The Effect Of Competence Frustration On One's Intrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation refers to individual's spontaneous and active participation in a task or activity in order to experience the pleasure,satisfaction and challenge from the activity and work itself.In enterprise management,intrinsic motivation is the source of employees'motivation and passion.Only by stimulating the intrinsic motivation of employees can the performance of enterprises be permanent improved.How to activate and improve employees'intrinsic motivation has gradually become an important issue of enterprise management,and which is also a hot topic in current human resource management research.According to the self-determination theory of motivation,the satisfaction of competence which is a basic psychological need is positively correlated with one's intrinsic motivation.Meanwhile,competence frustration predicted low intrinsic motivation,work burnout,ill-being and so on.In the actual work and life,individuals need to participate in various activities continuously,the perception of the previous activity affects individuals'intrinsic motivation and psychological state in a following task.However,the existing research has mainly focused the negative effect of competence need on intrinsic motivation in the current task.The relationship between prior competence frustration and the intrinsic motivation in a subsequent activity,and whether individual differences affect one's intrinsic motivation in a subsequent task remain unclear.Moreover,in the existing management and psychology studies,intrinsic motivation was mainly measured by two approaches,which were free choices and self-report.Although above measurements reflected one's intrinsic motivation to a certain extent,they were postmortems and brought a certain bias,the results were hard to quantify.Based on the above analysis,the study mainly focused on the following issues.(1)How does the competence frustration in the preceding task influence one's intrinsic motivation in a subsequent task?(2)After experiencing competence frustration,and if the subsequent task can satisfy his or her competence need,will the individual be more eager to restore the sense of competence?What is the neural mechanism?(3)After experiencing competence frustration,whether there is individual difference in the level of intrinsic motivation in a subsequent task,what is the neural mechanism?(4)Are there indicators of cognitive neuroscience that can represent one's intrinsic motivation in the above process?To solve the above problems,the study combined questionnaire and experimental research methods and designed three progressive substudies.In the first study,we explored the relationship between perceived competence frustration and intrinsic motivation in the same task,and we also discussed the effect of prior competence frustration on one's intrinsic motivation in a subsequent task by questionnaire survey.In this study,we resorted classic scale to measure one's intrinsic motivation,which laid the foundation for study 2 and study 3.In study 2,we further adopted ERPs technology to explore whether the prior competence frustration would lead to an increase in the intrinsic motivation of individuals in a subsequent task,and we resorted to the ERP component of d-FRN in the outcome evaluation stage to assess one's intrinsic motivation.In study 3,we further paid attention to individual difference,applied ERPs technology to explore that if there was difference for intrinsic motivation between different performance goal orientation individuals.Based on these studies,the following main conclusions were drawn:First,there existed U-shaped relationship between competence frustration in the precedent task and intrinsic motivatithon in a subsequent task.To be specific,if the competence frustration in the precedent task was low,the competence frustration in the precedent task negatively correlated with intrinsic motivation in a subsequent task;if the competence frustration in the precedent task was high,the competence frustration in the precedent task positively correlated with intrinsic motivation in a subsequent task.Specifically,Prior competence frustration would lead to an increase in the intrinsic motivation of individuals in a subsequent task,Second,individuals who experienced high competence frustration,there existed a motive to restore the sense of competence.Individuals would positively take actions to restore their competence sense if a subsequent task would satisfy their competence need.Specifically,prior high competence frustration would increase one's intrinsic motivation in a subsequent task.Third,after experiencing high competence frustration,there was difference for intrinsic motivation in a subsequent task between different performance goal orientation individuals.Specifically,there was difference in the motivation to restore competence need,the lower the individual performance goal orientation,the more eager to restore competence need,the higher the intrinsic motivation to participate in a subsequent task.Fourth,based on cognitive neuroscience perspective,the study further verified that feedback-related negativity loss-win difference wave(d-FRN)in the outcome evaluation stage can objectively measure one's intrinsic motivation,the larger the d-FRN amplitude,the higher the intrinsic motivation level.Based on the perspective of cognitive neuroscience,this study deeply discussed the mechanism of competence frustration on intrinsic motivation.The theoretical contributions were illustrated as follow:First,the current study took a perspective of competence frustration based on self-determination theory,builded up the relationship between one's competence frustration in the precedent task and intrinsic motivation in a subsequent task which enriched the understanding about the influencing factors of intrinsic motivation.Second,we considered individual difference,and explained the relationship between performance goal orientation and intrinsic motivation which enriched the research perspectives and categories of achievement goal theory.Third,from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience,this paper probed into the recovery mechanism of competence frustration which endowed with new growth points for self-determination theory.Empirically,the paper helps managers to deepen the understanding of competence and competence frustration.Meanwhile,it provides implications to improve employees' intrinsic motivation.