Tell me only what I want to know: Congruent self-motivation and feedback

Abstract

Electronic equipment has enabled consumers to track their behavior and better understand themselves. To investigate whether or not the data provided by quantification devices result in enjoyment for the users, we invited 456 Taiwanese students to take part in an experiment. We examined the interrelationship of user enjoyment and congruent or incongruent feedback from a computer program with self-motivation and performance level. The results demonstrated that mismatched feedback and self-motivation decreased users' enjoyment and matched feedback and self-motivation increased their enjoyment. However, both these effects were attenuated for participants in the low-performance condition as compared with the effect for participants in the high-performance condition. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.