The aim of this paper is to test the effectiveness of wage-irrelevant goal setting policies in a laboratory environment. In our design, managers can assign a goal to their workers by setting a certain level of performance on the work task. We establish our theoretical conjectures by developing a model in which assigned goals act as reference points to workers’ intrinsic motivation. Consistent w...

In this paper we will discribe a system that motivates robots with a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic sources of motivation. The system is based on reinforcement learning, and uses neural networks to predict the effects of the robot’s actions on the environment and rewarding it for improvement in predictions, while also granting other extrinsic rewards for specific actions. We then test t...

In the quest towards general artificial intelligence (AI), researchers have explored developing loss functions that act as intrinsic motivators in the absence of external rewards. This paper argues that such research has overlooked an important and useful intrinsic motivator: social interaction. We posit that making an AI agent aware of implicit social feedback from humans can allow for faster ...

Research on the adoption of information systems (IS) has been dominated by mechanistic motivational theories (extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation). In contrast, the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) goes beyond the traditional dichotomy of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation by distinguishing between different types of motivation based on one’s perceived self-determination when performing a behavio...

Two research gaps in prior studies on knowledge sharing in virtual communities (VCs) are identified. First, prior studies have focused on VCs with no explicit rewards system, whereas VCs using a competition-based reward system (e.g., transactional VCs) is not explored. Second, prior studies have concentrated on the determinants of initial participation rather than sustained participation. In th...

Three studies compared beliefs about natural and late blooming positive traits with those acquired through personal effort, extrinsic rewards or medicine. Young children (5-6 years), older children (8-13 years), and adults all showed a strong bias for natural and late blooming traits over acquired traits. All age groups, except 8- to 10-year-olds, treated natural and late-blooming traits as fix...

In the quest towards general artificial intelligence (AI), researchers have explored developing loss functions that act as intrinsic motivators in the absence of external rewards. This paper argues that such research has overlooked an important and useful intrinsic motivator: social interaction. We posit that making an AI agent aware of implicit social feedback from humans can allow for faster ...

Intelligent animals have a high degree of curiosity--the intrinsic desire to know--but the mechanisms of curiosity are poorly understood. A key open question pertains to the internal valuation systems that drive curiosity. What are the cognitive and emotional factors that motivate animals to seek information when this is not reinforced by instrumental rewards? Using a novel oculomotor paradigm,...