So let's look at some of the motives that have been out there in the literature for hacking and for cyber crimes. Different things that come up, okay, like greed, money, financial gain is one big reason why individuals hack into systems. Monetary outcomes are attractive. It clearly relates to the drive to get ahead, the drive to acquire things, okay? There's also a challenge involved, the old school hackers, the white hat hackers are referred to. They be motivated by the challenge of breaking into a computer network or system. This relates to the drive to learn, the mastery need that I imagined. It also could relate to the drive to acquire cuz you're acquiring new skills which may improve your overall functioning as well. Another set of motives for hacking are status and recognition, okay? This is also an important motive for those who may fall on the positive deviant side of things and even the cyberpunks that I referred to. The idea is that you gain status or recognition through your accomplishments.
This could be seen as the drive to bond, to get along with others. You gain status, they admit you to their group. You maintain membership in the group and you have an elevated status in the group. It's also, perhaps, related to acquiring things and getting ahead, because with status comes greater material gain, as well. Another motive is curiosity that relates directly to the mastery motives of the drive to learn that I mentioned before. And then finally, you have the other motive of ideology, whether it's political or religious. This probably relates most strongly to the drive to bond, again, cuz it's associated with social groups.
So this is the content. All right, so we understand a little bit more about why we do things. What gives us energy and directs that energy in terms of motivation. But that's not a comprehensive model or explanation of motivated behavior. We need to add some cognitive components. So one theory I think is useful for this discussion, as well as for discussions that we'll have the remainder of this course, is expectancy value theory. A sort of omnibus theory of human motivation that can explain why people choose to do the things they do. Expectancy value theory has a pretty basic set of premises. First it's gonna argue that behavior is instigated and directed to the extent that people one, believe that behavior or effort will lead to goal attainment.
If I try, I will attain this. I will reach this goal if I put forth effort. All right, so for example, the student in the class will say, if I study 10 hours this week, I will get an A in the class. That's sort of a believe that effort translates to performance. There's also, however, behavior will be instigated and directed to the extent that people believe that outcomes, or rewards, are attached to goal attainment.
If I get an A on that test, something good will happen, I'll get rewarded. I'll get an A in a class, I'll get into graduate school.
Okay, so outcomes being attached to goal attainment. Finally, you have to value those rewards or those outcomes.
It's like, yes I want to get into grad school or I want to get an A in a class, I value that, if you don't value that, then you may not be motivated. The key to expectancy value if you look at the form E times V, it's a multiplicative function, which means both elements are necessary. You need the expectancy that effort will lead to goal attainment. And you need the value. You need to value the rewards that will follow from it. So, going back to the hacker example, if a hacker believes that they can break into the system, and something good will follow from breaking into that system, they will be motivated to break into the systems.
In expectancy value theory, there's this concept of force, motivational force, okay? And force is, simply the multiplicative function of expectancy times value, okay? So, your psychological force to perform an act is a function of the expectancy that the act will lead to different outcomes, and the value attached to those different outcomes. We call that the valence of performance. So, the goal that you're striving for, the performance that you're shooting for will be attached to many different outcomes. Each of those outcomes may have a different value attached to them. If we sum the multiplicative function of each of those
terms, then we have an overall force. Which is how motivated we are. It's the intensity parameter of motivation that I referred to before.
Obviously, form is not critical to memorize, it's just putting this up there to show you that psychological force and motivation is really a joint function of expectancy and value. I could value something very much but if my expectancy of getting it is zero, the probability of me obtaining that goal is zero, then I'm not gonna be motivated. I'd love to play in the NBA. The National Basketball Association. But at my height and my age, there's just not way it's gonna happen. Expectancy is literally zero. So how much I would value that, I would not be motivated to try. Likewise, you can think there are things that we see that are sure things in life, we can attain them, okay? But we don't value the outcomes so again, we wouldn't be motivated. Here is a little example of expectancy theory at work. Imagine you were choosing between two difficult tasks, okay? You can choose projects at work, or you can put it back to the cyber crime situation. Think of a hacker trying to hack into two systems. One very easy, okay? Maybe their grandmother's. Something very low security, okay? So an easy system to hack into or a difficult system to hack into. Or at work, we can choose between an easy task or a difficult task.
Accomplishing those tasks, success on those, we attach a probability of success to it. That's expectancy. How likely is it that I can break into this system? How likely is it that I can accomplish this task, this easy task? How likely is it that I can have success in the difficult task? So there's a probability of success attached to each task.
Attached to the goal attainment in each situation are outcomes. And I just put two up here for illustrative purposes, let's just say that the same outcome, financial gain and status and recognition. There's gonna be some monetary outcome that you will receive and there's also status and recognition. Now, people different values those outcomes differently. In this case, let's say it's me, I value status and recognition highly and financial gain less so. Okay, so I look at how likely are these outcomes that I value attached to success. In the easy task situation, okay, notice that I have highlighted the link between success and status and recognition at 0. Doing something easy is not gonna give you much status or recognition, everybody can do it, you get no recognition for it. And that's something I value highly, so you can already sort of start seeing that I'm probably not going to be motivated doing the easy task because there's nothing of value attached to it. For succeeding on a difficult task or breaking into a complex system however, it's likely to bring status and recognition which I value highly. That got a probability of 1 attached to that.
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So if you do the math, you can do it yourself or you can just look at what I have on the slide. The motivational force for the first task is actually 3.5. The motivational force for the second easy task is 1, okay, so the difficult task has a higher motivational force, 3.5 versus the motivational force of 1 for the easy task. The individual should choose the difficult task in this case. Basically because there's a chance, not a certain chance, but there's a chance of obtaining a valued outcome. From the easy task, there's nothing of value to be gained. So that's an illustration of expectancy theory at work. So let's try to use that in explaining some of the cyber attacks.
One more piece here though is that if we go back through the outcomes that are attached to success. We can think of those outcomes as varying in terms of whether they provide intrinsic motivation or extrinsic motivation. The incentives for action are the outcomes on the far right hand side of that diagram I had up there. These incentives for actions may stem from internal feelings
which could be quite powerful, often discounted, but they're quite powerful. Things like pride, self-satisfaction are important, and may drive our behavior. So those are internal incentives. There's also external factors, external contingencies, the monetary gain we may get from doing a good job, for example. So now think of the outcomes as varying from extrinsic outcomes to intrinsic outcomes. Intrinsic being fun, mastery, autonomy. Extrinsic being money. But there's also some that are sort of in the middle. They're sort of intrinsic because they're feelings, but they are sort of driven by extrinsic factors. And those are things like obligation. The shoulds in our life. I know I should do that. That's an internal feeling that makes us do something. But it's really sort of driven by
attachment to the external world, obligations. Status and fame I think we outta put there also. It feels good to have status. But primarily, even though it's an internal feeling, it's because we want to elevate our status in an external group. So there are different kinds of incentives and you can see them being folded into the different types of hackers. I wanna focus one for a second on the intrinsic motivation side of that equation. Because if you look at trying to explain why do individuals start hacking and while they continue and progress perhaps from a simple hacking into very complex and ultimately sort of destructive. I would argue because that that's because computer hacking is ideally suited for an extreme form of intrinsic motivation, which we call psychological flow.
Psychological flow is sort of an intense high performance state, okay? You may have experienced it. When you're in flow, everything comes easy. If you're an athlete, it's when you have the hot hand in basketball. Whatever you do, it's going to work, okay? Everything's working and you're not really focusing on things. That's the state of psychological flow. It's the state of optimal experience.
Well research has been done
trying to determine when individuals get in the state of flow.
And it seems to be when an individual's skill levels match the challenge of the task.
So skills matched with challenge increases the chances of flow. And as you go up the continuum on both skill and challenge and you match, the probability of flow expands. So when you have high skills and a very high challenging situation, your chance of experiencing flow are even greater.
So this is sort of the challenge that many computer hackers, those with good computing skills, may sit down and start trying to hack into computer systems, okay? And they get into a state of physiological flow because there's a balance between skill and challenge. And they're basically doing it because it's fun.
They're experiencing this optimal challenge and they get good at it. Then, however, they may use it in different situations. But seeing it from this perspective, computer hacking is sort of a breeding ground for flow for those with high computer skills.
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