With the struggles that I have encountered during the preliminary research phases of my comp, I have begun to examine other possible topics of study that still deal with different motivation in different ways other than drinking. I have thought of an idea that I will need to research a little more to determine if switching my topic is the most beneficial move that I can make.
One possible idea that I could study deals with extrinsic motivation and the work ethic of the individuals that receive the motivation. In other words, does the size of the reward effect the efficiency of the job that an individual must perform. I would like to perform an experiment in two different phases to study my thesis.
I would begin with rats in the basement of Carnegie Hall. I would have them run a maze and time how long it takes the mouse to reach the end. I would give half of the mice a small portion of cheese and the other half of mice twice the amount of cheese. I would then have the mice run the same maze over again and repeat the same process. The hope is that the mice that receive twice as much cheese would begin to finish the maze at a faster pace than the mice that do not receive enough cheese.
After completing this portion of the experiment I would then develop a small task for participants to complete when arriving at my study. I would use deception to convince some of the students that if they can finish the task quickly and correctly the possibility to obtain more extra credit is available for them. Similar to the mice, I would hope that the students that receive more extra credit would complete the task in a better fashion than the students that do not receive more extra credit.
I began researching this topic recently and have found a lot of research that pertains to extrinsic motivation, which I have found to be very interesting. This fact makes me wonder if I would consider a topic change before I become to invested in my initial topic of research