I’m not sure what units of energy are used to measure the activation cost you’re talking about, and it seems that the costs vary across time, individual, and situation to the point that this theory can’t make any good testable predictions.
Hmm, actually, I wonder if you could do a self-assessed survey of “how hard” something seems to be to start doing. It’d face all the problems of self-assessment, but maybe you’d come out with some interesting data. Then you could track some related variables—how competent a person feels at it, identity-related, how often they’ve been doing it recently, etc. Might be able to come up with some interesting data.
It would go a long way to make some testable predictions based on this, or some evidence that this model can be used to do something.
Indeed. This was just a starting point. Also, I was going more for practical instrumental value than for epistemic, but I think there’d be value in expanding. Good comment, cheers.
I should note that I do like and use this as a metaphor in casual conversation, mostly as a way to ask my spouse or friend if they’d like to add motivation in some way to get me over the hump to start doing something I think benefits us both.
However, I tend to think of it as a shallow similarity, and I’m hesitant to try to draw deeper inferences from chemistry into motivation theory. I don’t know if the anti-akrasia tactics being mentioned by many comments here are reducing the activation energy, adding energy to cause the reaction, or providing an alternate reaction path like a catalyst. I don’t even know how to measure it so that I can determine which of these (if any) are in play.
Hmm, actually, I wonder if you could do a self-assessed survey of “how hard” something seems to be to start doing. It’d face all the problems of self-assessment, but maybe you’d come out with some interesting data. Then you could track some related variables—how competent a person feels at it, identity-related, how often they’ve been doing it recently, etc. Might be able to come up with some interesting data.
Indeed. This was just a starting point. Also, I was going more for practical instrumental value than for epistemic, but I think there’d be value in expanding. Good comment, cheers.
I should note that I do like and use this as a metaphor in casual conversation, mostly as a way to ask my spouse or friend if they’d like to add motivation in some way to get me over the hump to start doing something I think benefits us both.
However, I tend to think of it as a shallow similarity, and I’m hesitant to try to draw deeper inferences from chemistry into motivation theory. I don’t know if the anti-akrasia tactics being mentioned by many comments here are reducing the activation energy, adding energy to cause the reaction, or providing an alternate reaction path like a catalyst. I don’t even know how to measure it so that I can determine which of these (if any) are in play.