Motivation – What You Did Not Know

Imagine you have a goal. It could be about learning a new language. picking up a new skill, losing weight, getting fit. As you get closer to the goal, your motivation goes up and accelerates. This is called the goal-gradient effect and was first studied in the 1930s rats. The study found that rats that were running a maze to get food at the end would run faster as they got to the end of the maze…

The goal-gradient effect says that people accelerate their behavior as they get closer to their desired goal. A more recent research study in 2005 decided to investiage if humans would behave like the rats. And the answer is, yes they do.

Here are some key observations about the goal-gradient effect:

1- Acceleration of Motivation

The shorter the distance to the goal the more motivated people will be to reach it.

2- Illusion of Progress Works Too

You can get this extra motivation even with the illusion of progress; it does not have to be real. For example, imagine you are timing your running speed over 100 metres. If the coach makes a mistake and erroneously tells you your time was 14 seconds (when it was actually 16), your motivation sky-rockets anyway.

In a related experiment the same researchers showed that people would visit a web site more frequently and rate more songs during each visit as they got closer to a reward goal at the site.

It seems therefore that this goal-gradient effect appears to be applicable across many situations.

So the takeaway is that when you aim for something, give yourself the chance to get close to the goal because the motivation acceleration then takes you to the finish line. When you are far away from the goal, there isn’t that much to lose so motivation is not that high.