The effect of autonomous and controlled motivation on self‐control performance and the acute cortisol response

Previous research on work-related motivation and work-related outcomes generally shows that autonomous forms of motivation are associated with higher performance and job satisfaction, whereas controlled forms of motivation are generally linked to worse outcomes. These relationships are largely based on between-persons data from cross-sectional studies or longitudinal studies with few measurement points. However, motivation quality, performance, and job satisfaction can vary considerably from day to day, both between and within individuals. The present study therefore combines between-persons and within-persons approaches to study the relationships between motivation, performance, and job satisfaction. Nineteen white-collar workers participated in the study. With a default protocol of 30 working days, an ecological momentary assessment app prompted participants five times a day to report their autonomous and controlled motivation for work tasks and their productivity and job satisfaction at the end of each day. Fourteen participants gathered sufficient data to compute within-person relations and individual networks. At the between person level, autonomous motivation was positively associated with productivity, whereas no association with job satisfaction was detected. No associations were detected between controlled motivation and productivity or job satisfaction. At group level within persons, (a) motivation during work tasks (autonomous or controlled) was not associated with self-reported productivity or job satisfaction at the end of that day, (b) self-reported productivity at the end of a day was negatively related to next day autonomous and controlled motivation, and (c) end of day job satisfaction was positively related to next day controlled motivation, but not autonomous motivation. Individual network analyses indicated considerable interindividual heterogeneity, especially in the relationships between motivation and job satisfaction. In conclusion, these findings point to significant variability in the observed relations between motivation, performance and job satisfaction, and highlight the added value of a within person approach and individual networks in addition to between-persons approaches. The implications of these findings for occupational wellbeing research are discussed.

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Value congruence and teachers’ work engagement: The mediating role of autonomous and controlled motivation

Personality and Individual Differences ◽

10.1016/j.paid.2015.02.021 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 80 ◽

pp. 113-118 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Mingjun Li ◽

Zhenhong Wang ◽

Xuqun You ◽

Jie Gao

Keyword(s):

Work Engagement ◽

Value Congruence ◽

Mediating Role ◽

Controlled Motivation ◽

Autonomous And Controlled Motivation

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Self-Control, Agency, and the Placebo Brain Stimulation

Surrounding Self-Control ◽

10.1093/oso/9780197500941.003.0010 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 189-202

Author(s):

Davide Rigoni ◽

Naomi Vanlessen ◽

Rossella Guerini ◽

Mario De Caro ◽

Marcel Brass

Keyword(s):

Brain Stimulation ◽

Prediction Error ◽

Metacognitive Knowledge ◽

Self Control ◽

Control Beliefs ◽

Control Performance ◽

The Core ◽

Actual Outcome ◽

Core Idea ◽

The Relationship

This chapter focuses on the relationship between control beliefs and self-control. After providing an overview of the research showing how control beliefs affect self-control performance, the authors present a novel experimental procedure based on a placebo brain stimulation that aims at altering people’s belief about their own self-control. They then describe a heuristic framework that accounts for belief-related changes in self-control performance. The core idea is that beliefs should be conceptualized as metacognitive knowledge about the self and that such metacognitive knowledge is used to predict the success of self-control behavior. When people form the expectation that they can exert self-control but experience failure, they perceive a discrepancy between their expectation and the actual outcome. Under specific circumstances, the perception of such discrepancy or prediction error will motivate people to exert more effort to match their expectation, which will lead to increased self-control.

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Task duration and task order do not matter: no effect on self-control performance

Psychological Research ◽

10.1007/s00426-019-01230-1 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Wanja Wolff ◽

Vanda Sieber ◽

Maik Bieleke ◽

Chris Englert

Keyword(s):

Self Control ◽

Control Performance ◽

Task Duration ◽

Task Order ◽

And Task

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Bored Into Depletion? Toward a Tentative Integration of Perceived Self-Control Exertion and Boredom as Guiding Signals for Goal-Directed Behavior

Perspectives on Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/1745691620921394 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 15 (5) ◽

pp. 1272-1283 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Wanja Wolff ◽

Corinna S. Martarelli

Keyword(s):

Ego Depletion ◽

Self Control ◽

Strength Model ◽

Control Performance ◽

The Past ◽

Working Model ◽

Societal Relevance ◽

Depletion Effect ◽

Control Research ◽

Goal Directed Behavior

During the past two decades, self-control research has been dominated by the strength model of self-control, which is built on the premise that the capacity for self-control is a limited global resource that can become temporarily depleted, resulting in a state called ego depletion. The foundations of ego depletion have recently been questioned. Thus, although self-control is among the most researched psychological concepts with high societal relevance, an inconsistent body of literature limits our understanding of how self-control operates. Here, we propose that the inconsistencies are partly due to a confound that has unknowingly and systematically been introduced into the ego-depletion research: boredom. We propose that boredom might affect results of self-control research by placing an unwanted demand on self-control and signaling that one should explore behavioral alternatives. To account for boredom in self-controlled behavior, we provide a working model that integrates evidence from reward-based models of self-control and recent theorizing on boredom to explain the effects of both self-control exertion and boredom on subsequent self-control performance. We propose that task-induced boredom should be systematically monitored in self-control research to assess the validity of the ego-depletion effect.

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