Crystal Smit

General Discussion 6 131 term. After all, the findings of Chapter 3 showed that intrinsic motivation is an important predictor for long-term changes in water consumption. Intrinsic Motivation of the Targeted Peers Chapter 5 explains the finding that intrinsic motivation was not transferred by the influence agents to their peers. One explanation might be that some influence agents used less autonomy-supportive strategies to promote drinking water, such as strategies that focused on external motivation (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Vansteenkiste et al., 2005). For example, influence agents introduced a challenge or promised rewards. These strategies are more responsive to children’s externally regulated motivation. External regulation is the least autonomous form of motivation in which individuals perform the behavior for external rewards or to avoid punishment (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Thus, it could be that the changes in the targeted peers’ healthy drinking behaviors were more extrinsically driven and therefore did not increase their intrinsic motivation. It could also be that children do not become intrinsically motivated after being exposed to influence agents that promote water consumption. It may be that for some children it was too big a step to internalize drinking water and thus enjoy drinking it. Self-determination theory suggests that the individual’s motivation for a particular behavior can be placed on a continuum, ranging from amotivation (i.e., a state that reflects a lack of any motivational force to act) to the most autonomous form of motivation (i.e., intrinsic motivation; Ryan & Deci, 2000). Adjacent to intrinsic motivation on the motivation continuum is integrated regulation, which occurs when the behavior is identified as being valued (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Thus, it could be that if children do not like water, they achieve, at the most, an integrated motivation to drink water. To gain more insight into how children’s motivation to drink water evolves, future research could include the entire motivation continuum of the self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Pelletier, Tuson, & Haddad, 1997).