Motivation and emotion/Book/2024/Learned industriousness and motivation

Learned industriousness and motivation:
How does learned industriousness influence motivation and work ethic?

Multimedia presentation (3 min)

Overview

Figure 1. Two women chatting outside their office

• Overview of Learned industriousness as a theory
• Overview of how learned industriousness develops
• Definitions of motivation and work ethic
• Overview of how learned industriousness impacts work ethic and motivation based on literature
• Negative impact of learned industriousness in relation to motivation
• Strategies to increase learned industriousness in the workplace

Laura and Nicole are colleagues at the Department of Human Services, they are both 29 years old and work as project officers for the same team (Figure 1). Both employees are friendly, smart and have bachelor's degrees. Laura has gained a reputation for being reliable, putting in extra hours if needed and helping others with their work. Nicole, on the other hand often struggles to complete tasks, is easily distracted and shows a lack of enthusiasm for her work. Their manager recognises this, and as a result delegates more complex projects to Laura, praising her and knowing she will do a good job.

Focus questions: What is learned industriousness? How does learned industriousness develop? How does learned industriousness influence work ethic and motivation? Are there any negative impacts of learned industriousness in relation to motivation? What practical strategies could be implemented to increase learned industriousness in the workplace?

What is learned industriousness?

• It is a theory which denotes that through positive reinforcement and experiences, people learn to become more hard working and motivated. The motivation becomes self-sustaining as individuals who were rewarded for high effort in the past, generalise this high effort behaviour to other tasks (Bustamante et al, 2014).
• "The formation of early work habits in youth, of working longer hours than others, of practicing more intensively than others, is probably the most reasonable explanation we have today not only for success in any line, but even for genius" (Watson, 1930).
• Effort is a basic feeling. When it's paired with additional positive feedback, one is more likely to enjoy the sensation of effort. Through the feedback loop, we learn to apply more effort in other areas. This theory is unique compared to previously theories about motivation which focus only on behaviours, actions and responses (Eisenberger, 1992)
• The learned industriousness model is built upon a classical conditioning reward framework (Ramachandran, 2012)

How does learned industriousness develop?

• Reinforced effort: Persisting individual differences in industriousness may result from long-term differences in the degree of reinforced effort. An experiment with rats demonstrates the positive effect of longer term effort training on industriousness, as well as the considerable generalization of reinforced performance across very different situations (Eisenberger, Masterson, & Over, 1982).
• Reinforcement during childhood: Both questionnaire responses and case studies of employees with various jobs who were exceptionally hard workers indicated that almost all had a childhood in which strong reinforcers were used to shape high performance in a variety of tasks (Cherrington, 1980)
• Secondary reinforcement: it may be moderated by other motivating factors (Estes, 1949)

The relationship between learned industriousness and motivation or work ethic

• Reinforcement in the form of verbal praise is the most effective strategy teachers use to motivate students in English Language centres and schools (Bhatti et al., 2021)
• People can assign positive feelings to cognitive effort (Clay et al., 2022)
• The reinforcement must be strong enough to instigate activity (Estes, 1949)

Negative impacts of learned industriousness in relation to motivation

• Could be taken to extreme levels of psychopathology such as anorexia nervosa as it motivates one to maintain unhealthy behaviour patterns. Social praise from losing weight (Haynos et al., 2023)
• Learned industriousness may be linked to other eating disorders, more research needs to be done (Haynos et al., 2023)
• Obsessive compulsive personality types are linked with high levels of industriousness. Possible link to workaholism (Ng, T. W. H., 2007)

Practical strategies to increase learned industriousness in the workplace

• Provide rewards for only high difficulty tasks, not low difficulty ones to employees or students (Cameron, 2004)
• Reward systems are useful and positive, provided they promote, not limit human freedom (Cameron & Pierce, 2002)

Tables

• Use to organise and summarise information
• As with figures, tables should be captioned
• Refer to each table at least once in the main text (e.g., see Table 1)
• Example 3 x 3 tables which could be adapted

Table 1. Descriptive Caption Which Explains The Table and its Relevant to the Text - Johari Window Model

	Known to self	Not known to self
Known to others	Open area	Blind spot
Not known to others	Hidden area	Unknown

Quizzes

• Using one or two review questions per major section is usually better than a long quiz at the end
• Quiz conceptual understanding, rather than trivia
• Don't make quizzes too hard
• Different types of quiz questions are possible; see Quiz

Example simple quiz questions. Choose your answers and click "Submit":

1 Learned industriousness improves self-motivation of individuals as they generalise effortful behaviours:

	True
	False

2 Praising colleagues at work may contribute to increase motivation and work ethic:

	True
	False

Conclusion

• The Conclusion is arguably the most important section
• Suggested word count: 150 to 330 words
• It should be possible for someone to only read the Overview and the Conclusion and still get a pretty good idea of the problem and what is known based on psychological science

Suggestions for this section: What is the answer to the sub-title question based on psychological theory and research? What are the answers to the focus questions? What are the practical, take-home messages? (Even for the topic development, have a go at the likely take-home message)

See also

• Flexible work arrangements and work motivation (Book chapter, 2019)
• Self determination theory (Wikipedia)
• Vocational identity (Book chapter, 2023)
• Vocational motivation and personality (Book chapter, 2016)
• Work motivation and work satisfaction (Book chapter, 2021)

References

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Watson, J. B. (1970). Behaviorism. New York: Norton. (Original work published 1930).

Bhatti, M. S., Iqbal, A., Mukhtar, R., Noreen, S., & Javed, Z. (2021). Studying the Role of Positive Reinforcement for Motivation to Learn the English Language at Secondary Level in Pakistan. Utamax (Online), 3(1), 14–20. https://doi.org/10.31849/utamax.v3i1.5899

Bustamante, E. E., Davis, C. L., & Marquez, D. X. (2014). A Test of Learned Industriousness in the Physical Activity Domain. International Journal of Psychological Studies, 6(4), 12–25. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijps.v6n4p12

Cameron, J., Pierce, W. D., & So, S. (2004). Rewards, task difficulty, and intrinsic motivation: A test of learned industriousness theory. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 50(3), 317–320. https://doi.org/10.55016/ojs/ajer.v50i3.55091

Cameron, J., & Pierce, W.D. (2002). Rewards and intrinsic motivation: Resolving the controversy. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, Greenwood.

Clay, G., Mlynski, C., Korb, F. M., Goschke, T., & Job, V. (2022). Rewarding cognitive effort increases the intrinsic value of mental labor. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, 119(5). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2111785119

Eisenberger, R. (1992). Learned Industriousness. Psychological Review, 99(2), 248–267. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.99.2.248

Estes, W. K. (1949). A study of motivating conditions necessary for secondary reinforcement. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 39(3), 306–310. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0062434

Haynos AF, Koithan E, Hagan KE. Learned industriousness as a translational mechanism in anorexia nervosa. Nat Rev Psychol. 2023 Feb;2(2):112-126. doi: 10.1038/s44159-022-00134-z. Epub 2022 Nov 24. PMID: 37693302; PMCID: PMC10485812.

Ng, T. W. H., Sorensen, K. L., & Feldman, D. C. (2007). Dimensions, antecedents, and consequences of workaholism: a conceptual integration and extension. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 28(1), 111–136. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.424

Ramachandran, V. S. (2012). Encyclopedia of human behavior. Academic Press.

Rosenberg, B. D., & Siegel, J. T. (2018). A 50-year review of psychological reactance theory: Do not read this article. Motivation Science, 4(4), 281–300. https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000091

Tip from tute: Search the author on google scholar: scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=sajNmxEAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate starting from 1992, (good one in 1988) look at his frequent co-authors and see what they've done

Suggestions for this section: Important aspects of APA style for references include: Wrap the set of references in the hanging indent template. Use "Edit source": {{Hanging indent|1= the full list of references}} Author surname, followed by a comma, then the author initials separated by full stops and spaces Year of publication in parentheses Title of work in lower case except first letter and proper names, ending in a full-stop Journal title in italics, volume number in italics, issue number in parentheses, first and last page numbers separated by an en-dash(–), followed by a full-stop Provide the full doi as a URL and working hyperlink The most common mistakes include: Incorrect capitalisation Incorrect italicisation Citing sources that weren't read or consulted

External links

Provide external links to highly relevant resources such as presentations, news articles, and professional sites. Use sentence casing. For example:

• Why Learned Industriousness spreads to all areas of life (Linkedin Article)
• Learned Industriousness (Medium)

Suggestions for this section: Only select links to major external resources about the topic Present in alphabetical order Include the source in parentheses after the link