As I begin to write this Preface, I feel a rush of excitement. I have
now finished the book; my gestalt is coming into completion. Throughout
the months that I have been writing this, I have, indeed, been
intrinsically motivated. Now that it is finished I feel quite competent
and self-determining (see Chapter 2). Whether or not those who read the
book will perceive me that way is also a concern of mine (an extrinsic
one), but it is a wholly separate issue from the intrinsic rewards I
have been experiencing. This book presents a theoretical perspective. It
reviews an enormous amount of research which establishes unequivocally
that intrinsic motivation exists. Also considered herein are various
approaches to the conceptualizing of intrinsic motivation. The book
concentrates on the approach which has developed out of the work of
Robert White (1959), namely, that intrinsically motivated behaviors are
ones which a person engages in so that he may feel competent and
self-determining in relation to his environment. The book then considers
the development of intrinsic motiva- tion, how behaviors are motivated
intrinsically, how they relate to and how intrinsic motivation is
extrinsically motivated behaviors, affected by extrinsic rewards and
controls. It also considers how changes in intrinsic motivation relate
to changes in attitudes, how people attribute motivation to each other,
how the attribution process is motivated, and how the process of
perceiving motivation (and other internal states) in oneself relates to
perceiving them in others.