W. Davd Phillips » Science

The Animated Drive: Images of Motivation

David Phillips — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:09:37 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

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The Drive to Thrive

David Phillips — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:56:05 +0000

Carrots and sticks are so 20th century. We need to understand the drive to thrive in the 21st century. That’s my twitter summary of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink.

Summary
There is a great disconnect between what we practice in business – and I will add, in life – and what science is telling us in the area of motivation. The current model of motivation is carrots or sticks, money or termination. If-then rewards actually extinguish intrinsic motivation and diminish performance, crush creativity, and reduce good behavior. They also motivate people into behavior we do not want to see happen: unethical behavior, additions, and short-term thinking.

While carrots and sticks are not the best motivators, they are not all bad, however. They can be effective for rule-based routine tasks that are not very interesting and do not demand much creative thinking, though their motivation is minimal.

Science, however, shows us that we need to upgrade our operating system to motivation 3.0.

The new OS has three essential elements: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Autonomy “involves behaving with a full sense of volition and choice.” Motivation is different from independence. It is not the go-it-alone individualism of the American West. It means acting with a choice, meaning we can be both autonomous and happily interdependent with others. And more importantly, this is a human concept, not a Western one.

Autonomy has a powerful effect on performance. It promotes great conceptual understanding, better grades, enhanced persistence at school and in sporting activities, higher productivity, less burnout, and greater levels of psychological well-being. In addition, autonomous people impact the workplace. A study by Cornell University demonstrated that businesses that offered autonomy grew at four times the rate of non-autonomous businesses and had one-third the turnover.

The opposite of autonomy is control. Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement. Engagement leads to mastery, the desire to get better at something that matters. For the tasks of the 21st century, an inquiring mind and willingness to experiment to find a fresh solution is required. That means the ability to have autonomy over our tasks, techniques, team, and time. This all works to allow people to be engaged in their tasks and to master them.

Autonomous people working toward mastery perform at very high levels. But those who do so in the service of some greater objective can achieve even more. The most deeply motivated people connect their desires to a cause larger than themselves.

Thoughts
I really enjoy the writings of Daniel Pink. He assembles complicated research and makes it accessible to the masses. I appreciate how Pink makes the research in the areas of motivation easy for those who are not scientists to understand. In fact, in Drive, he does a magnificent job.

Much of the background for this book comes from the research of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian psychology professor, who emigrated to the United States at the age of 22. Now at Claremont Graduate University, he is the former head of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago and of the department of sociology and anthropology at Lake Forest College. He is noted for his work in the study of happiness and creativity, but is best known as the architect of the notion of flow and for his years of research and writing on the topic. He is the author of many books and over 120 articles or book chapters. Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association, described Csikszentmihalyi as the world’s leading researcher on positive psychology.

I do a lot of church planter assessments and one of the things we look for is intrinsic motivation. This allows us to see what will keep them going when things get tough. It also allows us to determine if money is a primary motivator. Drive provides us with the research behind the importance of this needed tool for church planting. And for ministry in the 21st century as well.

Drive is also a marker for entrepreneurial ministry. And entrepreneurialism in general.

The book is easy to read despite its topic. It makes good use of emerging research. But it’s a very practical book as well. At the end of the book, Pink provides a toolkit. In it, he provides strategies for awakening motivation for individuals, parents, educators, and businesses. He provides a great reading list of 15 essential books to encourage and promote a healthy environment for autonomy, mastery, and purpose. He also provides a discussion guide to get the discussion started.

This is a fabulous book, and will be effective for leaders and followers alike. Whether you are a pastor, small group leader, or business person, this will help motivate those you lead and even help you understand yourself better. Pick it up at amazon, barnes & noble or your local bookstore.

Learning How to Die?

David Phillips — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 14:09:53 +0000

Is the real purpose of life living? Or learning how to die?

Researchers in contemporary science, psychology and philosophy are trying to respond to humans’ confusion and wonder about what happens after death. In fact, it’s a difficult question that has been challenging humankind since ancient times. It even challenged the man many believe was the greatest philosopher in Western history, Socrates.

After being condemned to death by Greek authorities in the fourth century BC, Socrates told them that death is not an evil thing, but on the contrary a good thing. In saying that, Socrates did not presume to know what happened to humans after death. He was satisfied with being an agnostic about the afterlife. In fact, Socrates said, “Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or, as we are told, it is really a change; a migration of the soul from this place to another.”

The story of Socrates’ lack of fear about death makes up the opening chapter of The Book of Dead Philosophers (Vintage), by Simon Critchley, which explores what 190 famous philosophers thought about death and how they died. In his book, Critchley argues that real philosophy should be “about learning how to die.” Paradoxically, that is the goal of living. Our ultimate purpose, as Critchley puts it, should be “cultivating the appropriate attitude to death.”

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, which this week released it’s latest technology, the iPad, has come to believe that death is life’s greatest teacher. In a 2005 speech to Stanford’s graduating class, Jobs, who had then begun battling pancreatic cancer, stated,

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

During this weekend, celebrated in much of the world as Easter, the focus is on the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the period when the tomb becomes the womb, when His death is the seed to life, to rebirth, and to recreation. But we must remember that this a journey we all have to take. We all have to die, and in dying, experience rebirth and life recreated. It is the only way to live. Learning how to die, to our selfishness, our demands, and our attempts at being God, is a journey to life and living. If we can practice dying daily, we can live in an appropriate relationship with Him. That is really living. And when we do physically die…Wow! What a life we will have then!

Help from the article Is there life after bodily death?

Can science determine morality?

David Phillips — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:38:06 +0000

I read Sam Harris during my first semester of doctoral work. His book, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, introduced me to the new atheism that is propagating the literary landscape. I found his ideas contradictory at best then.

He gave a talk at TEDS where he tried to answer the question, can science determine morality? Below is the talk.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww

Harris states that:

Values are a certain kind of fact. They are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures… If we’re more concerned about our fellow primates than we are about insects, as indeed we are, it’s because we think they are exposed to a greater range of potential happiness and suffering. The crucial thing to notice here is that this is a factual claim.

Sean Carrol, a cosmologist who has a blog at Discover Magazine, wrote a piece that rebuts Harris’ assertion. He does a good job, though many commentors disagree with him. Reading the comments, I ran across what I think to be the most valid argument for Harris’ view (24. Cody):

the differences we have in morals are largely influenced by our environments, but from an evolutionary point of view there ought to be causal reasons why we tend to have the moral values that we have, and with that understanding we can make scientific statements about what morals people have (and why).

This is an important point to make, I think. I have stated before that I believe in micro-evolution, or evolution of species, but not macro-evolution, or evolution between species. I don’t think we all came from a frog-like being, for instance. Let’s assume for a moment that macro-evolution is correct. There would indeed need to be causal reasons why everyone would tend to have similar values. The brain is wired a certain way or genetically we are coded a certain way.

Here is the rub: the what is determinable. The why isn’t. We can, through emerging neuroscience be able to determine what actions, in general, all humans determine moralistic. We can know because certain parts of the brain are generally aroused from certain activities. For instance, pleasure and pain both activate the same brain areas and the neurochemical dopamine is involved in both. But can we really answer why murder is an (almost) universally held moral? Determining this means that the brain makes a value judgment that life has meaning. But while meaning may activate a specific area of the brain that creates an emotional experience through which we make decisions, that emotional experience is still experientially framed -- and that is subjective, not something that science can empirically and objectively understand. Is it so difficult to believe that a creator, a universal judge, can wire something into the brain that brings a universal moral concept?

Science has uncovered that genetically, all cellular organisms have an inherent aspect of altruism and cooperation. Charles Darwin’s theory of how evolution works is explicitly competitive. Species are pitted against species for shared resources, similar species with similar needs and niches even more so, and individuals within species most of all. All this comes down to one factor: out-competing all rivals and predators in producing progeny. Darwin’s explanation of how preferential survival of the slightest benefits can lead to advanced forms is the most important explanatory principle in biology, and extremely powerful in many other fields. Such success has reinforced notions that life is in all respects a war of each against all, where every individual has to look out for himself, that your gain is my loss.

In such a struggle for existence altruism (voluntarily yielding a benefit to a non-relative) and even cooperation (working with another for a mutual benefit) are antithetical to self-interest as to be the very kind of behavior that should be selected against. Yet cooperation and seemingly even altruism have evolved and persist, and evolutionists have been hard pressed to explain why. [1] In fact, they can’t.

I like science. I really do. But science can’t explain everything. Our identity is determined by our experiences, our understanding of ourselves, and those we live in community with. That identity forms our actions. Underlying all this is a bigger question of identity. Are we simply a biologic, with no value or meaning in life? Or do we have an intrinsic meaning, one fueled by being created in the image of God.

Science says if it can’t be proven, it can’t be true. But just because it can’t be proven, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

NOTES:

[1]

Is climate change causing all this snow?

David Phillips — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 14:22:26 +0000

I live in the Mid-Atlantic. Since December 19, 2009, we have received almost 6 feet of snow. We set records for snowfall this year. I am asking God to move me back South as a result.

I admit that I’m not a climatologist. But I am a scientist. I read scientific literature. My doctoral dissertation integrated emerging brain research and theology. I have a computer science degree and spent 6 years in the IT industry. All this intrigues me.

Climate change is a difficult subject, and a contentious one. It’s a charged debate with people on the left and right politically and socially at each other’s throat. With the winter storms that have roared through this year, and with the Cap and Trade bill before Congress and being pushed through by the White House, the debate has only grown louder and more angry, if that is possible.

This week, both sides of the debate politically have gone after each other in the media. Those on the right are considering putting out an amber alert for Al Gore because he has been silent with all this snow and with ClimateGate. They have made fun of the former Vice President and those on the Left because global warming couldn’t be happening with all this snow. The Left has now fired back saying that all this snow is actually evidence of global warming. Just this week, MSNBC anchors and Fox News anchors have lobbed shots at each other over this.

Here is a sampling of video clips of this week’s action. First, Rachael Maddow interviews the lovable Bill Nye, the Science Guy. Nye appeared on MSNBC’s Feb. 10 “Rachel Maddow Show” and aired his disapproval of manmade climate change skeptics and labeled them “unpatriotic.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYvk1OtI0H0

MSNBC Anchor Dylan Ratigan got into the act, stating: ‘Snowpocalypses’ that have been going through D.C. and other weather events are precisely what climate scientists have been predicting, fearing, and anticipating because of global warming … In fact you could argue these storms are not evidence of a lack of global warming, but evidence of global warming.” That clip is here.

Glenn Beck responds to this clip on the radio and on his Fox News program. The transcript of what he said on the radio program can be found here.

Not to be out done, Ratigan responds to Beck with what appears to be scientific evidence. Note that clip here:

The IPCC report that Bill Nye notes received a Nobel Prize for their work has been exposed by ClimateGate. The IPCC has had to announce this week that errors were made. Britian has called for an inquiry. India has pulled out because of the manipulation of the data. And despite some claiming the science is settled, it certainly doesn’t appear to be.

I know two things. First, in 2002, I participated in a doctoral class where one of my colleague worked for an environmental group. She was, herself, an environmentalist. During part of her research, however, she came to the conclusion that the environmental movement had little to do with the environment and more to do with the money. In fact, it was primarily a money movement.

Second, the science that Ratigan & Nye use to validate their claim that global warming is the cause of the record snow falls, has recently been proven incorrect. A recent study by Susan Solomon,Karen Rosenlof,Robert Portmann,John Daniel,Sean Davis, Todd Sanford, and Gian-Kasper Plattner, published in the journal Science, states:

Stratospheric water vapor concentrations decreased by about 10% after the year 2000. Here, we show that this acted to slow the rate of increase in global surface temperature over 2000 to 2009 by about 25% compared to that which would have occurred due only to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. More limited data suggest that stratospheric water vapor probably increased between 1980 and 2000, which would have enhanced the decadal rate of surface warming during the 1990s by about 30% compared to estimates neglecting this change.

This article was generated by scientists with the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences in Colorado and the Physics Institute in Bern, Switzerland. These are hardly groups associated with any high level of climate change skepticism.

If the water vapor concentrations were increasing, with more water in the atmosphere there could be more rain and snow, depending on the temperature. However, water is decreasing; therefore there should be reduced rain and reduced snow falls. That is just not happening.

Another article was published in Geophysical Research Letters by two scientists with the National Climatic Data Center in North Carolina and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. The article is entitled “Is the climate warming or cooling?” Easterling and Wehner basically show that with little-to-no external forcing of global climate, we will still get decades of warming and cooling. They note that no real cause is needed to produce a decade of cooling – it is all just part of the natural variability of climate.

Has there been a trend towards an increase in temperature? Since 1975, yes there has. It is, however, now trending downward.

As a Christian, I believe it is important to be good stewards of creation. I want to be off the grid (except for internet) in 10 years, using solar, wind, and geo-thermal energies and the grid as back-up power only. At the same time, I also believe in the sovereignty of God and in that I believe that God can take care of this planet without my help or my harm. So while I support environmentalism to a point, I also reject the rabid environmentalists trying to cap and tax (~~trade~~) and destroy economies and jobs.

Q4U:

1. Will extreme environmentalism hurt our economies? If so, how?
2. What are you doing to be more aware environmentally, and a better steward of the earth’s resources?

Saturday’s suggested reads

David Phillips — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:42:07 +0000

From the Pat Robertson Haiti debacle, Jeffrey Weiss has a story entitled “Haiti and the Pat Robertson Paradox” Great thoughts on religion in America (HT: Len Sweet)

From the election on Tuesday

Massachusetts Voters Backed Brown to Show Opposition to Democratic Agenda, Poll Says

“Nearly two-thirds of those who voted for Republican Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race said their vote was at least in part to make clear their opposition to the Democratic agenda in Washington.”

Now What? Democrats Struggle to Make Sense of Losses

Between Republican Scott Brown’s surprise Senate victory over Martha Coakley in Massachusetts Tuesday night, the Supreme Court’s decision to lift campaign restrictions on corporations Thursday, Obama’s Transportation Security Administration nominee stepping down, Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke’s nomination coming under fire, and even progressive radio station Air America going off the air, Obama had just come through the most bruising five days his administration, his party, and his progressive base had ever seen together.

From Science this week

Neurons Developed from Stem Cells Successfully Wired With Other Brain Regions in Animals. Why does this matter?

In this study, a team of neuroscientists led by James Weimann, PhD, of Stanford Medical School focused on cells that transmit information from the brain’s cortex, some of which are responsible for muscle control. It is these neurons that are lost or damaged in spinal cord injuries and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). “These stem cell-derived neurons can grow nerve fibers between the brain’s cerebral cortex and the spinal cord, so this study confirms the use of stem cells for therapeutic goals,” Weimann said.

Human Brain Uses a Grid to Represent Space. Why read this? Well, these cells correlate with Alzheimer’s. Fascinating read.

The parts of the brain which show signs of grid cells — the hippocampal formation and associated brain areas — are already known to help us navigate our environment and are also critical for autobiographical memory. This means that grid cells may help us to find our way to the right memory as well as finding our way through our environment. These brain areas are also amongst the first to be affected by Alzheimer’s disease which may explain why getting lost is one of the most common early symptoms of this disease.

From Health, Wellness, & Food

Unraveled? Here’s How to Knit Yourself and the World Together. Okay, get past the Buddhist quote and you’ll find some great thoughts:

Have you ever looked into the mirror and wondered who is staring back at you? Or longed to unite the many parts within you? The friendly one, the angry one, the resentful one, the sad one, the calm one, the impatient one, the confused one – that are all jumbled up behind a public persona that’s buffed and glossed – but tends to crack when you’re angry or upset.

27 Fitness and Fat Loss Tips. “These 27 Fitness and Fat Loss Tips will get you on the right track for this New Year”

How To Reach Your Goals By Keeping A Journal. Great suggestions for record-keeping!

Cook Pizza in a Cast-Iron Skillet. A great suggestion.

Think you need a pizza stone to make some great homemade pizza? Megan from DIY home weblog Not Martha suggests trying your trusty cast-iron skillet before shelling out for a uni-tasking pizza stone.

Less Christianity = More Christian Activism?

David Phillips — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:53:46 +0000

“It seems that when Christianity is popular, Christians are content with the idea of a firewall separating Church and State. It’s only when Christianity begins to lose it’s influence over the population at large that Christians begin to campaign for the State to adopt a Christian character.” That is the opening statement from Razib Khan’s December 22 article entitled “Less Religion = More Religious Activism” from his blog Gene Expression.

Data from a research team from Erasmus University in the Netherlands shows some interesting results. Looking at survey data from 18 Western countries, they found:

1. The fewer Christians in a country, the greater the support among Christians for a greater public role for religion.
2. The polarization of views between Christians and non-religious on a public role for religion is greatest in countries where there are fewest Christians.

The reasoning behind this increased activism are at least two fold. Some of this can be attributed to specific factors in Europe relating to religious pluralism. Even if a society is very secular, if the dominant religious orientation is uniform, then its background assumptions spreads through one’s daily life. One can therefore be a “cultural” Catholic or Lutheran, with an attachment to the exoteric forms associated with the religion, without being a believer. But when you have religious pluralism people are going to disagree strenuously about exoteric forms. This applies even to the post-religious; an American atheist from a Jewish background may have a different attitude toward Christmas than an American atheist from a Catholic background. In other words, as European societies have become less Christian over the past generation, they’ve also had to face more religious pluralism. Christians will become more assertive and aggressive in direct response to Europe’s growing Muslim community, which wishes to contest the tacit monopoly that Christianity has long had in Europe as the Faith.

Another issue which might be at work is that as nominal or marginal believers fall away, the set of individuals who remain committed Christians are more religious and exhibit more fidelity to their identity than before. This may result in a group of Christians who are much more cohesive and can engage in collective action out of proportion to their numbers. Whereas before more marginal and nominal members of the community might have served as a check on excessive activism, today those individuals may no longer be part of the Christianity community.

The power of an organized Christian community is clear in a society such as South Korea. Though only around 30% of the population is Christian, with almost half the population not having a religious affiliation at all, Christians have been over-represented in positions of power. The growth of the Christian religion has been rapid, but has slowed over the past 15 years. It seems possible that it may be nearing its “natural limit.” But that does not mean that it won’t be influential in the years to come.

So what do you think of the study and its conclusions? If the results of this study are true, as Westerners, do get more aggressive because we feel we are fighting back against the enemy (Satan)? Or are we just defensive, fearful of loosing our place?

Study Source:
Achterberg, P., Houtman, D., Aupers, S., Koster, W., Mascini, P., & Waal, J. (2009). A Christian Cancellation of the Secularist Truce? Waning Christian Religiosity and Waxing Religious Deprivatization in the West Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 48 (4), 687-701

How we read each other’s minds

David Phillips — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:56:13 +0000

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOCUH7TxHRI

Sensing the motives and feelings of others is a natural talent for humans. But how do we do it? Here, Rebecca Saxe shares fascinating lab work that uncovers how the brain thinks about other peoples’ thoughts — and judges their actions.

Rebecca Saxe studies how we think about other people’s thoughts. At the Saxelab at MIT, she uses fMRI to identify what happens in our brains when we consider the motives, passions and beliefs of others.

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation

David Phillips — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:54:30 +0000

About this talk

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don’t: Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories — and maybe, a way forward.

About the speaker

With a trio of influential bestsellers, Dan Pink has changed the way companies view the modern workplace. In the pivotal A Whole New Mind, Pink identifies a sea change in the global workforce — the shift of an information-based corporate culture to a conceptual base, where creativity and big-picture design dominates the landscape.

His latest book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, is an evolutionary transformation of the familiar career guide. Replacing linear text with a manga-inspired comic, Pink outlines six career laws vastly differing from the ones you’ve been taught. Members of the Johnny Bunko online forum participated in an online contest to create the seventh law — “stay hungry.”

A contributing editor for Wired, Pink is working on a new book on the science and economics of motivation called Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
for release in late 2009.

How social media can make history

David Phillips — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:22:25 +0000

About the Talk
While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.

About the Speaker
Clay Shirky’s consulting focuses on the rising usefulness of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, wireless networks, social software and open-source development. New technologies are enabling new kinds of cooperative structures to flourish as a way of getting things done in business, science, the arts and elsewhere, as an alternative to centralized and institutional structures, which he sees as self-limiting. In his writings and speeches he has argued that “a group is its own worst enemy.” His clients have included Nokia, the Library of Congress and the BBC. Shirky is an adjunct professor in New York University’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, where he teaches course named “Social Weather.”

W. Davd Phillips » Science

The Animated Drive: Images of Motivation

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