THINKER'S ALMANAC - August 1

How can a Soma cube puzzle help us better understand human motivation?

Subject:  Motivation - Soma Cube Puzzle

Event:  Publication of Edward Deci’s book Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation, 1996

Self-directed accomplishment, no matter how absurd it may look to outsiders or how partial it may be, can become a foundation of our sense of self and of our sense of possibility. Losing ourselves in an all-absorbing action, we become ourselves. -Adam Gopnik

Psychologist Edward Deci's work challenged a basic assumption about human motivation:  that external rewards -- especially money -- are a prime motivator for human achievement. What made people think twice about this assumption was an experiment he conducted in 1969.

Image by Bluehouse Skis from Pixabay

In Deci’s experiment, subjects put together configurations using seven Soma puzzle pieces from the Soma Cube dissection game during three sessions on three consecutive days.  He began by dividing the subjects into two groups:  Group A and a control group, Group B.  On the first day, both groups were challenged to assemble the Soma pieces into specific configurations. On the second day, the task was the same for both groups; however, Group A was incentivized by an offer of $1 for each successful configuration they constructed.  On the third day, both groups again were challenged to construct puzzles, and just as on the first day of the experiment, neither group was paid (Group A was told that the experimenters had run out of money to compensate them for their work).

The key to the experiment came midway through each day’s session when Deci stopped the experiment, telling the participants that he needed to take a short break to compile data.  At that point, the subjects were told to do whatever they wanted. (In addition to the Soma puzzle pieces, the subjects had access to magazines they could read).  During the 8-minute break, Deci recorded the activity of the participants, noting specifically how much time they spent working on the puzzles when not required to do so.

On the first day, there was no significant difference between what the participants did in Group A and B; on average both groups spent around four minutes working on the puzzles.  On the second day, however, Group A, which was offered the financial incentive, spent more than five minutes on average working on the puzzles during the “break,” while Group B spent the same amount of time as they did on the first day.  The third day’s results were the most interesting:  Without the financial incentive, Group A played with the puzzles about two minutes less than they had on the second day when they were paid; furthermore, they played with the puzzles a minute less than they had on the first day.

Deci’s experiment challenged what so many took for granted, that external rewards, such as money, motivated people to be more productive and to achieve more.  Instead, Deci showed that external rewards could produce short-term results, but in the long run, these rewards had a net negative effect, causing people to lose inherent interest in the activity. 

Deci’s work was so challenging to the conventional wisdom about human motivation that he was fired from a business school.  Fortunately, social scientists were intrigued enough by his findings to give him a job as a psychology professor, where he continued to develop and expand his studies in human motivation.  On this day in 1996, he published the book Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Human Motivation (1).

Writer Adam Gopnik echoes Deci’s ideas in a New York Times editorial in 2023.  Gopnik recounted his early teen years when he worked for hours in his bedroom with his guitar and a Beatles chord book.  Gopnik was intrinsically motivated to learn to play his guitar -- that is he was absorbed in doing something that he loved and the positive feelings that resulted were the only motivation he needed.

To make the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation more clear, Gopnik defines the difference between “achievement” and “accomplishment.”:

Achievement is the completion of the task imposed from outside — the reward often being a path to the next achievement. Accomplishment is the end point of an engulfing activity we’ve chosen, whose reward is the sudden rush of fulfillment, the sense of happiness that rises uniquely from absorption in a thing outside ourselves. (2)

Understanding the difference between achievement and accomplishment will help us to better understand where our motivation is coming from, and this insight may help us to understand ourselves better.  It also may guide us on the path toward a better future.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the difference between an achievement and an accomplishment, and how does this relate to the Soma cube puzzle experiment?

Challenge - Just Do It:  Whether it’s internal (intrinsic) or external (extrinsic), motivation is a subject that everyone should study to better understand how we can push ourselves toward success.  Do some research on quotations about the topic “Motivation.”  Which one do you think is the best and why?

Sources:

1-Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Canongate Press, 2011.

2-Gopnik, Adam. What We Lose When We Push Our Kids to ‘Achieve.’ New York Times 15 May 2023.