This paper introduces Interactional Motivation (IM) as a way to implement self-motivation in artificial systems. An interactionally motivated agent selects behaviors for the sake of enacting the behavior itself rather than for the value of the behavior’s outcome. IM contrasts with extrinsic motivation by the fact that it defines the agent’s motivation independently from the environment’s state. Because IM does not refer to the environment’s states, we argue that IM is a form of self-motivation on the same level as intrinsic motivation. IM, however, differs from intrinsic motivation by the fact that IM allows specifying the agent’s inborn value system explicitly. This paper introduces a formal definition of the IM paradigm and compares it to the reinforcement-learning paradigm as traditionally implemented in Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs).