My husband and I have a new entertainment: I read out loud to him from books about scientific subjects that I’ve checked out of the public library. We do this at the ends of meals mostly — I have always eaten much faster than he does — in my opinion because I grew up one of many children and he was an only child. We joked that there were two ways to be at the table: quick or hungry. I haven’t been able to break that early habit.

So while he takes his time and tastes his food, I read out loud.

We started with Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin. I started reading it to myself and had so much fun with it that I kept reading him passages out loud. So I decided to go back to the beginning and read it all out loud. It was fascinating to explore the connections between our body plans and those of other species on both the paleontological and molecular biology fronts — for example, how our limbs are structured relative to those of late fish, amphibia, and other mammals (one bone, two bones, lots-a-bones, digits).

When we finished that book, I returned to the library to pick up books referenced by Your Inner Fish. I found 4, and my husband suggested we read them from earliest geotime forwards. We just finished Andrew Knoll’s Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth, an exploration of fossil remains in rocks going as far back as the Archaean Eon, as much as 3.5 billion years ago to the “earliest glimmers of life (maybe).” I hadn’t been aware that our planet didn’t always have so much oxygen available, that the chemistry of ocean water has changed repeatedly. Nor was I aware what an enormous part that microorganisms play in keeping the oxygen, carbon, and other cycles going. It’s a good lesson in humility for humans.

So why do I write about this oddball form of entertainment here?

First to celebrate that I married a man who has the strength Love of Learning as much or more than I do. We have such a good time talking about the ideas that are new to us. He has a much better grounding in science than I do, so he often gets to explain back to me what I just read.

Second to explore another downward comparison that makes me appreciate a much used skill. I did a lot of stumbling over names — I started saying “the AK group” instead of “Akademikerbreen Group,” for example. I also found some of the sentences a little hard to parse as I went along — I’d read a word as a noun, and then realize it was the verb and have to go back and reread the sentence. But for every sentence where I did that, there were 100’s that I was able to read and and speak as I went. Wow, what a complex skill I take for granted all the time! I don’t think these authors expected to be read out loud.

Recently I’ve been trolling through the articles in Positive Psychology News Daily (PPND) looking for ones on various topics — such as positive emotion, flow, goals, positive interventions, strengths — in order to create image maps for others to use as reader’s guides.

Some topics have been written about often — especially gratitude and using strengths. But some have been barely touched, for example, meaning and The Meaningful Life. When I looked a littler further, I found that meaning has also not been addressed very much in the positive psychology literature. Because the Meaningful Life is one of Seligman’s three pathways to happiness, I initially found that surprising, but on reflection, maybe it’s a harder than average topic to address in an empirical way.

Some people define The Meaningful Life as working toward goals that serve a cause larger than oneself in a positive way. That’s fine for people in the active times of life, but when I look at people my mother’s age, I think it isn’t inclusive enough.

I posted an article in PPND about meaning at work as part of meaning in life. Some interesting discussion ensued in the comments, including one comment that people are socialized to think they ought to find meaning in work, become unhappy when they don’t, and could be looking for meaning in other parts of their lives instead. Well said. It’s common for a person to think that what works for him or her works for everybody. So people who find their primary meaning in work may find it hard to understand people who work for money to support families or hobbies that are their primary sources of meaning.

Professor Roy Baumeister

Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs (2005, p. 615) also comment, “Because work does not easily lend itself to existential significance, however, relying on career for meaning in life is associated with career burnout.”

Baumeister and Vohs (2005, p. 610) associate the quest for meaning in life with four main needs:

1. Purpose: Present events draw meaning from their connection to future outcomes — objective goals and subjective fulfillment.
2. Values, which can justify certain courses of action
3. Efficacy, the belief that one can make a difference
4. Self-worth, reasons for believing that one is a good and worthy person

Although people tend to think of meaning as singular, they quote Emmons (1997), “Empirically, however, people’s lives usually draw meaning from multiple sources, including family and love, work, religion, and various personal projects.”

Professor Kathleen Vohs

There’s lots more food for thought in the Baumeister and Vohs article. For example they describe actions one can take in pursuit of the 4 needs and ways of interpreting suffering in terms of the 4 needs. I expect I’ll come back to this topic again. For right now, let me end with their proposal that “meaning is necessary but not sufficient for happiness” (p. 612). This may help answer the question that a friend recently asked me: Why does it appear that becoming a parent seems to make people less happy (from a recent Newsweek article). Baumeister (1991) saw extensive evidence that having children reduces parental life satisfaction, but increases the meaningfulness that they experience in life. In my experience, the life satisfaction goes up and down, but the meaningfulness of being a parent stays constant.

Baumeister (1991). Meanings of life. New York: Guilford.Baumeister, R. & Vohs, K. (2005). Meaningfulness in life. In C. R. Snyder & S. Lopez, Handbook of positive psychology, pp. 608-618). Oxford UK: Oxford University Press.
Emmons, R. (1997). Motives and goals. In R. Hogan & J. A. Johnson (Eds.), Handbook of personality psychology, (p 485-512). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

While I was out in Idaho, Jesse Posey gave me a sketch that he had written about growing up there during the depression years. It was a very interesting piece about habits of gratitude coming out of a hard beginning.

Since this piece has been published in a magazine (Jesse couldn’t remember where), I’m not going to include the whole thing here. If I do find the reference I’ll add it.

Downward comparisons can be very useful for enhancing gratitude. That means thinking about how things could be worse, or were worse, or are worse for someone else. Jesse’s gratitude comes partly from thinking of the hobos who showed him that having a home and enough food to give some away was something to be grateful for. It also comes from remembering being cold and working hard. According to the poet, Robert Pollock, “Sorrows remembered sweeten present joy.” These experiences from more than 70 years ago have cast a very long gratitude shadow.

Jesse and his mother during the Depression

We came to Idaho from Tennessee in 1935 when I was 6 years old with hope of finding a better life. … All that we brought to Idaho with us was what we could cram into the car. It must have been so hard for mother to have to leave so many treasured things behind. 5 of us made the move, my mother, an aunt, an uncle, a cousin, and myself. Years later I asked my cousin if we camped out. He laughed and said, “No, we just drove and picknicked with a loaf of bread, bologna or cheese and crackers.”

We moved to Kimberly, Idaho that fall and into another one room house across from the railroad tracks. Being close to the tracks we had our share of hobo’s knocking on our door looking for a hand out or anything to eat. Though we had little I can remember that my mother always found something to share with them.
Our house was just a framed building with no insulation and the winters were really cold. I would walk along the tracks looking for coal that had fallen off of a coal car and sometimes a hobo would toss coal off.

Kimberly had a dance hall called “Shadowland” and several name bands played there. After a dance I would get up early the next morning and walk around the building and hunt for beer bottles which I could sell. Once in a while I would find some change or even a bill. I sold the Saturday Evening Post and the Grit magazines and mowed lawns with a really hard to push reel mower with a grass catcher. The money earned was turned over to my mother to help buy groceries.

We made our own entertainment by playing basketball, baseball or football when we could find a ball to use. … We also played what we called field hockey. We would use a Sego or Morning Milk can for the puck and what ever for the stick.

It was a hard life but I think it was a good time to be growing up. I’m sure it made us appreciate anything that we were able to obtain later in life.

Jesse and Anna Lou Posey today

I’ve written this answer twice to a LinkedIn question and had the connection be reset when I tried to save it. So I think I’ll do a third brain dump here where I know I can save it! (If you can’t see the question and other answers, I suspect you need to register with LinkedIn, a professional networking tool.)

3. Stop thinking in terms of competitiveness and start thinking in terms of global non-zero-sum behavior. In his book, Non-zero, Robert Wright has a strong argument that we’ve reached a time in history where this is not only possible, but also very much needed to face the challenges that humankind has in front of it.

Savoring is a set of skills that can be learned in order to increase the positive emotion we experience in our day-to-day existences.

These are all processes that can be practiced intentionally so that they become more common and habitual, increasing the positive experiences in our lives.

I’ve been an active contributor to Positive Psychology News Daily (PPND) ever since it started. PPND is an online publication about positive psychology with regular articles by people who have gone through an applied positive psychology training program — the one at Penn and the one at East London University. We also occasionally have guest authors. The articles are based on positive psychology research, but they are also leavened with stories and suggestions for practical application.

I am now an associate editor of PPND, which means that I work in collaboration with the editor-in-chief, Senia Maymin and another associate editor, Timothy So, on ways to make the site more interesting and helpful to people. Now that we have nearly 300 articles, we concluded it would be good to create some guides to help people find their way to topics that particularly interest them or that correspond to whatever concerns they have on their minds right now.

I created the first of such guides, an image map for Positive Emotions. It’s a picture akin to a mind map for various topics that comprise Positive Emotions where each topic in the image is a link to a short description, a list of related PPND articles, and a list of other resources for those who want to dig deeper.

We have plans for other image maps — e.g., Positive Actions, Positive Attributes, Relationships. This first image map certainly does not exhaust the space. But we would really like feedback as we go to be sure we’re creating something that people find useful.

Post comments here or there if you have suggestions, complaints, or kudos. Thanks!

This posting is a continuation of an earlier posting on intrinsic motivation. In Ryan and Deci’s paper, Figure 1, the Self-Determination Continuum, presents a very useful model of different sorts of motivation. I’ll describe it briefly here — putting my own spin on it, I’m sure. If you want it in their pictorial form without my spin, remember you can get the paper, Self Determination Theory and Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being, from the Self-Determination Theory site.

People get motivation a number of different ways — and in different ways for different activities.

The continuum starts with amotivation — not feeling motivated at all — and ends with intrinsic motivation — doing something purely for the joy of doing it. Movement along the continuum is often driven by the trio, Relatedness, Competence, and Autonomy, described in the first part of this discussion.

1. Amotivation: Lacking the intention to act, going through the motions — either from not valuing the activity, not feeling competent at it, or not expecting a positive outcome from it.

There may not be much that can be done about someone not valuing an activity, but there are things that can be done about perceived competence — helping someone build skills or become aware of existing skills or remove obstacles — and perhaps there are things that can be done to raise the level of expectation of a positive outcome.

2. Extrinsic motivation with external regulation: Intention to act that is based on external rewards and punishments. Often experienced as being controlled or alienated.

This is the form of motivation that responds to bribes and punishments. The problem is, when the bribes and punishments stop, so does the activity unless the person’s motivation has moved further along the continuum.

3. Extrinsic motivation with introjected regulation: I think of introjected regulation as hearing someone else’s voice in one’s head. It involves doing things to please others — perhaps having one’s self-esteem contingent on doing what others want done.

I think this one emphasizes Relatedness. To increase introjection, give people reasons to want to please you and then let them know when they do please you.

4. Extrinsic motivation with identified regulation: consciously valuing the goal so that it becomes personally important.

I think identification comes with a growing sense of competence. People are unwilling to identify with activities that they feel are beyond their ability. Task enablement interventions may be useful to increase motivation to this point — finding mentors, breaking tasks down into manageable pieces, highlighting instances of success.

5. Extrinsic motivation with integrated regulation: The motivation is taken in and integrated with one’s sense of self. It’s still driven by interest in outcome, but now it is congruent with one’s personal values and needs.

This is probably also related to a growing sense of competence, as well as autonomy since integration implies a greater degree of ownership.

6. Intrinsic motivation: Interest, enjoyment, inherent satisfaction in the activity.

The shift from extrinsic to intrinsic is from being focused on the outcome to being focused on the activity in and of itself. To some degree, it involves all three of Relatedness, Competence, and Autonomy.

It is very unlikely that you will feel the same level of motivation for all the activities you could do. But if you happen to want to be more motivated for a particular activity, it may be helpful to look at your level of Relatedness, Competence, and Autonomy — to see if ideas come up for positive interventions. Are there ways that you could connect the activity to the well-being of others you value? Increase your skills? Gain greater volition and freedom in the way you conduct the activity? To quote Ryan and Deci (p. 76),

“Contexts supportive of autonomy, competence, and relatedness were found to foster greater internalization and integration than contexts that thwart satisfaction of these needs. This latter finding, we argue, is of great significance for individuals who wish to motivate others in a way that engenders commitment, effort, and high-quality performance.”

This continuum shows how motivation can grow, and it leads to ideas of positive interventions that can make a difference, different ones at different points. Don’t focus on making amotivated people more autonomous. Don’t put all your energy into increasing external rewards for people who are intrinsically motivated. At any point, think about whether and how basic human needs for relatedness, competence, and autonomy are relevant.

Albert Bandura has an article about self-efficacy that I have read over and over again. I’ll summarize my own take-aways from it with the hopes that you’ll be interested enough to go see what he REALLY said.

Self-efficacy is a sense of personal effectiveness, a belief that I have the power through my performance to affect the outcomes that matter to me. Self-efficacy beliefs have a big impact on how people think, feel, motivate themselves, behave, and thus perform in a given setting.

There are four ways that people grow in self-efficacy, arranged below from the most effective down to the least — but still effective.

1. Personal mastery: Taking on something that is a little beyond your personal sense of what you can do and then succeeding at it. Personal comment: I was unhappy to discover when I left work temporarily after the birth of my first children that a sense of personal mastery starts to seep away without new experiences. I had thought you got it and then kept it. Not so.
2. Vicarious mastery: Observing people like yourself achieving personal mastery. The more they are like you, the more self-efficacy you gain. Personal comment: Aha! This is the reason that role models matter so much for women in technical work places — and for under-represented minorities everywhere.
3. Social persuasion: “Come on, you can do it. Yes you can.”
4. Interpreting stress reactions in a positive way: self-efficacious people view performance stress as energizing; those without self-efficacy find performance stress debilitating and a sign that they will fail. Personal comment: I still get butterflies in my stomach when I’m about to give a talk. I no longer experience them as a sign that I am going to mess up. Now they are the signals that I’m getting excited about meeting an audience.

When you look for ways to make the people around you more masterful at what they do — your co-workers, employees, children, spouse, friends, etc. — remember Albert Bandura and self-efficacy.

A friend of mine sees that the success of her work depends on actions taken by others — specifically others over whom she has no organizational control. She works with two different groups, one of which appears to be more motivated to participate than the other. This gives her an unusual opportunity to observe the differences between the two groups and perhaps use what she learns from one to augment the motivation of people in the other.

This situation reminded me of a paper by Richard Ryan and Edward Deci entitled Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being. This is a very meaty paper, right up there with Albert Bandura’s paper on Self-efficacy as a source of ideas for me. I’ll try to summarize parts of the article here and perhaps in a subsequent posting. If your curiosity carries you further, you can download this paper for personal use from the Overview of Self-Determination Theory site.

←Richard Ryan
←Edward Deci

Intrinsic motivation is self-authored and endorsed and leads to more interest, excitement and confidence than motivation based on external rewards or punishments. Intrinsic motivation is generally inherent in humans and will flourish when circumstances permit.

Intrinsic motivation is strongly affected by three psychological needs, each of which is affected by the social context:

• Competence — Can be increased by optimal level of challenge and effective feedback.

  Here are links to some musings about effective feedback: Effective Negative Feedback, Effective Positive Feedback, Process Praise versus People Praise.

• Autonomy — Having an internal locus of control, freedom to determine own behavior. Can be increased by having choice, acknowledgement of feelings, and opportunities for self-direction.

  Interestingly enough, the authors reference a meta-analysis that confirms “that all expected tangible rewards made contingent on task performance do reliably undermine intrinsic motivation.” (p. 70). I don’t think it is quite as simple as removing all contingent rewards — since there can be an evolution to reach intrinsic motivation that goes through various types of extrinsic motivation. But it may explain the frustration that managers find when rewards do not have exactly the impact they expect.

  I have another friend who made big difference in the motivation of the people he managed by giving them explicit goals and then leaving it up to them when and how they worked on the goals. That’s a story for another day.

• Relatedness — Having a sense of security and relatedness. Can be increased by having people around who care about you. This relates to one of the 12 questions that Gallup finds very associated with high productivity work places: “Someone at Work cares about me as a person.”

Ryan and Deci caution that intrinsic motivation occurs only for activities that have intrinsic interest for the person — there has to be a seed of interest before the social context has an impact. But once the seed is there, the social context can make a big difference.

My children loved The Great Brain books by John D. Fitzgerald starting in the 2nd or 3rd grade. I enjoyed reading them out loud immensely.

There’s a good Wikipedia article about this series, so I’ll only give a brief summary here. Each book is a series of episodes about a Catholic family living in southern Utah in the late 1800’s. The narrator is the younger brother of the main character, Tom D. Fitzgerald, otherwise known as The Great Brain because nobody ever seems to get the better of him. The very first chapter is about the installation of the first flush toilet in the whole town at their house and how The Great Brain turns it to his advantage.

I enjoyed the descriptions of life out west, since family was from Idaho, I did some of my growing up there, but my children had never experienced the open skies, sagebrush, and tumbleweeds of western landscapes or bluntness and directness of western culture.

My particular reason for including these books in the positive canon is the way they show an outstanding character strength being used in widely different ways, some morally good, some not. Tom is a paragon of social intelligence, but you can never tell whether he’ll be using it in a particular episode to manipulate people or to help them solve human puzzles that daunt even the adults in his world. He is very aware of his ability — he calls himself The Great Brain. But just when you are wanting to give up on the way he tricks people to get his own way, he exhibits true wisdom and unselfishness. It’s a useful reminder about the power of character strengths and the mixed nature of ways they can be applied.

Besides, the stories in the 7 book series are just plain fun for both children and adults.