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THE THERAPIST PSYCHOLOGIST BOOK STORE
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Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation By Edward L. DeciRichard Flaste ( Penguin (Non-Classics) )
Release Date: 1996-08-01
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $15.00
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 We can motivate people better by supporting and enhancing their autonomy
This is an important book that describes how people in one up-position can motivate people in one-down position (for example, how parents or teachers can motivate their children or students). Basically, people are better motivated to perform certain task if their autonomy, competence, and relatedness to other people are supported and enhanced. The book covers many experiments that has been done in motivation psychology since 1970's. For example, what happens when you reward a person to perform a task when they are intrinsically motivated to do so?
It goes without saying that people are more motivated to perform certain tasks if they are inherently motivated in performing that task. However, interestingly, rewards such as money may be detrimental to maintaining inherent motivation. For example, if you reward a person to do a task that they are already motivated to do and then withdraw the reward, the motivation to do the task actually decreases. Although the person was originally motivated to perform the task without the presence of a reward, after giving the reward the person is not motivated as much to perform the task if the reward is not present (this may be due to the possibility that the individual has now become conditioned to the presence of a reward for performing that task and thus automatically expects a reward to be present).
Of course, one can always motivate people by rewarding them with money, status, power, etc., however, the performance of the behavior is not maintained once you withdraw such reward unless their autonomy, self-competence, and relatedness to people was enhanced during the performance of the task.
I gave the book 5 stars because of the importance of the subjects covered. However, the book is sometimes a little boring to read.
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 Autonomy, competence and relatedness ( aliciacch )
This is a very interesting book to read if you are a leader in your organization, a coach, a parent or have a role leading or motivating people.
It does not have an easy flowing style and could well be re-edited and updated to include the changes technology has brought up in how we communicate and create social networks.
A lot of emphasis is put on self-motivation and respecting autonomy, yet I could not envision how to apply it in the business world.
The consideration of three fundamental human needs: autonomy, competency and relatedness is very interesting.
a good read to understand how to encourage autonomy. I wonder about its applicability for self-determination in groups of people, within an organization or a society.
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Great Book
This was a wonderful book that really helped me out with motivating my students. It also helped with my classroom management. I would recommend this book to any teacher.
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ok ( ngogerty )
This book is ok, but the author seems a little self interested. The motivation concepts are good, but My advice would be to read the Mindset by Carol Dweck. Understanding intrinsic motivations is very interesting and she explores this a lot more effectively with the basics of labeling and self labeling.
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 Great but little weak on how to improve self motivation ( illini012 )
This is a very good book written by a Professor in Psychology. All the facts and conclusions in this book have a strong basis in empirical research. If you want to a good overview of human motivation from clinical psychology perspective, this is a must read.
There is, however, scant information on "how to improve" self motivation. The author goes into great depth on what can demotivate people, but provides very little suggestions on how we can improve our motivation.
Perhaps this is due to author's strict adherence to empirical psychology. I imagine he is not a person who will give psychological suggestions lightly.
The author strongly suggests that increasing self motivation involves focusing one our natural autonomous motivation while staying away from environments and thoughts which can demotivate us.
At any rate, this book is superior to the plethora of psychological books based on NLP.
Overall, this is a highly credible book which is worth a read.
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Addiction
