Recently in Motivation Category

A fun survey on motivation and the Web: "What Motivates Wikipedians?"

As a follow-up to "what do bestsellers tell us about society?", I thought I'd share a couple of relevant posts by Tim O'Reilly in the last week.  Somehow I often find his posts highly relevant to my perspective and sometimes even my research.  First, "The Techmeme Leaderboard: The Enduring Appeal of the Bestseller List" is an alternate angle on what bestsellers tell us about society, and precisely why they can be used as such a lens.  Or at least that's one thing to take from it!

Second, today he posted a lovely example of the motivation provided by stories I spoke of at the end of my piece:

Few business leaders appreciate the power of stories to connect with their audiences. A few weeks ago I was working with one of the largest producers of organic food in the country. I can't recall most, if any, of the data they used to prove organic is better. But I remember a story a farmer told. He said when he worked for a conventional grower, his kids could not hug him at the end of the day when he got home. His clothes had to be removed and disinfected. Now, his kids can hug him as soon as he walks off the field. No amount of data can replace that story. And now guess what I think about when I see the organic section in my local grocery store? You got it. The farmer's story. Stories connect with people on an emotional level. Tell more of them.

We need more farmer's stories, especially in the non-profit world!  Who is going to go out and write them?

Here's another example of using personal motivation for the greater good: BBC News reports that Carnegie Mellon has started using samples from old books for CAPTCHAs. 

But the CMU research team, based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has devised an ingenious system to put the time used interpreting CAPTCHAs to good use.

Text files

The team is involved in digitising old books and manuscripts supplied by a non-profit organisation called the Internet Archive, and uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to examine scanned images of texts and turn them into digital text files which can be stored and searched by computers.

But the OCR software is unable to read about one in 10 words, due to the poor quality of the original documents.

The only reliable way to decode them is for a human to examine them individually - a mammoth task since CMU processes thousands of pages of text every month.

To solve this problem the team takes images of the words which the OCR software can't read, and uses them as CAPTCHAs.

These CAPTCHAs, known as reCAPTCHAS, are then distributed to websites around the world to be used in place of conventional CAPTCHAs.

What a nifty side effect!  I love this because it takes something people have to do anyway, validate themselves as humans, and turns it into historical restoration without the person even knowing it.  I am endlessly fascinated by these little backchannel ways of getting people to do good.

I love the One Laptop Per Child initiative.  It's a lovely blend of technology and worldchanging, and I do believe it is worldchanging given how important computers were to my development (my family got our first when I was three and I was instantly hooked).  Having access to a worldwide web of information from a young age changed my life and perspective on the world, and I look forward to more children having the same opportunity.

Plus the laptop itself?  Super cool.  Jesse Vincent brought one to dinner a few weeks ago and it is terrific.  Adorable and thoughtfull designed.  The screen is bright, the pull cord is clever, and the convertible touch screen is useful.  The keyboard is a bit small (it's intended for children after all) but I'm sure I would adjust to it.  After trying it out I instantly wanted one for notetaking in class, since it is much smaller, lighter, and hardier than my 15" Powerbook.

So I was excited to read in the New York Times that OLPC is taking advantage of people like me in the best possible way:

The marketing program, to be announced today, is called "Give 1 Get 1," in which Americans and Canadians can buy two laptops for $399.

One of the machines will be given to a child in a developing nation, and the other one will be shipped to the purchaser by Christmas. The donated computer is a tax-deductible charitable contribution. The program will run for two weeks, with orders accepted from Nov. 12 to Nov. 26.

Cool!  I can't wait to order one in November, and I am all the more eager because a child will be enjoying the laptop too.  This is a neat little motivation trick, using people's desire for a cool gadget to get a donation.  I hope it is successful!

Goodness, it has been a week since my last post!  Fall quarter started up on Monday, so I have been chipping away at my classes all week.  I'm taking Methods of Psychological Research, Modern American Literature, Environmental Issues & Problems, and Introductory Physics.  Psych research ends a month from now (eek!) so physics will be my hardest course once that's done.

But anyway.  This summer I bought an adorable little red Prius, which I love to bits.  I particularly enjoy the two of the nifty dashboard displays.  One shows you whether the car is using the gas engine, electric motor, both, or neither (such as when coasting downhill). 

The other (pictured to the left, click for huge version) tracks your fuel consumption.  The bar graph provides a readout of miles-per-gallon and power regeneration in 5 minute increments.  The bottom display the average MPG since the last refuel.  

(You can see more views of both displays at this post by Carpundit.)

You already know I am a geek so I have no hesitation in revealing that I find this feature crazy fun.  The energy monitor is a fun logic puzzle as you try to figure out when and why it switches between gas and electric.  Obviously it is not completely random, but the algorithm for the switch is not readily obvious either.

But the especially fun one is the consumption monitor.  It is endlessly amusing for me to sit in the passenger seat and watch how driving style affects MPG and regeneration.

Using the general knowledge that the energy monitor gives you, you can learn to maximize MPG (for example, not accelerating quickly, or using engine braking when going downhill or coming to a stop). 

And unlike most cars, you get almost instant feedback through the consumption monitor.  Instead of calculating an average when you fill up or even just noticing you saved a few cents on gas, you see with five minutes how well you've done. 

When I'm in the passenger seat, the driver and I often (and this is really geeky) cheer when a particularly high MPG pops up due to efficient driving.  I even have a few photos on my camera phone from times when we've hit an especially long run of high MPG.  For example, the photo to the left is from a memorable drive up the 1 from Santa Cruz to San Francisco, where gently rolling hills and my co-pilot's excellent engine braking skills kept the MPG at nearly 100 for over fifteen minutes and regenerated 400Wh!

Artur tells me that there is research showing that constant monitoring of this kind turns activities into a video game.  Any time you can constantly see the effects of your actions in digital form (heart rate monitoring comes to mind,** or calories burned on a treadmill), it becomes a game to adjust your actions and see the effects.

So why am I treading on the lovely Jane MacGonigal's turf on my little literature blog?  One of my "humanity through humanities" interests is the psychology of motivation as seen through literature (see what do bestsellers tell us about society?), particularly the literature of technology (see del.icio.us as a model for social change). 

So you can probably see where I'm going with this: how can this be harnessed for social change?   Yes, you've heard this question from me before, and hopefully you will hear it a lot more.   This seems particularly relevant to environmental concerns, such as the Prius' motivator to save gas. 

From a psychology of motivation perspective, the Prius essentially shortens the time between action and reinforcement.  If you took Psych 101 you probably remember rat studies that explore this idea.*  A rat is placed in a box and tries to perform a maze correctly, receiving a pellet for a correct performance.  If the rat receives a pellet immediately after performing a maze correctly, it will remember the maze better next time.  If the rat receives a pellet a day after performing a maze correctly, the rat doesn't connect the two and the reward has no effect on the maze.  You receive the electrical bill after two months and it isn't connected to that time six weeks ago that you left the lights on when you went away for the weekend, or even all those times you left the lights on when you went out to dinner.

Carolyn Webster-Stratton's Incredible Years program applies the same principle when using logical consequences for children.***  If a child goes outside in winter without a coat, the consequence (being cold) is logical and immediate, therefore reinforcing the lesson that cold weather requires a coat.  But if a child does not study for a spelling test, the consequence (failing the spelling text next week) is logical but not immediate, so the child doesn't connect the failing grade with all those nights spent playing video games instead of studying.  The environment is one big spelling test that we are failing, but the grades likely won't come in until our children's, grandchildren's, or great-grandchildren's generations if we're lucky.  The consequences of not conserving are logical but without a Prius-style display, they are not immediate.

So back to the example of electricity.  What could be done to reduce the period between action and reinforcement?  I picture putting up a Prius-style display in my apartment, perhaps over the living room lightswitch, showing in real time the kilowatts of power my house is using plus averages for the hour, day, week, and month.  I imagine testing out the different combinations of lights that produce the ideal combination of low wattage and light needed for my task, instead of just flipping on all the lights at once.

Surely there could be lots more environmental applications for this.  I hope people smarter than me get around to inventing and implementing them!

* There are lots of examples and of course I don't have a relevant textbook handy, but one good example with pigeons is Fantino, E., & Dunn, M. (1983). The delay-reduction hypothesis: Extension to three-alternative choice.  Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 9(2), 132-146.
** For example, Larkin, K.T., Zayfert, C., Veltum, L.G., & Abel, J.L. (1992).  Effects of feedback and contingent reinforcement in reducing heart rate response to stress.  Journal of Psychophysiology, 6(2), 119-130.
*** From a therapeutic perspective, see Webster-Stratton, C.  (2007).  Reducing Inappropriate Behaviors: Part 5, Logical Consequences.  In Leader's Guide: School-Age Version (ages 6-12 years), (pp. 639-676). The Incredible Years: Parents, Teachers, and Children Training Series. Seattle: Incredible Years Press.
From a parent/lay perspective, see Webster-Stratton, C.  (2005).  Logical Consequences.  In The Incredible Years (don't have my copy handy for page numbers).  Seattle: Incredible Years Press.

Update, 10/19/07

Artur points to this DEFRA report, which analyzes the effects of feedback on energy consumption.  Here is the beginning of the executive summary:

Most domestic energy use, most of the time, is invisible to the user. Most people
have only a vague idea of how much energy they are using for different purposes
and what sort of difference they could make by changing day-to-day behaviour or
investing in efficiency measures. Hence the importance of feedback in making
energy more visible and more amenable to understanding and control. This
review considers what is known about the effectiveness of feedback to
householders. The focus is on how people change their behaviour, not on the
detail of the technology used. 

He also briefly posted on Radar about technologies that monitor everyday power usage here, and plans a followup on the latest technologies.  I'm looking forward to it!

One of my favorite questions when using literature as a lens is: what can be said about a society that values this text?  So with the arrival of Sunday's New York Times bestsellers list, I am curious what can be said about a society that made these books bestsellers.  Let's take a look at the top 10.

1	A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS, by Khaled Hosseini. (Riverhead, $25.95.) A friendship between two women in Afghanistan against the backdrop of 30 years of war.
2	THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. (Warner, $25.99.) A Tibetan abbot asks the F.B.I. agent Aloysius Pendergast to help recover a stolen relic with evil powers.
3	BONES TO ASHES, by Kathy Reichs. (Scribner, $25.95.) The forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is asked to examine the skeleton of a young girl in Canada, where, many years ago, her best friend disappeared.
4	DARK POSSESSION, by Christine Feehan. (Berkley, $24.95.) A Seattle counselor for battered women is wooed by a shape-shifter in Brazil; the 18th Carpathian novel.
5	THE ELVES OF CINTRA, by Terry Brooks. (Del Rey/Ballantine, $26.95.) The second volume of the Genesis of Shannara series is set in postapocalyptic Seattle.
6	TREE OF SMOKE, by Denis Johnson. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) The Vietnam War in the experience of military intelligence officers. First Chapter
7	* PLAY DIRTY, by Sandra Brown. (Simon & Schuster, $26.95.) A disgraced N.F.L. quarterback struggles to remake his life.
8	HEARTSICK, by Chelsea Cain. (St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95.) A detective obsesses over the beautiful, sadistic serial killer who nearly tortured him to death.
9	THE QUICKIE, by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. (Little, Brown, $27.99.) A police officer's attempt to get back at her husband goes dangerously awry.
10	SONGS WITHOUT WORDS, by Ann Packer. (Knopf, $24.95.) The relationship between two old friends is shaken when the daughter of one of them attempts suicide. First Chapter

I notice two basic themes emerge:

• The story of a relationship between two people
• The story of someone trying to get something done
  

Now, this is pretty broad, of course.  But it speaks to a trick that political communication scholars have known for a while: it's much easier to get people involved with a really good personal story than with a general call to action. 

There are two aspects to this.  One, people can be engaged by the story of an individual affected by a community problem.  Current bestseller A Thousand Splendid Suns is an example of this; Dave Eggers' What Is the What is another recent example.  Second, reading about someone doing something can make you want to do something too.  I'm sure everyone can remember an example of that.  I admit I was overcome with wanting to be a dancer after seeing Center Stage, which if nothing else shows the text in question doesn't even have to be very good to have an effect.  I also remember a lovely little film that the Jewish Family Service of Seattle shows new volunteers, which inspired me to assist in the many ways they help the community.

I feel like the second phenomenon is more recognizable but less utilized.  And really, it is a bit more intuitive, isn't it?  If you read a powerful story about someone who needs help, you want to help but don't know how.  If you read a powerful story about someone helping those in need, you want to help and now know a way, or at least have someone else to support.  These stories give people a means to action, instead of just a call to it.  I wish more organizations would partner with talented artists to put more of these stories into mainstream culture. 

Personally, I hope I can someday use my writing skills to give people a means to act for social change, and I hope I can find an organization to partner with and find a story to tell.  Hmm, this seems like a non-profit waiting to happen!

I woke up this morning thinking about the curious way community is created through del.icio.us.  I think that most people, myself included, join del.icio.us as a way to manage their own bookmarks.  But in the act of managing your own bookmarks, you contribute to a knowledgebase of thousands of bookmarks as well as a network of semantic structures.  So through a personal act, you contribute to the society of del.icio.us users.  You don't have to do anything special, and you likely never think, hey, I'll bookmark this so maybe someone else can find it.  But that's exactly what happens anyway.

Part of my commitment to humanity through humanities involves using knowledge about humanity gained through literature to promote social change.  So I can't help but think this model could be useful for more than just bookmarks.  It's often difficult to convince people to promote social change when it requires a task that does not directly benefit them--really, this is the theory behind incentive systems such as tax-deductible donations and NPR totebags.  So how can we harness this model where doing something for yourself simultaneously promotes the community?