Psychologyspeaking topic
Intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation: do we do things for their own sake, or for a reward waiting outside? How much does it matter for learning whether you study out of curiosity or just to pass the exam?
— Deci and Ryan, intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation
practice with this topic
Set the timer (5-30 min), take 20 seconds of prep if you like, start talking. Jot your thoughts onto the sticky-note board.
similar topics
- Emotional reasoning: 'I feel awful, so things must be awful.' Can a feeling ever count as evidence about reality?
- Procedural memory: we can't explain how to ride a bike, but we can ride one. Why can't knowledge that lives in the body be put into words?
- The Ellsberg paradox: people prefer a risk with known odds to an ambiguity with unknown ones; a familiar bad beats an unfamiliar maybe. Why do we cling to a known misery over an unknown hope?
- Regression: falling back into childish behavior under stress. Why does a grown adult sulk or go silent the moment things get hard?
- Bilingual children don't mix their two languages; they learn astonishingly early which language belongs to which person, speaking one with their mother and the other with their father. Even a one-year-old switches languages based on the face in front of them. How does a mind that small route languages to people so cleanly?