Cognitive Flexibility Lesson 1: Find implicit motivation

How to do it

Step 1. Take a look at the list of goals below (4, 5), adapted from validated motivation research.

Goals:

• To grow and learn new things
• To be able to look back on my life as meaningful and complete
• To choose what I do, instead of being pushed along by life
• To know and accept who I really am
• To gain increasing insight into why I do the things I do
• To have good friends that I can count on
• To share my life with someone I love
• To have committed, intimate relationships
• To feel that there are people that really love me and whom I love
• To have deep, enduring relationships
• To work for a better society
• To assist people who need it, asking nothing in return
• To work to make the world a better place
• To help others improve their lives
• To help people in need
• To be physically healthy
• To feel good about my level of physical fitness
• To keep myself healthy and well
• To be relatively free from sickness
• To have a physically healthy lifestyle

Step 2. These are examples of goals that derive from implicit, or internal, motivation. From the list, pick out the top 5 goals that resonate with you. 

Step 3. Get out your phone or a timer.

Step 4. For the first goal you selected, spend 1 minute thinking about a time when you engaged in behaviour that helped you meet this goal. When that minute is up, spend another minute thinking about steps you could take in the future to meet this goal.

Step 5. Repeat Steps 1-4 for the remaining 4 goals.

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Why you should try it?

• This exercise is widely used in motivation science to activate internal goal systems:
  
  • Helps improve executive function, especially in older adults (2)
  • Improves learning (8) and recall of domain-relevant information (8, 9)
  • Boosts creativity (5)

The research

• Participants aged 65-79 were ~13% better at the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test after completing an implicit motivation prime than those who did not complete the priming activity. They also made 6 fewer mistakes (2). This test measures cognitive flexibility based on the ability to shift between mental sets.
• The same researchers found similar results for younger participants, but the effects weren’t as strong. (2)
• One study found that between 18-23% of cognitive flexibility can be explained by being approach motivated, or thinking about what you want to achieve. (7)

How it works

Implicit motives refer to internal incentives that drive behavior, such as meaningful learning experiences. They occur automatically, without conscious effort. Conversely, explicit motivation reflects conscious goal setting, which includes planning how you’re going to meet your goals. Implicit motives occur more in response to incentives that are inherent in completing a task, such as emotional pleasure derived from completing a task (1).

When certain motives are primed, people are more likely to pay attention to stimuli that’s related to those motives. When implicit motives are aroused, our brains also release hormones that enhance memory performance for things that correspond to that motivation (1).

Motivation can directly affect cognitive flexibility, because certain cognitive processes require conscious, effortful control to complete (3; 6). By making implicit motivation clear, we can influence what we pay attention to. If we are able to associate implicit motivations to the tasks we have to complete, it is less likely we will have to engage in task switching behaviour. If we are implicitly motivated to complete a task, we can also maintain cognitive flexibility through motivation by decreasing anxiety and making tasks less tiring (2).

The evidence

1. Bender, Michael & Woike, Barbara. (2010).
   Learning and Memory Correlates of Implicit Motives.
   BMC Health Services Research.
   
   
2. Cohen-Zimerman, S. & Hassin, R. R. (2018).
   Implicit motivation improves executive functions of older adults.
   Consciousness and Cognition, 63, 267-279.
   
   
3. Heitz, R. P., Schrock, J. C., Payne, T. W., & Engle, R. W. (2007).
   Effects of incentive on working memory capacity: Behavioral and pupillometric data.
   Psychophysiology, 45, 119-129.
   
   
4. Kasser, T. & Ryan, R. M. (1993).
   A dark side of the American dream: correlates of financial success as a central life aspiration.
   Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(2), 410422.
   
   
5. Kasser, T. & Ryan, R. M. (1996).
   Further examining the American dream: differential correlates of intrinsic and extrinsic goals.
   Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22(3), 280287.
   
   
6. Krawczyk, D. C., & D’Esposito, M. (2011).
   Modulation of working memory function by motivation through loss-aversion.
   Human Brain Mapping, 34(4), 762–774.
   
   
7. Shao, Y., Nijstad, B. A., & Täuber, S. (2018).
   Linking Self-Construal to Creativity: The Role of Approach Motivation and Cognitive Flexibility.
   Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1-11.
   
   
8. Woike, B., Bender, M. & Besner, N. (2009).
   Implicit motivational states influence memory: Evidence for motive by state-dependent learning in personality.
   Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 39-48.
   
   
9. Woike, B., Lavezzary, E., & Barsky, J. (2001).
   The influence of implicit motives on memory processes.
   Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(5), 935–945.