High
School students often complain about the classes that they are taking.
Their course of study is largely laid out for them, and so they have few
choices of the subjects they take. The lack of choice can be
demotivating. When those students get to college, though, an interesting
thing happens. Suddenly, they have almost an infinite amount of
choice. They can select the courses they want. At that point, the
number of options can feel completely overwhelming.
So,
is it better for your motivation and performance if you are allowed to choose
what you want to do or if the choice is made for you?
This
question was explored in paper in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology paper
published in 2013 by Erika Patall, Breana Sylvester, and Cheon-woo Han. They suggest that the influence of choice on
motivation and performance depends on people’s competence at the task. When people have some expertise in a task,
then they are more motivated when they can choose what they are doing than when
the choice is made for them. When people
are not experts, then they are actually most motivated when the choice is made
for them.
In
one study, participants played a word game in which they had to form as many
words as they could from a set of letters given to them. Before playing the game, they were given a
test of verbal ability and were randomly assigned to get feedback that they
were either among the top or among the bottom scorers on this test. The feedback was designed to manipulate how
people felt about their competence at playing these games relative to their
peers.
Some
participants were given the choice between playing one of two games (which were
labeled Text Twist and Boggle), a choice between having games
of medium difficulty, or games of a range of easy, medium, and hard difficulty,
and a choice between playing rounds for 2-minutes at a time or playing for a
total of 20 minutes. Other participants
were assigned to a combination of these factors.
Participants
then reported whether they thought they would do well in these games and their
motivation to succeed. Afterwards, did
the puzzles. (The two formats and
difficulty levels were actually identical, so participants ultimately did all
of the same puzzles regardless of the combination they chose or to which they
were assigned.) After completing the
games participants were asked how motivated they were to complete the puzzles
and how much they enjoyed them.
The
manipulation of competence was successful.
People who were given feedback that they scored well on the test of
verbal ability rated themselves as more competent at these puzzles than those
who were told that they scored poorly.
Participants
who could choose for themselves were more motivated to do the puzzles and
performed better when they rated themselves as good at these puzzles than when
they saw themselves as bad at them.
People who had the choice made for them showed the opposite
pattern. They were more motivated and
performed better when felt they were bad at puzzles than when they felt they
were good at them.
This
pattern is actually reflected in people’s judgments of what they would do in
real-life situations. In another study,
participants who performed a survey using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk were asked
whether they would prefer to choose a job or be assigned one in a work
situation in which they knew they were good at the task or in which they knew
they were not so good at it. Participants
had a stronger preference to choose their job when it was something they knew
they were good at than when it was something they knew they were not good
at.
These
findings are valuable for anyone who is managing a group. In order to increase people’s enjoyment of
what they are doing and their motivation to continue, it is important to match
the freedom they have to choose to the expertise they believe they have. People who see themselves as experts want
choice, while those who see themselves as novices prefer to be given an
assignment.
