What can culture tell about motivation?
Motivation is important to our mental health and performance. For example, highly motivated students tend to feel well, and perform well. An employee who is motivated is likely to enjoy their job, feeling well and doing well. In the field of motivation science, the Self-Determination Theory is one of the most established theories, categorising motivation into 3 types: Intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation.
Intrinsic motivation is about doing what you do because you love it. This often involves passion, curiosity, and flow. Intrinsically motivated workers will say "Because I love this job" when asked why they work. To them, work is a reward. Extrinsic motivation is about doing your job in order to get something. So your job is a means to an end, which can be money, status, and/or fame. Amotivation is no motivation at all.
Often (but not always) intrinsic motivation is assocaited with good mental health, whereas extrinsic motivation is associated with poor mental health. You can imagine someone who is so obsessed with an external reward being highly stressed. On the other hand, you may know someone who is genuinely enjoying their job or activity, feeling well. Cases where intrinsic motivation can be associated with poor mental health include when their passion is activated by fear or anxiety, instead of positive emotions. Also intrinsic motivation alone may not be practical in some contexts, because student motivation research reports that students with high intrinsic motivation only can take longer to finish their curriculum.
In our cross-cultural mental health research between Dutch and Japanese workers, we measured their work motivation, saw how different their work motivation was between the two groups, and discussed how the cultural difference between the Netherlands and Japan could explain the motivation difference.
Culturally, the Netherlands and Japan are very different. Of course, as with many western countries, Dutch culture is individualistic compared to many Asian cultures that are collectivistic including Japan. Another key difference between the Netherlands and Japan is the quality orientation of the Netherlands and the success-drivenness of Japan. We particularly paid attention to this cultural dimension to interpret our motivation findings.
The results were that Dutch workers had higher intrinsic motivation and lower extrinsic motivation than Japanese workers. Many Dutch workers do their work because it's fun for them, whereas many Japanese workers do their work because they want something external such as money, fame, and/or status. This difference can be explained by the cultural dimension of the quality orientation vs success-drivenness. Dutch workers' high intrinsic motivation can be explained by their cultural characteristics of quality orientation. Japanese workers' high extrinsic motivation can be explained by their cultural characteristics of success-drivenness.
This may mean that Japanese success-driven culture may foster workers' extrinsic motivation (which is unhealthy to our mental health), whereas Dutch quality-oriented culture may nurture workers' intrinsic motivation (healty to our mental health). Finding this relationship is helpful because there are other countries that are particularly quality-oriented or success-driven. Workers in these countries may be suffering mentally, because the culture they are in support one type of motivation. A Japanese worker wants to have better quality of life, but cannot pursue it, because of the cultural pressure. A Dutch worker wants to complete a task they love on time, may struggle as the cultural emphasis is placed on the quality of life.
The cultural dimension of quality orientation vs successdrivenness can impact on people's intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation.
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