are intrinsic rewards good enough?

[Cavernio]

I'm very leftist. I really like the idea of communism. I've always thought that money/possesions is/are an unnecessary external motivator that overwrites one's own internal desires, and that that's tragic, (even though capitalism nicely allows for individual micromanagement.) For instance I was told of studies back when I was in school that showed that if someone got paid for doing something they already liked doing, they'd actually start to like doing that task for the payment instead, as their intrinsic reward for doing it would fade. And when encountering discussions about the feasibility of communism, a common problem people see with it is that people will simply not do the things they do now as they don't have the motivation to. I've always countered that with "If the outcome of what they're doing isn't rewarding enough to do it, it shouldn't be something that's done at all as that task is clearly a cause of serious unhappiness etc for whoever does it." and/or "people will get it done anyways because they know it needs to be done"

But I'm suddenly not so sure of what's good. Breaking Bad, the retirement threads, and most poignantly, my own life has led me to question the value of what I had previously deemed as 'the best' for people. Is internal motivation and reward really all it's cracked up to be? Would you really be happiest doing what you want to do instead of what you have to do?

[devonin]

I think virtually everybody would rather do only the things they desired to do, and never have to make a sacrifice of doing something they don't want to do to enable the freedom to do what they want later.

The reason you put up with the things you don't want to do is that they enable you to do the things you want. If you had the option to just do the thing you want right off, why -wouldn't- everybody pick that?

[Cavernio]

It's not a question of what you'd pick, but what will end up making you happiest. The idea I want feedback about (and I guess I didn't make clear) is that if left to their own internal desires, people will not actually pick what's going to make them happiest. Like if we did live in communism, would things just fall to shit and for the most part and people would actually hate it, because people inherently make bad choices if left without desires for all things that we have in our consumerist society? (ie: because we'd have little/no external motivation)?

My own over-arching life just feels like an example of what I'm trying to say. I am a lazy person. I also don't really want a lot of material things either. I also don't need to work to get the majority of what I actually want. I pretty much feel like internal motivators (or at very least not external motivators) are what drive me to do the majority of things. Like if I get a job it will be for my own sanity more than for the money at this point...but of course I don't have a job for my own sanity. It's just an example of how I feel I make subpar choices on a daily basis. I choose to be lazy, and it's not making me particularly happy.

I DO hesitate to bring my own life into this as I am fully aware that me as a data point is incredibly skewed. I've suffered from depression for a long time, an illness that strips away desire and therefore motivation, and how to live depressed and how to live not depressed seem to be at odds with each other. Plus I've kinda checked out socially, and social pressures are huge intrinsic motivators. (I call social pressures intrinsic motivators because the reward you get from them are internal, eg: feelings of fitting in, making someone happy, despite that they obviously are caused by an external source.)

[Reincarnate]

Cavernio your questions aren't clear to me (at initial glance) so I may be misinterpreting, but as you asking "Would you be happier doing whatever you wanted, or happier being forced to do things within a predefined system where certain choices are made for you?"

If that is what you're asking, then yes, it is possible that you don't know how to maximize your own utility. If you asked me to devise my own birthday party plan, maybe I don't know what plan would make me happiest. Maybe if someone else more creative planned it for me, I'd find that I'd enjoy their plan much more.

Or to answer the thread title -- are intrinsic rewards good enough? Well, good enough for what? I might find that solving puzzles is really rewarding. But if you asked me to monetize that hobby, maybe I wouldn't like it so much if I had to solve puzzles more often than I'd be comfortable with, or if I had to solve puzzles that maybe I didn't enjoy, or if I had to do a bunch of extra administrative work around it all, or if I also had to solve-test puzzles for other people to determine their market worth, etc. Sometimes monetizing something adds other components that turns something "fun" into "work" we don't like.

But if you paid me to enjoy my own hobbies on my own terms, then yeah, I'd say that'd be pretty awesome even though I'd wonder why you were paying me, lol. So I don't think that "intrinsic reward" necessarily fades when you add money -- it depends on how you add money and whether or not you're changing the activity that you find rewarding.

[devonin]

The idea that communism is a system wherein people can do whatever they want which will make them happiest is sort of the first flaw here.

[rushyrulz]

People doing only what they want to do doesn't make the world go round. If people only did what they wanted to do, nobody would be motivated to do the things nobody wants to do, necessary things that are required for a functioning society. The reason we get paid in a capitalist society is because it is a fact there are things that people wouldn't want do without a monetary motivation (an extrinsic reward).

Even if some people were intrinsically satisfied doing the things that a lot of people don't want to do, is there enough of these people out there to do a good enough job to keep up with the work load? Will these people eventually get overloaded with work to the point that they grow tired of it and no longer feel the intrinsic reward they originally had? Would it work in most to all cases?

I think the system we have now is great, where if you enjoy your job and you get paid to do it too, power to ya! But if you don't enjoy your job, you're still getting paid to do it so you're getting compensated enough to allow you to do the things you do want to do in your free time.

[Cavernio]

I don't think I said that communism is a society where everyone can do what they want to make themselves happy. I'm pretty sure I specifically didn't want to imply that, as doing so would require assuming that which I want to discern. What I want to discern is whether or not people will make choices that will make them happiest if they are free from extrinsic reward.
What communism has (besides using it as initial thought that I feel relates to this idea)that I want to get at is low consumerism. The mental exercise one could do to try and answer this question would be to imagine yourself in a mythical society where consumerism isn't possible, thereby making materialism impossible, thereby eliminating extrinsic reward. This itself will be flawed of course, such a thing could never truly happen, so if you find this too hard to do or I'm making too many assumptions about how this would work or am just getting it wrong, then just don't bother trying to do this mental exercise.

Reincarnate, you got the question(s) fine, but you didn't answer either question accordingly. You equated happiness to utility.
The second question, are intrinsic rewards good enough, I totally already see how adding money to something can negatively affect doing a task. But it's the opposite I want to know about, are extrinsic rewards somehow mandatory for most people's happiness?

Examples of where someone gets to do what they want (largely because they are free from monetary concerns) and end up not being really happy because they can do what they want exist beyond myself. Lottery winners, retirees who become depressed despite being able to now do any number of things they may have wanted to while they were working.
Perhaps I AM conflating 'doing what you want' with 'doing things because you're intrinsically motivated to'.

Reading research about how extrinsic rewards affect intrinsic ones now, I seem to have horribly outdated scientific info regarding it. Reading up about it now.

I really didn't want this to be a debate about political/social structure, but rather around individuals.

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by Cavernio

Reincarnate, you got the question(s) fine, but you didn't answer either question accordingly. You equated happiness to utility.

Utility is defined as a personal measure of satisfaction/happiness/etc. "Utility" in this context doesn't mean "how useful I find it" (if that's what you thought).

Originally Posted by Cavernio

Examples of where someone gets to do what they want (largely because they are free from monetary concerns) and end up not being really happy because they can do what they want exist beyond myself. Lottery winners, retirees who become depressed despite being able to now do any number of things they may have wanted to while they were working, spoiled kids.

Reading research about how extrinsic rewards affect intrinsic ones now, I seem to have horribly outdated scientific info regarding it. Reading up about it now.

I really didn't want this to be a debate about political/social structure, but rather around individuals.

Many people find that even after they earn lots of money, they're still depressed or unsatisfied with life. Maybe you win the lottery and your personal relationships change because everyone knows you're rich and is trying to get something from you. Maybe you retire and find that you don't know what to do with your spare time and that you were happier having something to do day-in day-out to keep yourself occupied. Maybe your feelings of happiness don't depend on rational decision-making -- maybe it's a chemical imbalance in the brain that makes it hard to feel happy, no matter the circumstances.

But the opposite may be true. Winning the lottery would make some people's lives amazing. Retiring would finally give certain people the freedom to have fun in ways they never could before, etc.

Ultimately, utility is a personalized concept and everyone has different profiles and preferences. Some people are happier making money. Some people are happier living off the land. Some people are happier following directions. Some people are happier being in charge. Some people are happier living a stable life. Some people much prefer risk and unpredictability. It really depends on the person.

[reuben_tate]

I think even with money and other extrinsic rewards out of the question, many people would still wouldn't be happy with the ability to do what they want to do because of social pressure. Just like how social pressures may cause you to do things you wouldn't want to do otherwise, they can also prevent you from doing things you would have done otherwise because people are concerned with how others view them and to many people, they value social capital and the relationships they have with others. I'm still unsure of exactly what this thread is getting at, so I hope this post is contributive somehow.

[Cavernio]

rein: It's easy to say it depends on the person, but that doesn't mean there isn't a pattern or an overall preference for one way over another. Besides which, so few people actually get to experience the freedom to live life relying only on an internal reward structure. It's terribly skewed.

Good point reuben, I fully agree that society is a very strong factor that contributes to people's behaviour. As it is though, it seems that you too (as I have generally thought) have already decided that intrinsic reward/motivation is the best because you're positing that socialness 'gets in the way' of what someone really wants to do, as if societal pressures are ultimately bad and the internal motivators someone has are always ideal for the individual.

There's a difference between doing what you want to do and being happy doing that. Ideally these things coincide, but they don't have to. One can want to do something and upon doing it find that it's unfulfilling; I get this a lot. The opposite experience, where you do something you don't want to do but you find that you actually enjoyed the activity (regardless of external rewards you might have gotten from the activity), seems far more common. Regardless, in both cases there's a mismatch of what you would likely do and whether it will make you happy.
It seems that in order for intrinsic motivation to make one happiest, what one desires needs to be what makes you happy, there can't be a mix-up with this. I suppose I'm suggesting that most people are misinformed/duped/unclear about what will make them happy most of the time, so to strive to live using your own internal reward system is more often than not going to leave you unhappy.
At least with an extrinsic reward system and a social reward system, there's always some tangible reward. Money represents everything, including the necessities of life you need to live, so unless you're just never, ever going to be happy, or if you have too much money, money is ALWAYS a reward you desire that will give you happiness on some level.
Secondly, if people are so often misinformed somehow about what will make them happy, one might find unexpected intrinsic reward upon doing tasks that you set out to do for extrinsic reward.

(I totally had deja vu while writing this. Have I made this thread this before and forgotten about it :-p)

[Syhto]

What if what one wants to do and has to do coincide in a balanced way that allows one to live happily regardless of whether or not every seeming desire is met, because you practice gratitude, or have a system in place for keeping yourself happy? It's almost like that, it's not what your country can do for you, it's what you can do for your country type of things, where you have to just make a choice, it isn't about what you want, it's about what literally has to be done to get certain results.

If I want to be happy, and I'm not, what is my obstacle? Is it what I'm doing or is it how I am controlling the situation and the things I'm doing, how true I'm being to myself and my feelings, how I choose to deal with them, etc. ? A daily grind isn't necessarily going to make you happy or unhappy, it depends on your reactions and management thereof. Whether you live in denial or not, is up for discussion.

What we want is not always aligned with what we truly desire. And perhaps this question is better answered by how we think, and how we manage our emotional selves than what we do. It's not what you do, it's how you do it.

I think that... freedom is #1 and we will never be happy without exercising freedom of choice. Just my thoughts. If you can work from a solid framework in yourself, rolling with the punches and doing your personal best, then what is keeping you from happiness? Likewise, if you're unable to work from a place that makes sense to you personally... You'll probably feel unfulfilled. Whether or not these things equate happiness or not who knows. But.

I don't think our emotions are dependent on external factors. It's about an alignment of desires/action that brings happiness, a deep understanding of how we work inside, combined with the external world. But what's all this if we don't have the freedom to discover our own flow and live accordingly. So yea, do what you want to do. And do what you have to do. But make sure it coincides with your desires. If it does, why not be happy lol. That includes using discernment and having self control to know the difference between for lack of a better example love and lust.

If you're a recovering alcoholic and your true desire is to be healthy, but you WANT to drink, then what do you have to do? To get what you truly desire you will sometimes have to ignore what you want. It's like that. What must be done to feel happy, is sometimes as simple as understanding what happiness means to you and working from a place of happiness in yourself so you can channel that into everything you DO. You can't expect to be happy just because you're doing something you want. There's a lot of facets and gray areas that ask for more attention to your feelings and working through issues and blockages in the way.

[reuben_tate]

Yeah I did bring up societal pressures, however, I did not mean to imply that societal pressures are ultimately bad. If anything, I'd describe the problem as having conflicting interests. Some of us value our relations with other people and are willing to set aside our personal interests for the sake of either maintaining or improving the relationship with that person. Or perhaps you get an intrinsic reward for making that person happy at the expense of things you would have like to done otherwise.

For me especially, I don't feel comfortable when people ask me to describe what my strengths/weaknesses are or my good/bad qualities. I am in a very biased position to be making those kind of judgements. Most of us, whether we realize it or not, depend on others to get an accurate representation of how we view ourselves. And because we can only get an accurate view of ourselves through others, it's not too far of a leap to say that our interactions with others is what defines us and for me, I value that sense of identity which is why I'm willing to put in the time and effort into dealing with my relationships with people in a way I see fit.

EDIT: You can even have internal pressures. For example, perhaps you want to do something which will give you some type of intrinsic reward but you know there is a chance you might feel guilty or ashamed about it.

[Tokzic]

I feel like some people sometimes choose contentment over fulfillment. It's easier.