top of page

Would you still do it if nobody knew? The Psychology of what really motivates us

Oct 7
8 min read

Give me a medal and there is a pretty good chance I will put it in a drawer and forget about it. For someone else, that same medal might be photographed, posted on social media or proudly displayed at home. Neither response necessarily tells us who cared more. The more interesting question is: what does the medal mean?


For one person, it might represent months of training, sacrifice and progress. For another, it might represent completing something they never thought they could. It might mean being part of something with friends, receiving recognition, or simply having something tangible that says “I did it” or boosts our self-worth in some way.


Personally, medals or trophies have never been the bit that motivates me. Maybe it’s because my mother managed to lose some of her own World Championship medals and never treated them as important. Or maybe it’s because I received so many “girls’ winner” medals as a child, because, as my brother liked to remind me, I was “the only girl” in the competition. But whatever the reason, even now, I derive far more satisfaction from knowing that I had worked hard for something. Recently though, several conversations have made me think more carefully about how differently people experience motivation, even in non-competitive settings (if such a thing even exists anymore!).


A friend told me that she probably wouldn’t travel if she couldn’t tell anybody she had been. I found this concept fascinating, because my immediate reaction was almost the complete opposite. I would still want the experience even if nobody else could ever know about it. I’ve also watched people complete half-marathons with basically no training. Again, my instinct is completely different. So much of the satisfaction comes from the process: training consistently, seeing myself improve, and knowing the work that had gone into the performance. For someone else, simply completing the challenge may provide that same sense of satisfaction, regardless of how much preparation came beforehand. Importantly, neither form of motivation is necessarily better, and the psychology of motivation is far more complicated than simply splitting people into those who are “internally motivated” and those who are “externally motivated”.


This feels particularly relevant at a time when running seems to be everywhere. More than one million people applied for a place in the 2026 London Marathon (London Marathon Events, 2025), while running clubs, organised races and platforms such as Strava have become an increasingly visible part of running culture. For many people, running is no longer necessarily a solitary activity; instead it can provide community, identity, accountability and a shared goal. This raises an interesting question: are we falling in love with running, or with being runners? Maybe for many people, it is both.


Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation


One of the most influential theories of human motivation is Self-Determination Theory (SDT) (Ryan & Deci, 2020) developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. Simply put, we often distinguish between intrinsic motivation (doing something because we find it interesting or enjoyable) and extrinsic motivation (doing something because of an outcome beyond the activity itself).


However, Self-Determination Theory suggests that extrinsic motivation is not one single thing. For example, if five people go for a run:

  • One runs because their coach will be annoyed if they don’t

  • One runs because they would feel guilty if they didn’t

  • One doesn’t enjoy running but runs because they believe it will make them healthier

  • One runs because they see training as part of who they are and what they want to be

  • One runs because they love running


All five runners are motivated, and their behaviour is the same, but the quality and source of that motivation are very different.


Self-Determination Theory describes extrinsic motivation on a spectrum, from externally controlled behaviour through to increasingly internalised motivation, where the behaviour becomes personally valued and ultimately integrated with our sense of self (Ryan & Deci, 2020).


Looking at my own motivation, I often think I am highly intrinsically motivated. I have always done what I want to do, because I want to do it, and struggled at times to do things I have to do for what appears to be no real reason (pencil instead of ink being a small example that led me to get 0 on an A-Level history mock). But if I use pencil because I want to, or if I train hard because I value challenging myself and seeing what I am capable of, then that is not necessarily intrinsic in its strictest sense. I may well not enjoy every session, but the reason feels like my reason. Just as using a pencil felt like my choice. Therefore, a more useful distinction when it comes to motivation is not necessarily whether it is inside or outside of us, but how much ownership we experience over what we are doing.


The Influence of Others


For me personally, there is another reason why I don’t always want to share what I am doing, and why I don’t use social media or Strava – sometimes I don’t want feedback. Something can begin as mine, but then there are questions or judgements. “What are you aiming for?”, “How’s it going?” or even “That’s amazing!”

None of those responses are remotely negative, and they are certainly intended as supportive. But sometimes the presence of an audience can change the relationship with a goal. Something that once existed within, has another layer attached to it: other people’s expectations, praise, judgement or interpretation.

Research has long suggested that external rewards and feedback can influence intrinsic motivation, although the effect depends on how they are experienced. Within SDT, feedback that supports a sense of competence can strengthen motivation, whereas feedback or rewards experienced as controlling can undermine autonomy (Deco et al., 1999; Ryan & Deci, 2020).


SDT offers an interesting way of understanding this. The theory proposes three basic psychological needs:

Autonomy – experiencing a sense of ownership over our behaviour

Competence – feeling effective, capable and able to develop

Relatedness – feeling connected to and valued by others


Environments that support and facilitate these needs tend to encourage higher-quality, more self-determined forms of motivation. However, the same external influence may not affect everybody in the same way.

For me, putting a run on Strava might introduce an external audience that I don’t need or want. For somebody else, that same community provides a huge sense of encouragement, connection and accountability, and can be the difference between going or not going. It may support their sense of relatedness, seeing their progress and stats might support competence, and choosing to share it in this way may be consistent with their sense of autonomy.


So the question is not: “Is Strava good or bad?”, it is “What impact does Strava have on your motivation?” And the same could be asked of medals, praise, selection, awards, rankings, money and social recognition. Do they support something we already value? Or do they gradually become the reason we do it?


What happens when the reward disappears?


Motivation becomes particularly important in sport when we look at what happens when the reward disappears. My interest in this subject goes back some way, with my Master’s Dissertation exploring Self-Determination Theory to understand why girls and women play cricket. Behind the research was a question that remains incredibly relevant across all sport: what makes people keep playing? That question remains particularly pertinent in girls’ sport. Despite the huge growth and visibility of women’s sport, participation still commonly drops during adolescence. Recent research from Women in Sport (2022) found that 43% of teenage girls who once considered themselves ‘sporty’ disengaged from sport after primary school, with feeling judged, lacking confidence and not feeling good enough among the barriers identified. So simply creating opportunities for girls to participate is clearly not enough: getting someone through the door is very different from creating an environment they want to remain in. Motivation, enjoyment, perceived competence, autonomy, relatedness and the surrounding social environment can all matter considerably (Teixeira et al., 2012).


Parents can get their child to training, coaches can demand practise, selection can motivate someone initially, medals can encourage entering an event and friends can persuade you to sign up to a race. Those can all be useful, and often just what someone needs to participate, or to get started.

But those things don’t last forever. If a young cricketer only practises because their parents tell them to, what happens when the parent stops? If athletes train for selection, what happens once they are selected? If exercise only feels worthwhile when somebody notices it, what happens when nobody is watching?

This does not mean the answer is to remove external sources of motivation entirely. One of the most interesting concepts within SDT is internalisation (Ryan & Deci, 2020). This is the idea that our reasons for doing something can change.


Someone may be signed up for an event by a friend. They train because they don’t want to let them down. But then later, they realise they actually care about getting better. Then being physically active becomes part of who they want to be. And maybe one day “I actually love it now”.


Motivation is not fixed, and so the goal is not to turn everybody into someone who needs absolutely nothing from anybody else. Instead, the goal is to create conditions in which people can gradually develop their own reasons for continuing.


So how do we motivate someone else?


So, why am I posting about this?


Well, this has really important implications for coaches, parents, teachers and those working in sport psychology spaces. We so often ask “why are they so unmotivated?”, or “how do I motivate them?” But a more helpful question is: “how can I help them discover what matters to them?”

  • In my experience as a coach, that can often look like providing choice rather than controlling every decision. It might feel like it makes no difference what kind of ball you use, or what coloured cones, but even just a small sense of autonomy, can support motivation.

  • Helping someone notice their progress and develop competence. Often feeding back on the little things “your positioning was better, even if you still didn’t quite catch it.”

  • Creating a team environment where someone genuinely feels they belong.

  • Asking what someone wants from their sport, rather than making assumptions about what their goals are or should be.


And I should add, accountability, rewards, praise and social recognition are not automatically bad. What matters is whether they support someone’s autonomy, competence and relatedness, or instead replace their own reasons for participating (or even apply unnecessary pressure). We can become so focused on trying to make people train, practise and improve that we forget to ask whether we are helping them develop a relationship with sport that can eventually survive without us.


Would you still do it if nobody knew?


I still don’t think I need anyone to know where I have been for an experience to matter, I don’t think I’ll ever much care about medals and I will probably always deliberately keep some goals to myself because I want to preserve my own relationship with them. However, that does not mean that somebody who posts their training, proudly displays their medals, or draws motivation from sharing the experience with others is any less genuinely motivated.


Instead, ask yourself: would you still do the run if you couldn’t tell a soul? Would you still enter a race if nobody would ever know and there was no medal?


When we’re trying to motivate ourselves or others, the goal is not to find harder ways to push. Instead, it is to create the conditions in which the reason to continue gradually becomes our own.

 

 

References


Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125 (6), 627-668.



Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2020). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation from a self-determination theory perspective: Definitions, theory, practices, and future directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 61, 101860. https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/2020_RyanDeci_CEP_PrePrint.pdf


Teixeira, P. J., Carraça, E. V., Markland, D., Silva, M. N., & Ryan, R. M. (2012). Exercise, physical activity and self-determination theory: A systematic review. International Journal of Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity, 9, 78. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22726453/



 
 
 

Comments

©2018 by Briony Brock. Proudly created with Wix.com

bottom of page