C.E.T on T.E.D

Imagine getting hired to coach a sport you have never coached but you have the enthusiasm of five year old who was just given 300 tokens at Chuck-E-Cheese. That is how Ted Lasso feels about being chosen to coach a premier league soccer team when he has never coached soccer a day in his life. That enthusiasm comes from Ted’s intrinsic motivation to guide athletes to being greater than what they believe. We now know that intrinsic motivation is the internal wherewithal to pursue your interests and master them with internal validation rather than external validation. (Reeves 2009). However, when you begin to throw in extrinsic rewards with a person’s intrinsic motivation, you begin to interfere with that person’s internal, self-rewarding, motivation. This begins to occur in Ted’s own experience by being a soccer coach for AFC Richmond the further the season progresses. We will dive into the Cognitive Evaluation Theory to explain the season 1 finale of the show and how, up until this point, Ted had high intrinsic motivations that were shifted into extrinsic motivations. 

We first need to breakdown what the Cognitive Evaluation Theory (CET) is and what it is made of. CET “asserts that all external events have both a controlling aspect and an informational aspect” (Deci & Ryan 1985). That means that anything that happens outside of the self has the capability to control one’s behavior or to inform one’s behavior. Within CET there are 3 parts that we can discuss. 

 The first part talks about how all external events influence why we perform a behavior. It is either going to come from an internal place (intrinsic motivation) or it is going to come from an external place (extrinsic motivation). With these external events we either feel in control or feel controlled. If we feel like we have a sense of control, then this heightens our internal reasoning for performing a task. If we feel like the event is controlling us, such as with extra pay, rewards, etc, then our external reasoning is heightened (Reeves 2009)

The second part talks about our competence. If the external event gives us feed back that we are competent at the task or behavior, then we are more intrinsically motivated to continue pursuing that task or behavior. (Reeves 2009) If the external gives us the feedback that we are not competent at the behavior or task, then we are less likely to continue to pursue that task. Remember this component as it will come in later when discussing Ted. 

The last part ties in the first two parts to give a holistic view of CET. The third part of the theory asserts that when we can determine if an external event is being used to control a behavior or if it is being used to provide feedback, then we can almost always predict how it will affect someone’s motivation (Reeves 2009). 

We can utilize this theory with the last episode of season one of Ted Lasso. The entire series, there are several external events that motivate Ted. However, the overall external event is him being a soccer coach when he has never coached soccer a day in his life. If we take the first portion of the CET, then Ted’s wanting to be a soccer coach is very much intrinsic. Even in the last episode, he feels like he has a level of autonomy and has chosen this life for himself. None of the extra has ever influenced how he coaches, whether he keeps the job or quits, etc. He is fully invested in the job solely because he gets internal rewards from it. However, that begins to shift when the team is threatened with relegation. Which in soccer, that means when a upper division team is moved to a lower division based on how well they have played throughout the season. 

With that shift, we start to see that Ted’s goal of winning this last match is less about his intrinsic motivation and more about the extrinsic motivation of not having the team relegated. This external event is causing him to make various decisions based off of what could come of their team if they do not win. The second part of CET is what interests me with Ted. Per the theory, with the feedback Ted has gotten all season about him being a terrible coach, it should have pushed him into quitting. However, he does not quit. He continues to pursue coaching which lends itself to being intrinsically motivated WITH extrinsic motivations as well. 

The third part of CET is figuring out what the external event is trying to achieve with Ted. In this case, the external event is trying to do a bit of both. Not only is winning this match important so that the team does not get relegated, I believe that it is providing Ted with the feedback that he is not as awful of a coach as everyone says he is. The controlling aspect is getting Ted to coach at a level that keeps the team in the upper division. By the book, nothing offhanded. Whereas the feedback portion allows Ted to know that even in his off handed ways, the team is still doing better than they were prior. 

Cognitive Evaluation Theory is a great theory to utilize not only with Ted Lasso but also with children in academics and adults in the work place. By being able to predict how an external event will affect someone’s motivation, I believe that there can be proactive steps to mitigate any negative outcomes that could come from it.