33. People Are More Motivated By Intrinsic Rewards than by Extrinsic Rewards

So far in this chapter, the conversation has been about operant and Pavlovian conditioning and the use of rewards and reinforcements. Although the use of rewards and reinforcements has been proved to establish and shape behavior, there are drawbacks to using operant and Pavlovian conditioning.

One of the criticisms of operant and Pavlovian conditioning is that the behavior may not stick forever. These methods work well when you are trying to change behavior during one presentation session. But what if you are interested in more permanent behavior change when the presentation is completed?

Research shows that sometimes giving rewards and reinforcements (called extrinsic motivation) is less effective than having people enjoy the activity just for the activity itself (intrinsic motivation).

For example, let’s say you have a presentation you are giving about team collaboration. You are presenting on how working in a team and collaborating is better than working in isolation. What you hope is that after your presentation people will be motivated to seek others out to work in a team rather than working alone. You have put together a session in which you talk about the benefits of team collaboration, and then people get to do some team activities during the session. Which of the following would work better?

a. Give people who come to the presentation a Team Collaboration Certificate if they participate in the team activities during the session (extrinsic motivation).

b. Don’t give a certificate, and hope that the activities themselves are interesting and make people want to collaborate more (instrinsic motivation).

Mark Lepper, David Greene, and Richard Nisbett (1973) conducted similar research to answer the question, “What’s more powerful in affecting behavior, intrinsic or extrinsic motivation?”

They went into a school and set up different conditions under which students would draw:

• Group 1 was the Expected group. The researchers showed the children the Good Drawing Certificate and asked if they wanted to draw in order to get the certificate.

• Group 2 was the Unexpected group. The researchers asked the children if they wanted to draw but didn’t mention anything about a certificate. After the children spent time drawing, they received an unexpected drawing certificate.

• Group 3 was the Control group. The researchers asked the children if they wanted to draw, but didn’t mention a certificate and didn’t give them one.

The real part of the experiment came two weeks later. During playtime the drawing tools were put out in the room. The children weren’t asked anything about drawing; the tools were just put in the room and available. So what happened? Children in the Unexpected and Control groups spent the most time drawing. The children in the Expected group, the ones who had received an expected reward, spent the least time drawing. Contingent rewards (rewards given based on specific behavior that is spelled out ahead of time) resulted in less of the desired behavior. The researchers went on to do more studies like this, with adults as well as children, and achieved similar results.

The answer to our question above regarding team collaboration is that you should not give a certificate, but should instead let the collaboration activities be intrinsically motivating on their own.

From Algorithmic Work to Heuristic Work

In his book Drive, Daniel Pink points out that a lot of people’s work used to consist of following a procedure to accomplish a task, such as using a machine in a factory. He calls this algorithmic work. Although many people still do algorithmic work, a growing number (Pink estimates 70 percent in developing countries) now do heuristic work. Heuristic work has no set procedure, guidelines, or principles. Traditional punishment and reward scenarios, which are based on extrinsic motivation, work well for algorithmic work, but not for heuristic work. Algorithmic work assumes that people don’t like to do the tasks and so need an external motivator. Heuristic work, though, assumes that there is an incentive to enjoy and do the work itself—the work creates a sense of accomplishment and therefore does not require extrinsic motivation. In fact, offering rewards can backfire and result in people being less motivated.