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Instead of trying to encourage some new type of behavior through extrinsic rewards, Quora tries to understand why people come to their site in the first place so they can play to that motivation through gamification. Once users accrue enough points, they can use them to upvote a question so more people answer it or ask experts specific questions.
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Quora reinforces this behavior by awarding credits (read: points) to users for participating in the community. Quora users want to share their knowledge and interact with people who have the same interests as them, and the platform lets them do that, satisfying their need for human connection and relationship. This is the secret to Quora’s success-the community not only features notable experts from a variety of industries, it also has tons of incredibly active, engaged members. Quora enjoys strong community participation and has grown significantly in the past several years, boasting 300 million monthly users in 2018. The site uses popularity to rank questions in users’ feeds, similar to how social media platforms display posts. Started by two ex-Facebook employees in 2009, Quora is a question-and-answer website with a heavy focus on technology. Consequently, gamification can successfully tap into people’s intrinsic motivation by emphasizing certain actions through a software-interface and workplace structure.īut enough with the abstract psychology. Games satisfy people’s needs for relatedness, purpose, autonomy, and competence. If external rewards can harm intrinsic motivation, how do you encourage intrinsic motivation? This is where well thought-out gamification comes into play. If businesses want to move beyond the current landscape of employee malaise, identifying and catering to intrinsic motivation is the only way forward. Traditional extrinsic rewards work well for motivating workers to perform repetitive tasks-studies have found that rewards don’t undermine internal motivation to perform uninteresting tasks-but when applied to job functions that require innovation, these rewards can actually harm intrinsic motivation. Yet a majority of the business world still relies on extrinsic motivation to encourage their employees to be productive. Of course employees want their basic needs like food and shelter covered, but once everyday comforts are addressed, pay raises, bonuses, and other monetary prizes don’t consistently encourage long term motivation. You can see the author’s entire speech here:Īccording to social science research, external rewards are not the best motivators for white collar workers. As he says, “There’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.” In his 2009 TED Talk, Pink explains the need to understand and promote intrinsic motivation. Dan Pink, author of the influential book Drive introduces a fourth: purpose. Intrinsic motivation for businessĪs mentioned before, SDT identifies three universal needs that intrinsically motivate all humans. It’s also central to gaining a better understanding of what motivates your employees to engage with their work. extrinsic motivation is critical to implementing an effective gamification program. While the two types are often painted as distinct entities, the reality is often more complex.įor businesses, understanding intrinsic vs. As you might expect, extrinsic motivation refers to stimuli that originate from external influences, such as money or other types of rewards. In SDT theory, intrinsic motivation is the opposite of extrinsic motivation. These needs are not only essential for motivation without external influences, but also for mental well-being. In a broad sense, SDT posits that three psychological needs internally motivate humans to take action. It’s one of the key psychological theories for gamification designers, as well as many social psychologists. Intrinsic motivation-which refers to a person’s internal drive to perform an action purely because of the enjoyment they get from it-plays a foundational role in Self-Determination Theory (SDT). If you’re studying gamification, you won’t have to dig very deep to come across references to intrinsic motivation and all its glorious power.