically motivating activities (e.g., “writing an enjoyable article”) and extrinsically motivating activities (e.g., “writing an extra-credit article”). Most prominently, these studies found preferential activity within insular regions when participants imagined the enactment of intrinsically motivating activities. Building on this initial work, Lee ( 2016 ) more recently described the results of an fMRI study that examined functional connectivity between striatal regions and the AI when participants attempted trivia questions and anagrams. Results indicated that when participants worked on intrinsically motivating problems (curiosity inducing-questions and competence-enabling anagrams) they evidenced greater activity and functional connectivity between these regions.

Klasen et al. ( 2012 ) examined the neural correlates of flow using fMRI recordings obtained during free play of a video game. The authors developed an objective coding system for examining different components of the flow experience based on player-generated video game contents. Consistent with the idea that intrinsic motivation is associated with dopaminergic signaling, optimal challenge was associated greater activity within the caudate, putamen, and NAcc. Consistent with the idea that intrinsic motivation is associated with suppressed activity in default mode regions, concentrated focus and goal clarity were associated with reduced activity within the orbitofrontal cortex and ACC. Additionally, task-related failure was associated with increased activity within the cuneus, a structure included within the default mode network.

In another fMRI study, Ulrich et al. ( 2014 ) examined the neural correlates of flow by asking participants to work on mental arithmetic task and comparing experimentally challenging levels with boredom and overload conditions. Results indicated that flow states were associated with increased activity in the left putamen and left IFG, again implicating core regions of both the dopaminergic system and the central executive network. Results also indicated that flow was associated with deactivations within the MPFC, suggesting suppressed default mode network activity. In another study, Yoshida et al. ( 2014 ) used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine the time course of neural activations within the prefrontal cortex during states of flow and boredom when participants played Tetris ® . Again, consistent with the idea that intrinsically motivated states recruit central executive regions, results indicated increasing bilateral activity within lateral PFC regions during flow. However, a subsequent fNIRS study by Harmat et al. ( 2015 ) that compared prefrontal activity across easy, optimally challenging, and difficult levels of Tetris did not any differences. Despite these mixed findings, the results of existing studies altogether suggest that future research would benefit by explicitly testing the proposition that intrinsic motivation is associated with patterns of activity across the salience, central executive, and default mode networks.

Recent years have witnessed an emerging interest in the neurobiological systems that support intrinsic motivational processes. Although this area of inquiry is young, conceptual and empirical evidence points to the role of dopaminergic systems in supporting intrinsically motivated behaviors. Across different mammalian species, there appear to be linkages between dopamine and the positive experiences associated with exploration, new learning and interest in one’s environment (Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ). Building on Bromberg-Martin et al.’s ( 2010 ) distinction between dopaminergic value- and salience-coding and on previous work respectively mapping these systems onto the phenomenology of competence (Tricomi and DePasque, 2016 ) and interest (DeYoung, 2013 ), we propose that intrinsic motivation entails both types dopaminergic transmission. Because these dopamine systems entail distinct neural structures, future neuroimaging studies have a strong conceptual basis for specifying distinct a priori regions of interest. Beyond that, evidence suggests that intrinsic motivation involves alterations between the neural networks of salience detection, attentional control, and self-referential cognition (Menon and Uddin, 2010 ; Menon, 2015 ). Better understanding of these large-scale neural dynamics may provide greater resolution of the processes that support high quality learning and performance.

Despite the clear conceptual relationship between intrinsic motivation and dopaminergic transmission, only two existing studies provide direct evidence of an association between these two processes (de Manzano et al., 2013 ; Gyurkovics et al., 2016 ). The bulk of existing research provides indirect support to the hypothesis that dopamine is a substrate of intrinsic motivation in that the core regions innervated by dopamine neurons are activated during intrinsic motivation. Pharmacological manipulations of dopamine thus represent an important new research direction. Indeed, such manipulations have already been fruitfully applied in the study of dispositional traits (e.g., Wacker and Smillie, 2015 ) and their application in the study of motivational states would seem a natural extension. Pharmacological manipulations of dopamine may, for example, allow researchers to more precisely decode the neural mechanisms that mediate the undermining effect of externally contingent rewards on intrinsic motivation.

The link between dopaminergic systems and intrinsic motivation may also prove useful for developmental roboticists for whom the topic of intrinsic motivation has recently fallen into purview (e.g., Gottlieb et al., 2013 , 2016 ). The stated goal of developmental robotics is to design embodied agents that self-organize their development by constructing sensorimotor, cognitive, and social skills over the course of their interactions with the environment. Roboticists have proposed that in order for embodied agents to be capable of intrinsic motivation, they must not only be outfitted with computational systems that orient them toward novel, surprising, or uncertain stimuli, but also with meta-monitoring processes that track their learning progress in their investigation of such stimuli (Gottlieb et al., 2013 , 2016 ). Without meta-monitoring processes that track learning, agents will likely get trapped investigating stimuli that are random or otherwise unlearnable, precluding the possibility for self-directed development. The existence of salience- and value-coding dopaminergic systems, respectively capable of tracking novelty and rewarding feedback, may partially represent an organic instantiation of the type of computational system that Gottlieb et al. ( 2013 , 2016 ) hypothesize to be a requirement for intrinsic motivation. We believe that roboticists are well-positioned to discover the types of computational problems that need to be solved for a full understanding of the neural substrates of intrinsic motivation. We thus hope that some of the present ideas will help to spur robotics research on intrinsic motivation.

Future studies are also needed to directly test the hypothesis that intrinsically motivated states entail dynamic switching between the salience, central executive and default mode networks. Beyond traditional fMRI analyses comparing activity in a priori regions across intrinsically and non-intrinsically motivated states, this hypothesis specifically encourages the use of connectivity analyses and the adoption of chronometric techniques that can provide information about the dynamics and directionality of activity across large-scale networks (e.g., Sridharan et al., 2008 ). This research direction may help to not only elucidate the neural basis of intrinsic motivation but also to identify the neural mechanisms through which intrinsic motivation enhances learning and performance outcomes, especially on tasks that require depth of processing and high-quality engagement.

Beyond Exploration, Curiosity and Mastery: Intrinsically Motivated Social Play

SDT uses intrinsic motivation as a broad term for diversity of activities that are inherently rewarding and growth promoting (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). This is a large class of behaviors, minimally including curious exploration and mastery tendencies, on the one hand, and social play, on the other (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ). To date, human neuroscience studies have focused on intrinsic motivation associated with curious exploration and mastery, rather than social play, and we accordingly based our review on this subset of intrinsically motivated behaviors. Yet, comparative affective neuroscience suggests that exploration and social play have both distinct and overlapping neurobiological and phenomenological underpinnings, the former being subserved by the SEEKING system and the latter by the PLAY system (Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ). The subcortical PLAY system governs the rough-and-tumble (R&T) interactions of mammals, energizing them to develop and refine their physical, emotional, and social competencies in a safe context (Panksepp, 1998 ; Pellis and Pellis, 2007 ; Trezza et al., 2010 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ). In early mammalian development, R&T play constitutes a type of embodied social cognition that provides a basis for cooperation and the adaptive self-regulation of aggression (Peterson and Flanders, 2005 ). Humans are of course also capable of more sophisticated forms of play beyond R&T such as common playground games, sports play and friendly humor, but such human play may be nonetheless organized around basic PLAY motivations (Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ).

We might therefore regard play as intrinsically motivated socialization (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ), an expression of people’s complementary tendencies toward autonomy and sociality in development (Ryan, 1995 ; Ryan et al., 1997 ). Indeed, research in SDT suggests that in addition to competence and autonomy, people have a basic psychological need for relatedness , the sense of feeling meaningfully connected with others (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). Whereas strong associations between exploratory intrinsic motivations and satisfactions of competence and autonomy have been clearly demonstrated, relatedness is usually seen to play a more distal role in the expression of these intrinsic motivations. Specifically, relatedness satisfactions provide people (especially children) with a sense of safety, a secure base from which their exploratory tendencies can be more robustly expressed (Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). Recognition of social PLAY signifies the centrality of the need for relatedness in some intrinsically motivated activities.

Interest in the overlaps and contrasts between intrinsically motivated exploration and play is thus an important agenda for future studies and both are relevant to intrinsic motivation as it is studied within SDT (Ryan and Di Domenico, 2016 ). Behavioral models of human intrinsic motivation have generally conflated exploration and play because these activities share common features such as an internal perceived locus of causality and perceived competence or mastery. Indeed, functional distinctions between intrinsically motivated exploration and object or manipulative play are subtle and suggest that, for many activities recognized as “playful”, the conflation is appropriate and productive. For example, Wilson ( 2000 ) suggested that “In passing from exploration to play, the animal or child changes its emphasis from ‘What does this object do?’ to ‘What can I do with this object?”’ (p.165). In fact, intrinsically motivated object play, manipulative play, and solitary gaming likely arise from the activity of the SEEKING system (Panksepp, 1998 ; Panksepp and Biven, 2012 ). Clearly, more empirical work is needed to differentiate these types of intrinsic motivation in humans.

Methodological Suggestions

Our principal intent in this review article, is to stimulate increasing integration between social behavioral research on intrinsic motivation and the neuroscience of motivation. We see many new and promising pathways opening up. At the same time, methodological issues persist that warrant serious considerations. We list but a few of these.

First, intrinsic motivation and the associated undermining effect of rewards on these behaviors pertain only to tasks that are interesting and enjoyable in the first place. Thus, researchers should pilot test target activities to ensure that the activities are suitable for examining the undermining effect. This is especially important in neuroscience, where contemporary methods such as fMRI often involve procedures that limit how interesting experimental tasks can be. Researchers should also use multi-method assessments of intrinsic motivation to validate their measures and to ensure that the correct behavioral phenomena are being tapped. For example, in an attempted (and failed) replication and extension of Murayama et al.’s ( 2010 ) fMRI study on the undermining effect, Albrecht et al.’s ( 2014 ) utilized a picture-discrimination task for which participants may not have been intrinsically motivated in the first place (pilot testing was not reported) and for which free-choice behavior was not examined as a dependent variable. In the absence of these important design characteristics, it is difficult to draw decisive conclusions from their experiment. Incidentally, we note that Albrecht et al.’s ( 2014 ) study did show that competence feedback increased participants’ self-reported fun and that it was also associated with increased activations within the midbrain, striatum, and lateral PFC, findings that are consistent with the idea that competence is associated with dopamine-related activity.

Second, replicability is a central concern, as it is throughout the social and personality neurosciences (Allen and DeYoung, 2016 ). Most studies to date have been small-sample investigations, and larger samples are needed if we are to derive foundational conclusions. A priori hypotheses concerning regions of interest will also add confidence to the interpretation of findings. Toward that end, the present review ought to provide future studies with a useful reference for making clear predictions about the neural basis of intrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation is a topic of interest within both basic behavioral science and applied translational studies and interventions (Ryan and Deci, 2000 , 2017 ). Yet important to the progress of empirical research on intrinsic motivation is integrating what is known from phenomenological and behavioral studies with neuroscience studies. As we suggested at the outset, neuroscience holds potential for testing existing models of the situational and social determinants of intrinsic motivation as well as for providing greater resolution on the affective and cognitive processes that underpin such activities. Movement toward consilience is a central concern to SDT and our hope is that the current synthesis provides some broad stoke encouragement for that agenda.

Author Contributions

SID conceptualized and wrote the manuscript. RMR assisted in conceptualizing and writing the manuscript.

SID was supported in this research by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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