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 rea ction to an activity. Presumably, people experience and express intrin sic motivation during task engagement as well. The need therefore exis ts for a supplemental in-performance behavioral measure of intrinsic m otivation. To test the viability of constructing such a measure, we re corded the extent to which five acts of exploration and four facial di splays of interest corresponded to self-reports of interest, self-dete rmination, and competence for 60 undergraduates as they solved SOMA pu zzles. Correlational and LISREL analyses confirmed the validity of thr ee acts of exploration and two facial displays of interest. We conclud ed that just as task persistence is a valid postperformance indicator of intrinsic motivation, acts of exploration and facial displays of in terest are valid in-performance indicators.