Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Sunday, May 23, 2004 MotivationIn a comment to a post about course lengths, Eric wrote:...Then there is this premise that people will train more or better if we set longer courses?...I'd like to go on the record now. This notion simply defies my sense of logic and reality. I don't know what else to say, except I believe motivation to train comes from other sources. I'm very interested in motivation. What motivates people to train? What motivates people to train really hard? What motivates people to do things that most people wouldn't? I don't know the answers. But, I think I'm learning things that help me begin to understand motivation. I think the work place is a perfect lab to watch motivation in action. But writing about the work place isn't what I want to do. I also think psychologists have some interesting ideas (or at least raise some interesting questions). I've read a couple of interesting articles in newspapers over the last couple of weeks that touch on motivation and how "irrational" people can be. Gambling Playing a slot machine just doesn't make much sense. You don't have much chance of making money. The entertainment value seems pretty low. But, slot machines rake in money. The NY Times magazine had an article about how gambling is designed to hook you. One thing slot machines do is give you an impression that you got close to a big win. People who think they're getting close to a big win, put more money in and keep playing. Machines tend to pay small wins fairly often. Not often enough that the house doesn't make money, but often enough that the sucker...errr, player...feels they've got a chance to win. Maybe orienteering can learn something from slot machine designers. Maybe orienteers can be hooked on training. Perhaps orienteers will be motivated to improve their training if they see lots of small payoffs (e.g. meeting intermediate goals) and if they can see a chance for a big payoff. For North Americans, the model for the big payoff has to be Ted de St. Croix. If an orienteer can see a path toward doing what Ted did (a top ten in the WOC in 1985) and they reach or get close to reaching lots of goals along the way, then they'll be motivated to keep improving. Medical Errors Last week the Wall Street Journal had an article about how hospitals and doctors are learning to reduce the costs associated with medical errors. If a patient was hurt by a medical error, the doctor apologizes. Seems simple. Apparently it reduces the likelihood a patient will sue. For years, doctors have been advised not to apologize because it'll look like admitting a mistake and will make it easier for a patient to win a law suit. If patients followed the sort of strict rationality (the rationality modeled in an introductory economics course), they'd use the apology to maximize their chances to win a lawsuit and to maximize the damages the doctor would pay. Some people (probably most) aren't like that. Often, people are satisfied with the apology. Sometimes they'll still sue, but will be satisfied with less damages. I think there are some lessons for motivation and orienteering in the way the medical profession is learning to apologize for mistakes. But, I'm not really sure what those lessons might be. One might be that people aren't motivated by introductory-economics-rationality. The idea that changing the USOF rules to require longer courses would lead to better training is an argument that counts on some of that rationality. Most people aren't like that. So, to get people to train better, we need to try to understand how they are motivated. Then design approaches to take advantage of motivation. posted by Michael | 6:18 PM 
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