Chapter 22: Goals, Intrinsic Motivation, and Achievement

"People who have intrinsic goals — who feel they are doing what they do because it is interesting and meaningful and an expression of who they are — are more engaged, persist more, and ultimately perform better than those doing the same activity for external rewards." — Edward Deci

Opening: The Answered Question

January. The initiative's senior leadership presentation has happened. The results were received better than Jordan had anticipated — not just well, but in the specific way that meant: this changes something for the company. The VP who sponsored the project shook Jordan's hand after. His manager Sandra pulled him aside and said "this is a career moment." He went home and told Dev.

Dev made the good dinner — the one that takes two hours and means something is being celebrated.

Jordan ate the dinner and felt, genuinely, good. And then noticed something underneath the good that he had been waiting to notice for about a year: it was not the thing that would fix the other thing.

He had known this was possible. He had told Dev about this specific fear — "what if it succeeds and nothing changes internally?" — in November. He had told his therapist. He had framed it correctly, anticipated it correctly. And now he was sitting in the correct answer, which was: the work succeeded and he was still, fundamentally, himself — still prone to anxiety, still with a thin social network, still carrying the achievement orientation that cannot be satisfied by any given achievement, still in the relationship that he loves and that he has not yet fully arrived in.

He sat with this for a long time. Then he said, out loud to himself in the kitchen: "Okay. So we figure out what we're actually working on."

This is what the research on intrinsic motivation would predict. The initiative was meaningful and well-executed. It was also — at the level of his deepest motivational life — in service of something more important and less achievable than a successful proposal: validation that he was capable, that he mattered, that the work had been worth doing.

The distinction the chapter explores next is precisely this: the difference between goals that point outward toward achievement and goals that grow from within.

22.1 What Motivation Is — and Why It Matters

Motivation is the psychological force that energizes, directs, and sustains behavior. Understanding your motivation for a goal is more predictive of your success — and more important for your wellbeing — than understanding your capability for achieving it.

Two people can pursue the same goal with the same ability and produce dramatically different outcomes based on the quality of their motivation. The person motivated by genuine interest and values will, across hundreds of studies and real-world investigations, outperform the person motivated primarily by external reward or fear — particularly over time and in the face of obstacles.

This is not a mystical claim; it reflects specific psychological mechanisms that are well-understood. Intrinsically motivated behavior is maintained by the activity itself, making it less vulnerable to depletion when external rewards are removed. It produces deeper cognitive engagement, more creative problem-solving, greater persistence, and better integration of learning. It is also — not incidentally — significantly more satisfying.

The practical question is therefore not only "how do I achieve this goal?" but "why am I pursuing this goal — and does that reason support or undermine the pursuit?"

22.2 Self-Determination Theory: The Foundation

The most empirically comprehensive theory of human motivation is Edward Deci and Richard Ryan's Self-Determination Theory (SDT), developed across four decades of research in universities, workplaces, healthcare settings, schools, and athletic contexts. SDT has accumulated more empirical support than any other framework for understanding what drives human behavior and wellbeing.

SDT's foundational claim is that human beings are not passive recipients of environmental contingencies but active organisms with inherent tendencies toward growth and integration — and that these tendencies are either supported or undermined by the social environment in which they occur.

The Three Basic Psychological Needs

SDT identifies three universal psychological needs whose satisfaction is predictive of wellbeing, engagement, and sustained motivation in virtually every context studied:

Autonomy: The experience of volition — feeling that your actions are self-authored, consistent with your values, and genuinely chosen rather than externally pressured or internally coerced. Autonomy does not mean independence or isolation; it means acting from genuine endorsement of what you are doing rather than from submission, compliance, or avoidance.

Competence: The experience of effectiveness — feeling capable of meeting challenges, mastering skills, and producing intended outcomes. Competence is not the same as demonstrated achievement; it is the subjective sense of growing capability and meaningful impact.

Relatedness: The experience of connection — feeling cared for, feeling that you belong, feeling meaningfully connected to others who matter. Relatedness in SDT is not about the quantity of social contact but the quality of the connection: genuinely valued and caring relationships.

When these three needs are satisfied, people show higher intrinsic motivation, greater wellbeing, more persistent effort, more creative thinking, and better psychological health. When they are thwarted — by controlling environments, incompetence messages, or disconnection — people show reduced intrinsic motivation, increased anxiety and depression, and the substitution of extrinsic regulatory processes for genuine self-direction.

The Motivation Continuum

SDT describes motivation not as a binary (motivated vs. unmotivated) but as a continuum from amotivation (no motivation at all) through extrinsic motivation (various forms of behavior driven by external factors) to intrinsic motivation (behavior driven by genuine interest and values). The key distinction along this continuum is the degree of autonomy in the regulation of behavior:

The continuum matters because different regulatory styles produce different outcomes:

• External and introjected regulation are associated with lower performance, less creativity, more anxiety, and rapid withdrawal when the controlling factor is removed
• Identified and integrated regulation produce engagement and persistence comparable to intrinsic motivation, with the additional advantage of being available for tasks that are not inherently enjoyable but are genuinely valued
• Intrinsic motivation produces the deepest engagement, greatest creativity, and highest wellbeing

The practical implication: the goal is not always to make things more fun. It is to connect behavior to genuine values (identified regulation) or to find the genuine significance of the work (integrated regulation). This is more robust than trying to manufacture intrinsic interest for activities that don't inherently produce it.

22.3 Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation: The Research

The research on intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation has produced some of the most replicated and practically important findings in psychology.

The Undermining Effect

Deci's 1971 study initiated decades of research on the undermining effect (also called the overjustification effect): the finding that providing external rewards for intrinsically interesting activities reduces subsequent intrinsic motivation for those activities. When people are paid to do something they would have done for free — and the payment is then removed — they engage with the activity less than those who were never paid.

This effect is particularly pronounced for: - Tangible, expected rewards (money, prizes) - Contingent rewards ("you'll get X if you do Y") - Controlling rewards (those that communicate "you must do this")

The effect is minimal or reversed for: - Unexpected rewards - Informational rewards that communicate competence ("you did excellent work on that") - Non-contingent praise

The practical implications are extensive and often counterintuitive. Performance review systems that make all feedback feel evaluative and contingent can reduce the intrinsic motivation of already-motivated workers. Grading systems that emphasize external assessment can reduce students' intrinsic interest in learning. Parenting practices focused heavily on reward and punishment can undermine children's developing intrinsic motivation for learning, behavior, and connection.

Autonomy Support in Organizations

A major branch of SDT research examines the effects of leadership and organizational climate on employee motivation. Consistently, autonomy-supportive management — where managers explain rationale, acknowledge employees' perspectives, provide meaningful choice within constraints, and minimize controlling behavior — is associated with:

• Higher intrinsic motivation
• Greater engagement and effort
• More creative problem-solving
• Lower absenteeism and turnover
• Better psychological wellbeing and job satisfaction

Controlling management — characterized by surveillance, contingent reward, pressure, and directive behavior — produces compliance but undermines the intrinsic motivation that produces discretionary effort, creativity, and genuine investment.

These effects hold even when the work itself is not particularly interesting. The management climate shapes the experience of the work in ways that affect motivation significantly — a finding with direct implications for anyone in a leadership position.

22.4 Goal-Setting Theory: Making Goals Work

While SDT addresses the quality of motivation, goal-setting theory (Locke & Latham, 1990) addresses the structure of goals — how goals should be framed to produce the best performance outcomes.

The core finding of decades of research: specific, difficult goals produce higher performance than easy goals, vague goals ("do your best"), or no goals. The effect is large and replicates across tasks, populations, and contexts.

The mechanisms include: - Specific goals direct attention toward goal-relevant activities - Difficult goals increase effort and persistence - Goals activate strategy search — the search for the best approach to achievement

SMART goals — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound — represent a practical application of goal-setting research, though the research evidence is clearest for the specificity and difficulty dimensions.

Commitment and Goal-Setting

Goal-setting theory emphasizes that the relationship between goal difficulty and performance holds only when the person is committed to the goal. High commitment to a specific, difficult goal produces high performance; the same goal with low commitment produces little effect.

Commitment is enhanced by: - The person's belief that the goal is achievable (self-efficacy) - The perception that the goal is meaningful and important - Public commitment (particularly in social contexts where it produces accountability) - Participation in goal-setting (autonomy in goal choice)

The last factor — participation in goal-setting — is where SDT and goal-setting theory converge: autonomously chosen goals, or goals whose rationale the person genuinely endorses, produce both higher commitment and higher intrinsic motivation for the goal-pursuing behavior.

Learning Goals vs. Performance Goals

Carol Dweck's research on growth and fixed mindset (discussed in Chapter 26) intersects with goal-setting theory in the distinction between learning goals and performance goals:

• Learning goals: Goals framed in terms of skill acquisition, understanding, and mastery — "I want to learn how to do this well"
• Performance goals: Goals framed in terms of outcome demonstration and evaluation — "I want to prove I can do this"

Research consistently finds that learning goal orientation is associated with better learning outcomes, more resilience in the face of challenge, more effective strategy use, and greater intrinsic motivation — while performance goal orientation is associated with more performance anxiety, lower intrinsic motivation when outcomes are poor, and avoidance of challenging tasks that might reveal incompetence.

The practical implication: framing goals in terms of growth and mastery rather than demonstration and evaluation supports both performance and wellbeing.

22.5 Implementation Intentions: Bridging Goals and Action

One of the most practically important research findings on goal pursuit is Peter Gollwitzer's work on implementation intentions: specific plans in the form "When situation X occurs, I will perform behavior Y."

The research is striking in its effect size. Across hundreds of studies, adding an implementation intention to a goal — specifying when, where, and how the goal behavior will occur — approximately doubles the goal completion rate. The effect has been replicated for health behaviors, academic performance, creative work, and organizational tasks.

Implementation intentions work by: - Linking goal behavior to a specific situational cue, making the behavior more automatic - Reducing the deliberation required at the moment of action (the "just do it" problem is partly a problem of unresolved decision, which implementation intentions resolve in advance) - Protecting goal pursuit against competing demands and temptations

As explored in Chapter 13 (Self-Regulation), implementation intentions and environment design are among the most effective practical tools for behavior change. Here, in the context of goal achievement, they represent the operational translation of motivation into action.

WOOP: The Full Goal Pursuit Package

Gabriele Oettingen's research on WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) extends implementation intentions into a broader goal-pursuit framework:

1. Wish: Name the goal — what do you most want in this domain?
2. Outcome: Identify the best possible outcome — what would achieving it feel like?
3. Obstacle: Identify the internal obstacle — what in you most stands in the way?
4. Plan: Implement an if-then plan — if [obstacle] occurs, then I will [strategy]

The key insight is the Obstacle step, which distinguishes WOOP from pure positive visualization. Oettingen's research found that mental contrasting — simultaneously imagining the desired outcome and the obstacles in the way — produces significantly better goal pursuit than either pure positive fantasy (imagining the outcome without the obstacle) or pure obstacle focus (worrying about what could go wrong).

Pure positive fantasy, despite feeling motivating, actually reduces effort: people who vividly imagine achieving a goal feel some of the satisfaction of achievement in advance, which reduces the energy available for actual pursuit. Mental contrasting keeps both the goal and the path to it psychologically active, producing the motivational tension that drives action.

22.6 The Achievement Motivation Landscape

Beyond the general goal-setting and intrinsic motivation research, a specific literature on achievement motivation examines individual differences in motivation for success.

Need for Achievement

David McClelland's research on need for achievement (nAch) identified a characteristic pattern of motivation associated with high achievement: individuals high in nAch prefer moderately challenging tasks (not too easy, not impossible), take personal responsibility for outcomes, actively seek feedback, and show persistent effort in the face of obstacles. Importantly, high-nAch individuals are motivated primarily by the achievement itself — the mastery and effectiveness — rather than by external recognition.

Low-nAch patterns include: preference for very easy or very difficult tasks (either a guaranteed win or an unpunishable failure), avoidance of feedback that might reveal incompetence, and stronger responsiveness to social approval than to task mastery.

Fear of Failure vs. Hope for Success

A related distinction in achievement motivation research is between hope for success motivation (positive approach toward the desired outcome) and fear of failure motivation (avoidance of the undesired outcome). Both can drive high achievement, but with different psychological costs:

• Fear-of-failure driven achievers show higher performance anxiety, more sensitivity to evaluative feedback, greater vulnerability to burnout, and more difficulty enjoying success (because relief at avoiding failure is not the same as pleasure in achievement)
• Hope-for-success achievers show more intrinsic enjoyment of challenging work, greater resilience after failure, and more sustainable long-term motivation

The relationship between these motivational patterns and the anxiety patterns explored in Chapter 12 is direct: chronic anxiety is often the emotional signature of fear-of-failure motivation — achievement pursued primarily to avoid the shame and self-doubt that failure would produce.

22.7 Achievement and Wellbeing: The Hedonic Treadmill

The relationship between achievement and wellbeing is more complex and more sobering than popular success culture acknowledges.

Hedonic adaptation — the psychological process by which people return to a relatively stable level of happiness after significant positive (or negative) events — means that achievements rarely produce the sustained wellbeing that people anticipate. Research by Brickman and Campbell (1978) and subsequently by Kahneman and others documents the hedonic treadmill: the tendency for people to quickly adapt to improved circumstances, such that each achievement produces only a brief improvement in subjective wellbeing before returning to the baseline.

This has practical implications for goal-setting: it suggests that the question "will achieving this goal improve my wellbeing?" is less predictable — and less reliable as a motivational frame — than the question "will pursuing this goal be intrinsically engaging?"

The distinction between intrinsic goals (those that directly satisfy psychological needs — relatedness, growth, contribution) and extrinsic goals (those oriented toward money, status, appearance, and fame) is particularly important here. Research by Tim Kasser and Ryan found that people who place high value on extrinsic goals (relative to intrinsic goals) show lower wellbeing, higher anxiety, and less sense of meaning — regardless of whether they achieve those goals. The content of what you want, not only whether you get it, predicts wellbeing.

22.8 Goals in Practice: From Motivation to Achievement

What does well-functioning goal pursuit actually look like? The research converges on several principles:

Start with values, not outcomes: Goals that are genuinely rooted in personal values — that serve identified or integrated regulation — produce more sustained motivation than goals chosen to satisfy external expectation or to prove something to someone. The question "is this goal mine?" is more important than "is this goal achievable?"

Set specific, challenging goals: Specificity and challenge produce better performance than vagueness or ease. "I want to be a better writer" is not a goal; "I will write 500 words per day on the project from 7 to 8 a.m." is a goal.

Use implementation intentions: Specify when, where, and how you will pursue the goal. Implementation intentions more than double follow-through rates.

Practice mental contrasting: Identify both the desired outcome and the primary internal obstacle. Then form a plan for when the obstacle is encountered. WOOP is a structured version of this.

Build for intrinsic engagement: Where possible, design the goal-pursuit process to involve autonomy (meaningful choice), competence growth (appropriate challenge), and connection (shared purpose or social context). These SDT need-satisfiers make the pursuit itself more sustainable.

Track progress rather than outcomes: Research on feedback and goal pursuit consistently finds that tracking progress — making visible how far you have come — is more motivationally effective than focusing on how far you have to go.

From the Field — Dr. Elena Reyes

In my years of practice, I saw an enormous amount of suffering that was organized around achievement. Not the achievement itself — the work, the craft, the genuine engagement with a problem. That kind of achievement is sustaining. What was painful was the relentless quality of certain people's relationship with achievement: the treadmill Kahneman describes, where each peak produces a brief moment and then the next target appears.

The clinical picture of the high-achieving, chronically dissatisfied person is familiar. They have accomplished things — real things, things that required skill and effort. And they feel... nothing, or not enough. Or they feel briefly satisfied and then frightened, because the satisfaction is already beginning to fade and they can see the next requirement on the horizon.

What is missing, in almost every case, is what Deci and Ryan would call autonomy and relatedness — but in practice, it looks like: these people don't know what they actually want, and they are not doing the achievement for themselves. They are doing it for a version of themselves they are trying to become, or for a parent who is still watching, or for a threat they are still outrunning.

The work — and it is slow work — is asking: what would I pursue if no one was watching? What is engaging to me simply because it is engaging? Not because it will produce anything, not because someone will be impressed, not because it will fill the gap. Just because it is interesting.

The answer to that question, when people find it, is usually quieter and more specific than their achievement record would predict. And it's usually closer to who they actually are.

Research Spotlight: The Overjustification Effect in Practice

Deci and Ryan's 1971 experiment was deceptively simple: college students were given an interesting puzzle (Soma cubes) to solve. One group was paid for each puzzle completed during the experimental period; a control group received no payment. Then, in a free-choice period when the experimenter left the room, which group continued engaging with the puzzles longer?

The control group — those who had never been paid — spent significantly more time with the puzzles in the free-choice period.

This finding, replicated hundreds of times with variations, established what became one of the most cited results in motivation psychology. The most careful meta-analysis (Deci, Koestner, and Ryan, 1999) synthesized over 100 studies and found:

• Tangible, expected, contingent rewards significantly undermine intrinsic motivation
• Verbal rewards that communicate competence ("you did excellent work") actually enhance intrinsic motivation
• The undermining effect is most pronounced when the reward is clearly contingent on performance and when the rewarded activity was initially intrinsically interesting

The practical implication is significant for organizations, parents, educators, and anyone who has wondered why their incentive system seems to produce compliance rather than genuine engagement. Rewards work for rote tasks that require little creativity or judgment. They undermine performance and wellbeing for tasks that require genuine engagement. The distinction between when to reward and when to nurture intrinsic motivation is one of the most practically important distinctions in applied psychology.

Common Misconceptions

"More motivation is always better."

Motivation quality matters as much as quantity. High external motivation (strong fear of failure, strong desire for approval) and high intrinsic motivation can produce similar performance in the short term. Over time, and on tasks requiring creativity, persistence, and genuine engagement, intrinsic motivation significantly outperforms external motivation — and is associated with substantially better wellbeing. More anxiety about consequences is not equivalent to more productive motivation.

"You need to feel motivated before you take action."

Motivation often follows action rather than preceding it. The psychological research on behavioral activation (which is directly relevant to procrastination and depression) consistently finds that engagement with an activity often produces motivation for that activity — not the other way around. Waiting to feel motivated before starting is a recipe for not starting. Starting — even briefly, even imperfectly — activates the motivation that was waiting for engagement.

"Reward yourself to stay motivated."

For tasks that you are already intrinsically motivated to do, rewarding yourself with external incentives can reduce your intrinsic motivation (the overjustification effect). For tasks you are not intrinsically motivated to do, rewards can produce short-term compliance without genuine engagement. The research supports using reward structures deliberately — for developing habits, for building initial exposure to potentially engaging tasks, for sustaining boring but necessary behavior — while being cautious about applying reward structures to activities that are genuinely engaging.

"SMART goals are the answer."

SMART goals represent useful operational discipline — specificity and measurement are consistently associated with better performance. But they say nothing about the quality of motivation behind the goal or about the connection between the goal and underlying values. A SMART goal in service of identified regulation is powerful. A SMART goal that is externally imposed and internally experienced as controlling is still likely to undermine intrinsic motivation.

"Achieving your goals will make you happy."

The hedonic treadmill research is one of the most consistent findings in wellbeing psychology: people adapt to achieved goals faster than anticipated. The satisfying quality of goal achievement is real but typically briefer than expected. What predicts wellbeing is not achievement of extrinsic goals but engagement in intrinsically meaningful activity and satisfaction of the three basic psychological needs. Building a life that satisfies autonomy, competence, and relatedness on a daily basis produces more wellbeing than any particular achievement.

Chapter Summary

Motivation is not simply "wanting to do something." It exists on a continuum from amotivation through external regulation to intrinsic motivation — and the quality of motivation, not only its quantity, predicts performance, persistence, creativity, and wellbeing.

Self-Determination Theory provides the most empirically comprehensive framework: human beings have three universal psychological needs — autonomy, competence, and relatedness — and their satisfaction predicts wellbeing and genuine engagement. Motivation that satisfies these needs (identified, integrated, or intrinsic regulation) produces better outcomes than motivation based on external or introjected pressure.

The overjustification effect establishes that external rewards for intrinsically interesting activities undermine subsequent intrinsic motivation — with significant practical implications for organizational design, education, and parenting.

Goal-setting theory establishes that specific, difficult goals produce higher performance than vague or easy ones — and that commitment to challenging goals is enhanced by autonomy, self-efficacy, and genuine endorsement.

Implementation intentions approximately double goal completion rates by specifying when, where, and how goal behavior will occur. WOOP adds mental contrasting to identify both the desired outcome and the internal obstacle, combining the power of positive expectation with the motivational force of obstacle awareness.

Achievement and wellbeing are connected less directly than popular culture suggests. Extrinsic goal orientation is associated with lower wellbeing regardless of achievement level; intrinsic goal content and daily need satisfaction predict wellbeing more reliably than specific achievements.

Bridge to Chapter 23

Knowing what you want and why you want it is the first challenge in the work domain. The second challenge is actually doing it. Chapter 23 examines the psychology of procrastination — one of the most common and most studied forms of self-regulation failure, and the one that most reliably stands between people and the goals they have explicitly chosen. The neuroscience of delay, the emotional function of avoidance, and the specific strategies that research identifies as most effective: these are the questions the next chapter addresses.

For Jordan, the resolution of "what was I actually working toward?" sets up the next question: now that the initiative has succeeded, what is the next thing he is avoiding? For Amara, the sheer density of the MSW program's demands — research methods, theory, field placement, and a cohort of relationships to navigate — provides fertile ground for the procrastination patterns she brought in from the rest of her life.

Key Terms