Expressing Intrinsic Motivation Through Acts of Exploration and Facial Displays of Interest

Intrinsically-motivated behavior has been defined through participants' task persistence, during a free-choice interval. While fruitful, this operational definition assesses only the person's postperformance reaction to an activity. Presumably, people experience and express intrinsic motivation during task engagement as well. The need therefore exists for a supplemental in-performance behavioral measure of intrinsic motivation. To test the viability of constructing such a measure, we recorded the extent to which five acts of exploration and four facial displays of interest corresponded to self-reports of interest, self-determination, and competence for 60 undergraduates as they solved SOMA puzzles. Correlational and LISREL analyses confirmed the validity of three acts of exploration and two facial displays of interest We concluded that just as task persistence is a valid postperformance indicator of intrinsic motivation, acts of exploration and facial displays of interest are valid in-performance indicators.