In addition to intrinsic motivation, self-determination theory also talks about extrinsic motivation. This includes punishment and reward.
We might as well get the prune on the counter from the start: It doesn't work very well.
Overjustification effect
If you eat a sweet fruit that you know, the brain expects it to be sweet and therefore does not get particularly “happy” when you taste the fruit and experience that the fruit is sweet. But the brain gets quite “disappointed” if a fruit that you expect to be sweet is actually sour. On the other hand, if you eat something that is sweeter than we expect, our reward system gets very excited, so that it ensures that we learn to eat the sweet, and energy-rich, fruit. After a very short time, we learn to expect the new fruit to be sweet, and the reward system is not nearly as active when we eat the fruit again.
In neuroscience, it is said that the brain prefers situations where the gain is greater than the expectation of the gain.
Many types of reward systems have been tried to promote motivation in education, loyalty programs, and much more. Money, points, gold stars, bonus miles, and everything else.
Gamification is the latest in the field of reward in the context of learning and behavior. In gamification, the idea is to use techniques from games, such as points, badges, high score lists, etc. for purposes that are not games, for example to motivate someone to learn something. Common to all reward systems is that people quickly start to expect the reward and therefore do not value it. At the same time, the reward, or the negative reward (i.e. the punishment), removes the focus from the task itself that you are being rewarded for, and thus you end up with people becoming less motivated to complete the task, and not more motivated, which is typically the intention with rewards.
This is called the overjustification effect and has been demonstrated in many experiments. Here is one to mention.
In 1973, Lepper, Greene and Nisbett conducted an experiment, “The Felt Tip Marker Study,” in which they observed kindergarten children’s intrinsic motivation and interest in various activities. The 3- to 5-year-old children drew with felt tip markers.
The children were then divided into three different groups.
The children in group 1 have been promised a "Good Player" medal for continuing to draw with markers.
The children in group 2 were not promised a reward, but they received one anyway when they finished the activity. In other words, it was an unexpected reward.
The third group, the control group, was not promised any reward and did not receive any.
When the children were later observed playing without adult supervision, there was a big difference in who drew. The group that had been promised a reward drew significantly less than two other groups.
The bottom line is that extrinsic motivation negatively affects intrinsic motivation for an activity.
What about money? It MUST have an impact on motivation, right?
Money matters, of course, but there are some slightly strange connections:
Experiments show that as long as it involves simple mechanical actions, money works well as a motivational factor, but if even a minimum of cognitive skills are required, then a promise of a high reward actually leads to poorer performance than a promise of a lower reward.
Psychologist Daniel Kahnemann describes how he once studied the relationship between pay and performance in a large financial company. The norm in this and many other industries is to pay bonuses to employees based on their “performance.” He studied the performance of individual stockbrokers over time and compared it with the bonus they were offered, and found no correlation between their performance and their bonus packages. Those who were offered large bonuses did not perform better than those who were offered smaller bonuses. Management did not listen to him when he told them the results. They did not change their bonus systems, even though a scientist had told them that they had no effect.
And NO. I am of course NOT advocating that you should lower people's salaries to increase their motivation, it is of course not related that way. I am simply saying that money in itself is not motivating once we get past a level where money is no longer a problem (in relation to ensuring basic human needs). Therefore, of course, you must ensure that people are both sensibly paid – AND that they are motivated through a mix of the three parameters that I mentioned earlier.
In this video, author Daniel Pink elaborates in an entertaining, slightly hectic and thought-provoking way the three parameters of self-determination theory and how money affects motivation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc .
Bonus schemes and motivation
In addition to fixed salaries, many companies use bonus schemes to motivate their employees. As I have already indicated in the previous section, they rarely work as intended, and I wonder why?
Kahnemann and Tversky, both psychologists, won the Nobel Prize in Economics for their prospect theory (the Nobel Prize is not awarded in psychology). Before Kahnemann and Tversky's contribution, all economic models assumed that human economic behavior was rational. That is, that it could be predicted with mathematical calculations of risk and reward. The problem with this assumption is that it does not fit with observed behavior. For example, an economic model could predict that under certain given conditions, people should start saving more for retirement, while actual behavior did not match the theories. Now, in economic theory, we talk about 'econs' vs. 'humans' (i.e. people), where the term econs describes a type of creature that always behaves rationally in relation to economics, whereas humans do not always act economically rationally. . Kahnemann and Tversky thus introduced humans in their infallibility into economic theory.
Prospect theory shows that we humans are “risk averse”. Being risk averse means that we are more afraid of losing than we are happy to win. We can do a little experiment. Imagine a bet where we make a bet. If you win, you get 100 kr., and if you lose, you lose 100 kr. Few people would take that bet. A 100% rational person, an econ, wouldn’t either, since there is no prospect of profit in the long run. But then ask yourself if you would take a bet where you could win 101 kr. and lose 100 kr. You would probably still say no, but an econ (and a casino) would say that the odds were in their favor. The limit varies and can be influenced, but most people need to get to a level where they can win 160 to 200 kr., before they dare to risk losing 100 kr. It is also clear that the size of the amounts matters. It does not matter whether it is 100 kr. or a million kr. you can lose or win.
If we look at this again through the lens of evolution, it seems plausible that organisms with genes that are good at taking care of what they already have have a greater chance of survival in the long term.
To summarize
- Prospect theory says that we HATE losing something more than we would be happy to gain it.
- The overjustification effect says that we humans factor a possible bonus into our salary.
This means that losing a bonus affects us more negatively than getting a bonus will affect us positively. In terms of salary, you could probably get the same “amount” of motivation for fewer salary kroner by converting bonuses to fixed salary. At least when we look at the long term.
Do you want to? learn more?
If you are interested in reading more about motivation and learning, these articles might interest you.
- Self-determination theory. The most important theory you need to know about learning.
- Coercive design – how not to design e-learning .
- Which learning methods best support motivation for learning?
- Your brain is NOT a computer - Predictive Coding
- Flick 2 learn. Why Interactive elearning is NOT always exciting elearning
- Gamification
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