A Test of a Personality-Based View of Intrinsic Motivation

Abstract

The majority of research on intrinsic motivation has examined the impact of environmental factors that aroused people's needs for competence and self-determination and their influence on behavior. Relatively less attention, however, has been paid to the identification of psychological individual differences in intrinsic motivation. The present study tested a model in which a personality-based view of intrinsic motivation is prominent. Specifically, we investigated whether two of the Big-5 personality dimensions, conscientiousness and openness to experience, would affect intrinsic motivation. The results indicated that those two personality traits could be significant predictors of intrinsic motivation with the effects of taskrelated motivators (e.g., ability utilization, achievement, task variety, etc.) controlled for. The meaning of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.