Ma Qingguo, Pei Guanxiong, Meng Liang
Institute of Neural Management Sciences, Zhejiang University of Technology Hangzhou, China.
School of Management, Zhejiang University Hangzhou, China.
Front Neurosci. 2017 Mar 28;11:131. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2017.00131. eCollection 2017.
The balance between task demand and one's competence is critical for the maintenance of intrinsic motivation. According to Flow theory and Self-determination theory, optimal challenge gives rise to the maximum intrinsic motivation, and an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship between perceived challenge and one's intrinsic motivation is suggested. In order to provide direct experimental evidences for predictions of these theories, in this study, we employed the two-player StopWatch game that we previously designed, which made references to the game format of a badminton tournament. According to our manipulation, a male participant was defeated by the same-sex player paired with him (played by a well-trained confederate of the experimenter) in two matches, one with a wide margin (the complete defeat condition) and another with a narrow one (the near miss condition). Participants performed better and reported to enjoy the near miss match to a greater extent. Besides, an enlarged Stimulus-preceding negativity was elicited when participants were actively anticipating outcomes in the near miss condition, suggesting greater anticipatory attention toward the outcome and an enhanced intrinsic motivation to win. Thus, converging electrophysiological evidences from this study and our former study confirmed the inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship between perceived challenge and one's intrinsic motivation.
任务需求与个人能力之间的平衡对于维持内在动机至关重要。根据心流理论和自我决定理论，最佳挑战会产生最大的内在动机，并且感知到的挑战与个人内在动机之间存在倒U形曲线关系。为了为这些理论的预测提供直接的实验证据，在本研究中，我们采用了我们之前设计的两人秒表游戏，该游戏参考了羽毛球比赛的游戏形式。根据我们的操纵，一名男性参与者在两场比赛中被与他配对的同性玩家（由实验者训练有素的同盟者扮演）击败，一场是大比分落败（完全失败条件），另一场是小比分落败（险些失败条件）。参与者在险些失败的比赛中表现得更好，并且报告说在更大程度上享受这场比赛。此外，当参与者在险些失败条件下积极预期结果时，会引发更大的刺激前负波，这表明对结果有更大的预期关注以及增强的赢得比赛的内在动机。因此，本研究和我们之前研究的汇聚电生理证据证实了感知到的挑战与个人内在动机之间的倒U形曲线关系。
