Between the first (BEFORE) and second (AFTER) sessions of the
learning task, participants experienced a manipulation that was based
on techniques from motivational interviewing. Motivational interviewers
use an “importance ruler” to initiate discussion about the importance
of changing maladaptive behaviors, in which interviewees
rate the importance of a particular change on a scale from 0 to 10
(Miller and Rollnick, 1991). The interviewer may then ask why they
did not indicate a lower number, thus prompting the respondents to
generate statements favorable to changing their behavior, even if the
original importance rating was low. Self-generated motivational statements
such as those elicited during motivational interviewing are expected
to be more beneficial to intrinsic motivation than externally
provided reasons for the participant to care about the task (Deci and
Ryan, 1987).