Motivational ambiguity

Are your reasons for doing things always clear? Are they even known to yourself? And if so, do they align with your inner values? If not, is that a bad thing? And lastly, is it even possible to know the true nature of your motivations?

These are questions I often wrestle with. Strangely enough, I was not able to find a name for this phenomenon in psychological literature, so I decided to assign a term to it.

Specifically, for “the uncertainty about your own motivations for doing something”. An appropriate term for this is Motivational Ambiguity (or meta-motivational doubt).

Intrinsic & extrinsic motivations: definitions

Let’s define extrinsic motivations. Often seen in things such as salaries, grades in school, trophies in sports, doing something because you get paid for it, doing something in order not to get punished, doing something to impress others etc. But aren’t these intrinsic in the end? Isn’t winning the trophy intrinsically motivated, not because of the trophy but because of the feeling of pride and satisfaction that comes along with it?

I would like to distinguish and split apart the term of extrinsic motivations:

• Indirect extrinsic motivations: being motivated not because of the thing itself, but because of the effect it creates (such as being motivated to work because of the salary).
• Extraverted extrinsic motivations: being motivated to increase other’s view of you or status (buying a car to impress people). Technically this is also just an indirect motivation, but as this might be the most ambiguous one I decided to separate it.

The ambiguity

There are several stages in the ambiguity of one’s extrinsic motivations:

1. Not having or not acting upon extrinsic motivations (if such a thing is even possible).
2. Knowing your extrinsic motivations and act upon them (or think you know them).
3. Being aware of one’s motivations, but not knowing if they are intrinsic or extrinsic (this article).
4. Not knowing your motivations are extrinsic or never even considering the concept at all.
5. Not wanting to to consider or acknowledge the intrinsic- or extrinsicness of one’s motivations.
6. Not being aware that one is avoiding the question of the nature of one’s motivations.

In stage 3, 4, 5 and 6 there is ambiguity. 3 is aware and indeliberate, 5 is aware and deliberate, 6 is unaware deliberate (as if the unconscious made this decision) and 4 is unaware and indeliberate. For option 5, the bubble of ignorance may be the optimum. For the other 4 ambiguous options, there might be ways to reduce the ambiguity.

How to find your motivations

Ask yourself:

• Would I still do it if I couldn’t tell anyone?
• If everyone I respect would reject the thing I am doing, would I still do it?
• If you would have infinite money, would you still do it?

This should give you at least some direction of how extraverted a motivation is.

Limitations

• To what extent is it even possible to answer these questions? And even if the distinction would be clear, is it possible to act only intrinsically? And if it would be possible to only act intrinsically, is that the most optimal thing to do?
• If we didn’t manage to solve the ambiguity, at least now we’re more aware of our ambiguity. Is that a win? You decide.