This chapter focuses in more detail on the role of incentives in experimental sociology. Providing the right incentives in an experiment is an important precondition for drawing valid inferences. This is a predominant view in experimental economics based on the induced-value theory assuming that monetary incentives override any other human motivation in laboratory economic experiments. A slightly less demanding assumption is that subjects can be incentivized by monetary payoffs but are also motivated by other-regarding preferences or reciprocity. On the other hand, psychologists focus on motivations that subjects bring into the laboratory as a predisposition to behavior and on the framing of the situation. Sociological research takes elements from both perspectives and emphasizes institutional, cultural, and social determinants of human behavior. An important theoretical framework for experimental work is sociological work on framing. According to sociological framing theories, subjects interpret the situation in terms of the given cues and select an action that is appropriate to the situation. The chapter discusses the implications of these three views on the design of experiments in sociology.

This chapter focuses on three primary models for understanding motivation during transitions and addresses: (1) Expectancy × Value theory, (2) cognitive models for motivation and in particular attribution theory, locus of control, and taxonomy of perceived causes; and (3) intrinsic/extrinsic motivation theory and the self-determination model. We focus specifically on the ways in which intrinsic and extrinsic motivation influence human behavior. Individuals who are repeatedly successful in making a transition will more often demonstrate motivation intrinsically in decisions to make a transition. We examine the role of achievement motivation, need for autonomy, need for competency, search for satisfaction, and need for affiliation and relatedness as motivators for career change. They are discussed in light of the retrospective interviews with twenty-four elite performers in three domains (business, sports, and music) who successfully and repeatedly transitioned to higher positions within their field.

What makes us want to create? I provide an overview of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and their relationship with creativity before switching to needs, work orientation, and purpose. Creativity can help inspire us and drive us forward. It can be a source of passion or a vehicle to express it. We can enter the magical feeling of flow when we create. And across longer periods of time we can experience growth and have a sense of meaningful progress through creative work.

In this chapter, I offer some of the reasons to think that Plato has a substantial contribution to make to contemporary thinking about moral education. To allow a sense of how wide the range of reasons is, I start by listing ten miscellaneous reasons that one can compellingly offer, some of which scholars have offered. Then I present my preferred reason, which involves a way of approaching Plato that is new and unorthodox. When you approach Plato this way, you don’t try to interpret him correctly. Instead, you use his writings simply as a tool for theorizing, and what you theorize about is how best to carry out the Socratic project of leading other people to self-examination.

Research has shown that motivation plays an important role in guiding the creative process – why a person creates likely influences how they do so. This chapter summarizes existing evidence regarding motivational factors affecting the creative process and its outcomes. In doing so, this chapter also discusses existing research describing the interplay between motivations and emotions that precede, accompany, or result from the creative process for creators and audience members. To date, a large body of research has demonstrated that intrinsic motivation and associated positive affect predict greater creativity; creative individuals for example report enjoying their work because it satisfies their intellectual curiosity, or simply because the process of creation itself is pleasurable. Related, creative individuals may be driven by the desire to address emotional difficulties, though little research to date has examined this question using a motivational lens. Finally, recent research suggests that extrinsic motivations may also benefit the creative process under certain conditions. Creative individuals may often be motivated by the desire to meaningfully contribute to the lives of others. Accordingly, recent research has shown that prosocial motivation may increase creativity by enhancing the ability to consider the viewpoints of possible beneficiaries of one’s work.

Chapter 10: Motivation for Reading. This chapter explains the critical role of learner motivation for reading development. Research shows that positive motivation improves comprehension both directly and indirectly through greater amounts of extended reading, more effective uses of reading strategies, and greater engagement with reading comprehension processes. Motivation has an important role to play in reading development, and teachers and classroom contexts can have a major impact on student motivation. The chapter reviews the major theories of reading motivation and then focuses more specifically on the research of Guthrie and colleagues, and Schiefele and colleagues. Over the course of decades these researchers have developed key ways to measure motivation and relate motivation specifically to reading development. One consistent major finding is that intrinsic motivation supports amount of reading done by learners, and amount of reading is a major support for reading development. The chapter closes with implications for instruction.

Intrinsically motivated information-seeking, also called curiosity-driven exploration, is widely believed to be a key ingredient for autonomous learning in the real world. Such forms of spontaneous exploration have been studied in multiple independent lines of computational research, producing a diverse range of algorithmic models that capture different aspects of these processes. These algorithms resolve some of the limitations of neurocognitive theories by formally describing computational functions and algorithmic implementations of intrinsically motivated learning. Moreover, they reveal a high diversity of effective forms of intrinsically motivated information-seeking that can be characterized along different mechanistic and functional dimensions. This chapter aims at reviewing different classes of algorithms and highlighting several important dimensions of variation among them. Identifying these dimensions provides means for structuring a comprehensive taxonomy of approaches. We believe this exercise to be useful in working toward a general computational account of information-seeking. Such an account should facilitate the proposition of new hypotheses about information-seeking in humans and complement the existing psychological theory of curiosity.

When reinforcement principles are applied properly, they can be surprisingly effective. Examples discussed include improving classroom behavior, a token economy to reduce injuries in coal mines, reducing drug use, and Lovaas’s treatment for autism. One limitation is that when rewards are discontinued, the behavior may extinuish. To encourge persistence, and thus allow more time for reinforcers in the natural environment to take over, strategies include partial reinforcement during training, reinforcing behavior in a variety of settings, and fading reinforcement gradually. Another potential problem is that rewards can undermine a child’s intrinsic motivation, especially if the child feels coerced. One way to minimize this danger is to start with the mildest reinforcement likely to be effective, ususally praise, and to reinforce achievement rather than obedience. Another strategy is to train children to control their own behavior. Skinner argues that apparent failures of will-power—for example, difficulty dieting—are actually due to reinforcement contingencies that favor immediate gratification over long-term interests. One way to combat this is to introduce more immediate reinforcement for the desired behavior; another is to learn coping responses such as distraction. These techniques have been very effective in helping people lose weight and improve studying.

Several pathways can lead out of destructive drug use, including natural recovery with no treatment. Mental-health professionals in treatment programs or working independently offer treatment, and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and secular groups enable mutual support for recovery from SUD. The Minnesota Model, based on the principles of AA, heavily influences many treatment programs. Counseling and psychotherapy are primary treatments for SUD, often conducted in groups. Sharing of common SUD experiences relieves shame and isolation that impede recovery. Office-based treatment may provide individual psychotherapy. Therapists and counselors try to establish an alliance with clients to promote intrinsic motivation for secure abstinence. Therapies include cognitive-behavioral, 12-step facilitation, mindfulness, dialectical behavior change, and couples or family therapy. Brief Interventions are short counseling sessions most appropriate for early-stage substance abuse. Alcohol or other drug use often recurs after treatment, and prevention of relapse is a primary goal of SUD treatment. Participation in mutual assistance groups is associated with lower rates of relapse.

This chapter instills an appreciation for the powerful effects (both positive and negative) of performance pay on employee behavior. It opens with a performance-pay success story, namely a field experiment by Shearer (2004) in which the piece-rate compensation of Canadian tree planters was changed. It then develops some examples of the darker side of performance pay, including the Wells Fargo employees who opened false accounts to meet a quota. Section 9.2 provides visual representations of performance pay in which the pay graph has a positive slope (i.e., it increases when the worker’s performance measure increases), sometimes linearly as with piece-rate pay and sometimes nonlinearly as with bonuses. The chapter emphasizes the incentive and sorting effects associated with performance pay as well as its prevalence. Workers’ attitudes towards risk (of earnings fluctuations) and how risk affects performance pay is covered, along with performance measurement, various drawbacks of performance pay, and how to design performance-pay contracts. Readers will finish the chapter with an understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of performance pay and when it can be effectively used.

This chapter treats pay in nonprofits and the public sector, where the organization’s objectives are not as straightforward as in the typical for-profit firm. It also covers small businesses, a subject which is neglected in standard compensation texts but which is important because some readers are or aspire to be small-business managers. The opening section defines the 3 entities under discussion. Organizational missions and workers’ intrinsic motivation are described, which relates to compensating differentials in that workers who value the organizational mission interpret it as a non-monetary component of pay that creates an incentive to work hard to further the mission. The chapter revisits external and internal constraints on pay, training (and recruitment of desired worker types), performance pay, and turnover, thereby tying the book’s earlier concepts together. Subjects that were covered in earlier chapters are re-examined through the different lenses of nonprofits, the public sector, and small businesses. The chapter ends with coverage of “distance” between managers and owners, which tends to be shorter in small businesses than in larger ones, and its implications for pay.

This chapter treats pay in nonprofits and the public sector, where the organization’s objectives are not as straightforward as in the typical for-profit firm. It also covers small businesses, a subject which is neglected in standard compensation texts but which is important because some readers are or aspire to be small-business managers. The opening section defines the 3 entities under discussion. Organizational missions and workers’ intrinsic motivation are described, which relates to compensating differentials in that workers who value the organizational mission interpret it as a non-monetary component of pay that creates an incentive to work hard to further the mission. The chapter revisits external and internal constraints on pay, training (and recruitment of desired worker types), performance pay, and turnover, thereby tying the book’s earlier concepts together. Subjects that were covered in earlier chapters are re-examined through the different lenses of nonprofits, the public sector, and small businesses. The chapter ends with coverage of “distance” between managers and owners, which tends to be shorter in small businesses than in larger ones, and its implications for pay.

This chapter instills an appreciation for the powerful effects (both positive and negative) of performance pay on employee behavior. It opens with a performance-pay success story, namely a field experiment by Shearer (2004) in which the piece-rate compensation of Canadian tree planters was changed. It then develops some examples of the darker side of performance pay, including the Wells Fargo employees who opened false accounts to meet a quota. Section 9.2 provides visual representations of performance pay in which the pay graph has a positive slope (i.e., it increases when the worker’s performance measure increases), sometimes linearly as with piece-rate pay and sometimes nonlinearly as with bonuses. The chapter emphasizes the incentive and sorting effects associated with performance pay as well as its prevalence. Workers’ attitudes towards risk (of earnings fluctuations) and how risk affects performance pay is covered, along with performance measurement, various drawbacks of performance pay, and how to design performance-pay contracts. Readers will finish the chapter with an understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of performance pay and when it can be effectively used.

In this chapter, we argue that to understand intelligence one must understand motivation. In the past, intelligence was often cast as an entity unto itself, relatively unaffected by motivation. In our chapter, we spell out how motivational factors determine (1) whether individuals initiate goals relating to the acquisition and display of intellectual skills, (2) how persistently they pursue those goals, and (3) how effectively they pursue those goals, that is, how effectively they learn and perform in the intellectual arena. As will be seen, motivational factors can have systematic and meaningful effects on intellectual ability, performance, and accomplishment over time. Our discussion emphasizes that heritability is not incompatible with the malleability of intelligence and that motivation is the vehicle through which intellectual skills are successfully acquired, expressed, and built upon.