3 things you need to motivate people
[This article is a transcript of “3 things you need to motivate people” courtesy of volunteer Ben Tomlin. If you’re interested in volunteering to transcribe more of our content, please complete our volunteer survey.]
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There are three elements you need to motivate someone to take an action. Let’s say we’re talking about getting someone to take action X by offering them reward Y.
First, you need them to care about reward Y. So, for example, if I tell you, “Hey, if you jump in place for a minute I will give you a can of green beans,” and you’re like, “I don’t want a can of green beans,” so no. So they have to care about reward Y.
Second, they need to believe that they can do action X. So, if I say, “Hey, if you jump in place constantly for 24 hours I will give you $500,” maybe you care about the reward, $500, but you don’t really think you can jump in place constantly for 24 hours, so you’re not going to try.
And third, they have to believe that if they do action X, you really will give them reward Y. So if I say, “Hey, if you jump in place for one minute, I’ll give you a million dollars,” you can jump in place for a minute and you probably care about a million dollars, but you don’t actually believe I’m going to give you a million dollars, so you’re not going to do it.
So to motivate someone to take action X by offering reward Y, you need three things. You need them to:
care about reward Y,
believe they can do action X, and
believe that if they do action X, you really will give them reward Y.
Why am I talking about this? Well, because when you’re wondering why it’s difficult to get people who say they care about the issues you care about to do anything about it, it’s helpful to keep this paradigm in mind. A lot of times we’ll say, “If you really cared, you’d do XYZ,” but really caring is not the only element. Sometimes people don’t do anything to help because of a lack of courage or a lack of interest, but sometimes it’s just a feeling of futility. Maybe they really do care about this issue, and maybe they really don’t mind working on it. It’s just that they don’t see what the point is if they don’t think it’s going to give them the reward they want. So it really depends on what rewards you’re offering.
If the only reward you talk about is total victory (so, for example, in the abortion debate for pro-life people, if the reward is, you know, banning abortion in a given state) and they don’t think that’s possible, it’s going to be hard to get them to work with you on that issue.
But there are lots of other rewards you can talk about. For some people, having the opportunity and taking the opportunity to say clearly what you think is very satisfying. For some people, fighting the good fight is a reward. For some people, it’s just wanting to show support and solidarity for those we care about, so if we see other people working very hard on an issue, even if we don’t think the issue is going to win, we want to support them. We admire and appreciate their courage and their efforts, and so we help because we care about them, and that’s the reward.
Lots of fights for major societal change take years, decades, even generations. If we make people think that they’re doing all this right now for a fast and easy victory right now, a lot of times they will be disappointed. You need to be thinking about how to explain that in the short term, the rewards are different. They’re not total victory; they’re other, smaller things that you get out of the satisfaction of fighting the good fight. We do want the victory in the end, but we recognize that it might be a long haul and, in the meantime, what motivates us to keep going?
[Read more – I usually don’t think my pro-life work makes much difference, so why do I keep doing it?]
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This article was originally published on July 11, 2025 at secularprolife.org.
*Article image credit Juliana Romao on Unsplash.