What are the obstacles to positive motivation?
Ken Sheldon started the discussion by reviewing the future role of positive psychology and the legacy of humanistic psychology. One of the failures of humanistic psychology was its failure to build results on an empirical base, an error which positive psychology seeks not to repeat. To this end, Ken discusses the importance of self-organizing systems, flow, enjoyment, and other generative concepts. Through the lens of Deci and Ryan’s Self Determination theory, he proposed that extrinsically motivated individuals lose out not only in terms of quality of experience, but ironically, may also lose out in terms of material success, because of the “tragedy of the commons.” He reviewed results of recent social dilemma research and noted their relevance to the emerging “group selection” paradigm in evolutionary psychology. Ken’s results suggest that when extrinsic rewards are the dominant motivation, people not only fail to enjoy what they are doing, but also fail to secure as many resources a
