motivation: Extrinsic rewards reduce intrinsic interest

Lepper, Greene, and Nisbett (1973) found that rewarding children with extrinsic rewards can actually reduce their intrinsic interest in something. The researchers observed preschool children drawing. They then randomly selected some of the children and asked them to draw some more, promising rewards for the best participants. The rest of the children just drew pictures, without the promise of a reward. Two weeks later, the drawing behavior of the children was observed and the researchers found that those who had been rewarded before drew less, but those who had never been rewarded still drew at the same rate. Hence, the rewards had reduced the children's interest in something that they had previously enjoyed.

Deci (1971) found similar effects with using money as the extrinsic reward. He offered college students money for solving problems, while another group of students just solved the problems without any external reward. Deci found that the unpaid students were more willing than the rewarded students to solve the problems later on in the study.

A common rebuttal to this is that although extrinsic rewards may reduce intrinsic interest, extrinsic rewards are still useful when there is no intrinsic interest to start with; then it is okay to use extrinsic forces to motivate a student. An example given by Chance (1992) is that as adults we recognize the importance of knowing how to add, like when we need to count change, but as children they have no intrinsic interest in knowing what 2 + 3 is. WRONG, children have many intrinsic reasons for knowing what 2 + 3 is. If mom brings home 2 pizzas for dinner right after Domino's just delivered 3 pizzas that you and your brother ordered, how many pizzas are you having for dinner? If children can not find intrinsic interest in something that is covered in school, then it is the teacher's job to help the child make the connection between what seems like an abstract problem to something that is meaningful and applicable to this big world that they are trying to understand.

Furthermore, if teachers bribe children with extrinsic rewards to do something in school, then what is that saying about the activity? It is telling them that the activity must not be very important if one has to be coerced into doing it; the activity must not be exciting on its own. By motivating children with extrinsic rewards, then the intrinsic value in the task is undermined by the task-contingent reward. As Kohn (1993) describes it, "extrinsic rewards turn learning from an end into a means" (p.785).

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