Management implications of the interaction
between intrinsic motivation
and extrinsic rewards
David Beswick
Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University
| DB Home | Psychological Research |
Academic email: beswick@unimelb.edu.au
Published 2009: Beswick, D. G. Management implications of the interaction between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic rewards. Intrinsic motivation. R. Raj. Punagutta, Hyderabad, India, Icfai University Press: 130-159.
For an earlier paper see An Introduction to the Study
of Curiosity
and for further development see From Curiosity to Identity.
This paper is the basis for Chapter 3 of Cognitive motivation: From curiosity to identity, purpose and meaning.
Mangers generally, and
anyone formally or informally responsible for oversight of others who are
engaged in work or learning tasks, will be aware that some people are
participating more out of interest in the task than others are. Others gain
their satisfaction principally out the way in which their performance on the
task leads to rewards like pay or status or good grades in a course. But
typically there is a mixture of motives for which a range of different
incentives is relevant. Most people will find at least some satisfaction in
simply doing the work. They might say, for example, that they found it
"interesting". For most people there is also some satisfaction in
rewards which are contingent upon performance in the task. The balance of these
intrinsic and extrinsic sources of satisfaction varies from one person to
another and between different situations. Some people indeed are highly
motivated by both intrinsic interest and extrinsic rewards: I found this for
example among medical students.
Managers are usually aware
to some extent of the ways in which both intrinsic and extrinsic types of
motivation affect performance and work satisfaction, but there are many
complexities in how these different types of motivations and their relevant
rewards affect behaviour. One of the most subtle and demanding complexities has
been found to occur when extrinsic rewards are given for performance in a task
which would otherwise have been undertaken purely out of interest. But effects
of the interaction are not simple and have been a subject of extensive debate
in recent years. How extrinsic rewards affect intrinsic motivation obviously
has many implications for the management of incentives for work and study where
both extrinsic rewards and intrinsic motivation are very often found together.
Extrinsic rewards have been
found to reduce intrinsic motivation, but not in all circumstances. The
majority of published research has dealt with the effect on motivation rather
then performance, but consequent effects can be evident in performance, and
there are many theoretical predictions supported at least in part by empirical
findings. When people are intrinsically motivated they tend be more aware of a
wide range of range of phenomena, while giving careful attention to
complexities, inconsistencies, novel events and unexpected possibilities. They
need time and freedom to make choices, to gather and process information, and
have an appreciation of well finished and integrated products, all of which may
lead to a greater depth of learning and more creative output. Extrinsic rewards
tend to focus attention more narrowly and to shorten time perspectives, which
may result in more efficient production of predefined or standardised products.
Job satisfaction and long term commitment to a task may also be affected.
By intrinsic motivation we
mean a process of arousal and satisfaction in which the rewards come from
carrying out an activity rather from a result of the activity. We speak of the
rewards being intrinsic to a task rather than the task being a means to an end
that is rewarded or satisfying. By contrast, one might work hard at a task in
order to eat or gain social approval. Such work, undertaken as a means to an
end, is typically deficit motivated behaviour, in which there is a reward as a
consequence of effort to reach a goal where the deficit is reduced. Intrinsic
motivation tends more to be appetitive, new information arousing a slight
interest leading to an appetite for more.
The term “intrinsic”
sometimes also occurs with a different connotation in reference to incentives
which are consistent with personal qualities, intentions and values.
Satisfaction gained from such incentives may be seen as intrinsic to the person
rather than to the task. It can be the case that behaviour such as undertaking
a scientific research project can assist in the satisfaction of personal
development goals while it is also intrinsically rewarding in itself. The micro
sense of intrinsic interest in the task is the primary meaning, but
satisfaction intrinsic to the person in the macro sense carries some of the
same meaning, especially in regard to the processes of integration which will
be considered further below. However, while the two can work together,
intrinsic motivation in the primary sense is vulnerable to being inhibited by
the use of extrinsic rewards in ways which do not give the secondary type of
intrinsic satisfaction but are experienced as alien to the person. The work of
several investigators in recent years points to the importance of the secondary
or macro type of intrinsic satisfaction from extrinsic rewards as the clue to
managing the effects of extrinsic rewards in ways which do not inhibit the
operation of intrinsic motivation for engagement in the task. This paper is
concerned with the basic processes that underlie that interaction and its
practical consequences.
The original report of an
experiment which led to many others showing that extrinsic rewards, like pay
and status, when associated with outcomes of interesting tasks tend to suppress
the operation of intrinsic motivation, was published by Deci
in 1971 (Deci 1975).
He found that if people are paid to do something they would otherwise
have done out of interest they will be less likely to do it in future without
being paid. Evidence of reduced motivation was found in their being less likely
to return to the task when free to do so. There has been some controversy in
the literature in the past decade concerning the generality of this effect,
which is taken up in the final section of this paper in reference to recently published
meta-analyses. It is clear that the effect in not universal. It can be reduced,
and it may be absent in some conditions, but it is quite common. It poses
serious problems for managers in education and other fields in which narrowness
of purpose and concentration on short term results are counter-productive.
In this paper I hope to
give at least an introduction to some of the ways in which an understanding of
the cognitive and motivational processes which lead to the suppressing effect
can suggest principles of effective management for complex systems. I think
there is a general approach to effective management of systems of learning and
intellectual achievement and for productive work in which originality plays an
important part. A key element in the solution seems to be related to the
secondary kind of intrinsic motivation mentioned above. This macro type needs
to be understood in greater depth. I will first give a more detailed exposition
of how intrinsic motivation works at the micro level of the task and then apply
it to the macro level of personal development. I suggest that the same
principles apply at the macro level, in the function of rewards which have a
meaning that is intrinsic to the self; so that in the management of incentives
for academic work, for example, which has a large component of intrinsic
interest in the task, extrinsic rewards need to be integrated with aspects of
personal development, autonomy, integrity and self direction if the extrinsic
incentives like pay and status are not to inhibit the micro level of
intrinsically motivated behaviour in teaching and research. The same applies to
many other types of work including a range of business activities in which
creativity is important.
On her theme of “Let
creativity be its own reward” Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile said in an interview (Perry and Amabile
1999) on her psychological and applied
business studies of creativity and intrinsic motivation over twenty years:-
People are at their most creative when they feel
motivated primarily by the interest, satisfaction, and challenge of the work
itself and not by external pressures or incentives. Consider, for example, the
experience of a firm I've been studying in the last few months, called E Ink,
which is developing a revolutionary electronic-display technology that enables
retailers to change any sign in their store in a matter of minutes. The signs
are very light and flexible and do not require electricity after the message
has been changed. The company is creating something completely different, while
simultaneously addressing an enormous technical and marketing challenge. Every
person I've talked to – from the CEO right through to the people doing the
day-to-day technical work — is excited by the opportunity before them. Each is
intrinsically motivated; that is, they find rewards in the challenge of the
work itself.
In order for creativity to flourish, people must be
allowed to have a degree of freedom to choose their approaches to their work,
to fail occasionally without ridicule or punishment, to stretch their horizons
in terms of working with others who will share their knowledge, and to feel
comfortable knowing that the organization supports their work with the
requisite resources. Otherwise, they will keep trying the safe, narrow,
repetitive approaches to solving problems.
Elsewhere (Amabile 1998; Amabile 1999) she wrote:-
There is abundant evidence of strong intrinsic
motivation in the stories of widely recognized creative people. When asked what
makes the difference between creative scientists and those who are less creative,
the Nobel-prizewinning physicist Arthur Schawlow
said, "The labor-of-love aspect is important.
The most successful scientists often are not the most talented, but the ones
who are just impelled by curiosity. They've got to know what the answer
is." Albert Einstein talked about intrinsic motivation as "the
enjoyment of seeing and searching."
These
quotes from some of Amabile’s popular presentations rely upon extensive
published research, (Amabile 1983a; Amabile 1996; Amabile 1998)
The cognitive process
theory of curiosity
Amongst the many concepts
that have been introduced in discussions of the issue over the past thirty to
forty years, the specific example of curiosity is central to the more general
concept of intrinsic motivation. It is not the only type of intrinsic
motivation. There are aspects of achievement motivation, especially those
concerned with unique achievements, for example, which share some of the same
qualities; and the more general “effectence
motivation” described by White (White 1959; White 1961) which is evident in the sheer joy
of being able do something, especially a playful activity. But curiosity, and
particularly its associated sense of wonder, which is a key component of
learning at all levels of education, is the purest instance of intrinsic
motivation at the micro level of engagement in those work and learning tasks
where rewards for engaging in a task come from the task itself rather than from
its being a means to an end. Before returning to the more practical
implications for management of different types of incentives I would like to
provide some more detail of a conceptual framework for understanding the
problem. I am introducing first a particular approach to the study of
curiosity, because I think that a further elaboration of this cognitive theory
will help later to make sense of the complex findings and other theories
regarding effective functioning and maintenance of intrinsic motivation.
Many investigators have
approached the study of curiosity through the study of individual differences,
and my cognitive process theory of curiosity (Beswick 1965; Beswick 1971) was developed in such studies of
curiosity as a trait varying between people and reasonably consistent for
individuals across situations. But later work treated it as both a consistent
trait and a momentary state, following the earlier models for assessment of
anxiety. Several authors, including especially Spielberger
(Spielberger, Peters
et al. 1976; Spielberger and Starr 1994), and here at Melbourne, Naylor (Naylor 1981), have developed measures and
studied the dimensionality of curiosity as both a trait and a state. Some
measures curiosity or a somewhat broader concept may be designated “intrinsic
motivation” (Beswick 1974; Amabile,
Hill et al. 1994). In Spielberger’s
work it was in conjunction with trait and state measures of anxiety. While
curiosity is a state which is commonly experienced at least occasionally by all
people, and there are some events which arouse curiosity in almost everyone, it
is also a trait which is much more typical of some people than of others. So a
magician might by clever manipulation produce unexpected events which arouse
curiosity, with people wondering, "Where did that come from", and
"How did he do it?" Such wondering illustrates the state of
curiosity. The trait, which varies between people, is seen in the way
that some people will typically focus attention on events which they see as
strange or peculiar, and then perhaps investigate them further, while others
will pass them by with little interest. Some people are more likely than others
to be in situations where strange or novel events occur, as well as being more
likely to focus attention on small discrepancies from what is expected which
happen to occur wherever they are. Some might people might go out looking for
new or strange things. For some people curiosity can be evident in attention to
a great variety of different stimuli without focussing for long on any of them,
while for others it is found more typically in careful attention to specific
phenomena. Berlyne (Berlyne 1960), for example, described specific
and diversive types of curiosity, and Ainley and others have distinguished between breadth and
depth factors in curiosity (Ainley 1987). Curiosity is a term that refers to
quite a wide range of phenomena (Loewenstein 1994; Kashdan 2004).
According
the cognitive process theory, which is concerned mainly with the depth type of
curiosity, consistent sensitivity to small discrepancies against an ordered
background is due to two contrasting facets of curiosity as a trait: openness
to novel stimuli and a concern for orderliness. When those two personal
qualities are measured separately from curiosity we find that they are
negatively correlated, as one would expect from common sense. That is, people
who readily accept and seek out novel, strange or unusual things, who are in
general stimulus seeking, are typically not concerned with having everything in
its proper place or with orderliness in general. Vice versa, people who value
orderliness may not as often seek novel or strange things. (I use “stimulus
seeking” here in a more general sense than the specific variable in Zuckerman's
Stimulus Seeking Scale (Zuckerman 1975) which is loaded with items on high
risk physical activities. Openness to experience has been recognised in recent
years as a general personality factor, especially in the commonly used
five-factor model. Some form of orderliness is also commonly represented in
multi-factor models of personality.) But, although the two qualities of
orderliness and openness tend to be opposed and not often found together in
great strength, it turns out that highly curious people tend to have both these
contrasting characteristics, they both seek novelty and value orderliness. If
they had either one alone, that is if they sought novelty without care for
order, or they disregarded novel stimuli while guarding their well ordered map
of the world, they would experience few conceptual conflicts. They would be
less aware of gaps and discrepancies. Whereas if they tried to be both open to
novelty and seek order they would experience many conflicts, and they would
tend to be aroused by inconsistencies and incompleteness. The result then of
combining openness with orderliness is a propensity for that careful attention
which is characteristic of the depth type of curiosity. When Ainley (Zuckerman 1975; Ainley
1985; Ainley 1987) distinguished between breadth and
depth types of curiosity, she found that my questionnaire measure of curiosity
or intrinsic motivation (Beswick 1974) correlated highly with her depth
factor, while it was unrelated to the breadth factor.
There are individual
differences not only in the probability and the intensity of being aroused, but
also in how people deal with conceptual conflicts and gaps in knowledge when
they are experienced. Before going a little into the dynamics of the process
there is another prior consideration. In the past I have seen curiosity as a
process of creating, maintaining and resolving conceptual conflicts, but I have
been convinced in reviewing more recent work that one must also speak in terms
of gaps in knowledge, understanding or perceptions and their effects. The
common factor seems to be a basic tendency to seek an integrated understanding
or map of the world. Conflicts and gaps give rise to an effort to produce a new
conceived or perceived order of things in a new whole or gestalt that accounts
for or makes sense of a discrepancy. I have not yet fully worked through the
implications of this more highly generalised conception. In what follows I am
presenting the theory in the previous terms of how people deal with conceptual
conflict, but similar processes should apply in regard to gaps in knowledge.
The more general concept may be a sense of incompleteness.
The conflict arises from a
lack of fit between an incoming signal or stimulus and a cognitive map or
category system which represents the world from past experience. Simple
conflicts are generated by some very primitive unlearned responses, such as the
orienting response which directs attention to new stimuli or to anything which
stands out from the background in one’s perception of the environment. People
quickly learn to make sense of such signals as part of a more complex learned
process of adaptation by referring them to an ordered representation of what
has happened before. If a new signal is something very similar to what is
already there it will be easy to give it meaning by fitting it into that
representation of past experience, but if it does not fit easily there will be
a conflict which can be resolved by one of two processes of modification, which
following Piaget (Piaget 1950) I have called assimilation and
accommodation. In the first, assimilation, the conceptual conflict is resolved
by changing one’s perception of what is out there, that is by modifying the
signal to fit the cognitive map. Alternatively, one can modify the cognitive
map to accommodate the signal. The more strange, unusual or unexpected the
event, or you might say the greater the information value of the signal, the
greater will be the need for assimilation or accommodation or both. People who
readily assimilate what they experience to what is already known will not
experience very much curiosity. That might be because they experience little
conflict when they do not have a sufficiently differentiated map of the world
for a novel event to cause much conflict. Or they may be too anxious about its
effects and fail to perceive its unique characteristics, and so act defensively
to put it away with as little trouble as possible. They could thus make it fit
where it does not fit well, and thus store potential for future conflict. On
the other hand some people will readily re-order their view of the world to
accommodate new information, but if they do so quickly and without gathering
more information they might simply pigeon-hole it or produce a new category
which is not well integrated with the whole cognitive map. That map would then
be unlikely to remain stable for very long.
The highly curious person with a high regard for the uniqueness of the signal
and for the integrity of his or her cognitive map, and will be loathe to either
assimilate or accommodate. He or she will seek the best possible fit, and
typically that will require seeking additional information to build a suitable
new integration of the incoming information with what was known before. So
questions will be asked, calculations might be made, things will be turned over
and looked under, there may well be much wondering and doubting; but after the
ball has been kept bouncing for a sufficient length of time some sort of
resolution will be reached in which sufficient accommodation occurs for the
conceptual conflict to be resolved. The result is that a new order or
representation of the world is developed. There is no homeostatic restoration
of a previous state of affairs that became disturbed, but a new order is
produced. The assumption we make is that there is a natural tendency towards
such a systematic integration of the cognitive map. That is given in the way
the brain functions. The processes of integration typically require one to seek
information which is additional to that which gave rise to the perceived
conflict or gap which aroused curiosity. Information seeking and processing are
instrumental acts which follow from arousal. Some people will be much better
able than others to carry them out and more confident in their capacity to cope
with the arousal, without debilitating anxiety, and so are more likely to
remain in a situation of uncertainty long enough to produce an enduring new
integration. Individual differences will then appear at many points in the
creation, maintenance and resolution of conceptual conflicts and gaps in
knowledge.
Some illustrations
The relationship of
intrinsic motivation to academic work was illustrated long ago by Chaucer in
his Clerk of Oxenford when he used the now obsolete English word
"cure", meaning care, in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. That
sense of the word cure is obsolete in so far as it is no longer used in
its general sense of "care", although it survives in the now seldom
used phrase "the cure of souls", meaning the pastoral care of people.
Hence we have the clerical title "curate". We have also retained the
more general sense of "cure", quite distantly, in
"accuracy", as well, of course, as in “curiosity”. Chaucer gives us a
beautiful example of the earlier sense of "cure" meaning care or
careful attention where he describes what is fundamental to the motivation for
academic work in his "Clerk of Oxenford":-
A clerk ther was of Oxenford also,
That unto logik hadde longe y-go.
…..
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold
in cofre;
But al that he mighte of his friendes
hente
On bokes and lerninge he it
spente,
And bisily gan for the soules preye
Of hem that yaf him wher-with
to scoleye.
…..
Of studie took he most cure
and most hede.
…..
And gladly wolde he learn and gladely
teche.
There
you have in its purest form what we are trying to understand: Of studie took he most cure and
most hede …..And gladly wolde
he learn and gladely teche.
Academics today are not too keen on the "litel
gold in cofre", and we would not wish it to be
seen as a necessary ingredient of this way of life, nor I suppose would the
ancient clerk. The point is, however, that while he might have sought payment,
and was pleased to receive it, it was not the reason he undertook his work. He
would gladly learn and gladly teach because it was intrinsically rewarding.
Even
the modern sense of "cure" as a concept in health has connotations
similar to the processes of cognition in the development of a newly integrated
whole when healing takes place. There is a common deep root to all these
conceptions of wholeness, whether it is in the careful attention of the student
seeking a new ordering of knowledge, or in the integration of personality, or
in healing. I will be suggesting that the same deep root is relevant to the
solution of some practical problems in the management of incentives.
Moving
to the present day we find the following set of predictions for the behaviour
of students by Amabile and her associates arising out
of their development of the Work Preference Inventory (Amabile, Hill et al.
1994) to measure intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation and the theories which informed that work:-.
.... compared with students who score low on Intrinsic
Motivation, students who score high should be more likely to voluntarily undertake
challenging courses and course assignments; enroll in
courses that will allow them autonomy; choose professions that will allow them
active, self-reliant involvement in their work; continue their educations
(formally or informally) beyond college; become more deeply involved in the
activities they undertake; perform more creatively in their work after college;
evidence more curiosity toward new or unusual things: and express higher levels
of positive affect when engaged in complex, challenging activities.
Elsewhere
Conti, Amabile and Pollak (Conti, Amabile et
al. 1995) described the implications for
learning with a positive impact of creative activity:-
When students are intrinsically motivated, they are
genuinely interested and involved in what they are learning and hence are
likely to actively process the information with which they are presented.
Conversely, students who are extrinsically motivated are concerned mainly with
their grades and often adopt a more passive processing approach (Meece,
Blumenfeld et al. 1988; Nolan 1988; Pintrich and deGroot 1990; Graham
and Golan 1991; Garcia and Pintrich 1992; Williams, Schullo et al. 1992). Perhaps their preference for
active learning is what makes intrinsically motivated students more likely than
their extrinsically motivated counterparts to choose novel and challenging
tasks (Deci
and Ryan 1985), to be curious,
persistent, and creative in their approach toward those tasks(Amabile
1983a; Amabile 1983b), and subsequently to show
high levels of concept attainment (Dweck
and Bempechat 1983; Deci
and Ryan 1985; Deci and Ryan 1987), and high academic achievement (Gottfried 1985).
Some
practical implications
There
is much similarity between that general view of the effects of intrinsic
motivation on students and the characteristics of highly curious people. I like
to think of curiosity as belonging at the border between chaos and cosmos.
Highly curious people will remain longer than others in situations of
uncertainty, as well as being more likely to be in such situations in the first
place. As we have noted in the cognitive process theory, they will have
developed a range of investigative skills to help resolve conceptual conflicts,
or to resolve the tension generated by gaps in knowledge, by gathering and
processing additional information. They will have a sufficient sense of
security in their world to put their cognitive maps in jeopardy without
experiencing debilitating anxiety. This suggests that they will be assisted by
training which gives them useful skills in information gathering and
processing, and by success which increases their confidence in their ability to
resolve conceptual conflicts. They are then able to run the risk of creating a new
and better order, and in so doing they will have the capacity to carry out the
integration required to create a sense of cosmos where there was the threat of
chaos. That is, they will be able, typically, and more than most people, to
create, maintain, and resolve conceptual conflicts, gaps and uncertainties. At
each of these points one can see that different types of consequences, or
extrinsic rewards, for engaging in intrinsically motivated behaviour will have
facilitating or debilitating effects. In general, any consequences that
heighten anxiety will be debilitating, while those outcomes which contribute to
personal growth and fulfilment will facilitate intrinsically motivated work or
learning.
There are practical
implications of various aspects of the theory. For example, in regard to the
need for attention to both openness and orderliness, in times of cultural
revolution when it has been popular to promote of rapid social change, there
has been a tendency in education to emphasise openness to novelty, and
flexibility in general; but, while an emphasis on openness and flexibility has
its value, especially in a system that has been repressive, it will not result
in intrinsically motivated learning without that regard for order which makes
up the other half of the conditions which give rise to conceptual conflicts and
the greater likelihood of investigative behaviour. Mere openness and its
associated value of flexibility will not do the trick on its own. On the other
side, the tendency to value established order in large institutions will
militate against that openness which is also essential. Sadly, educational
institutions are no exception and often kill curiosity and creativity. However,
conceptual orderliness and regard for social order are
not the same thing, although they tend to be related culturally. For example,
highly curious children have been found by (Maw and Magoon 1971) to be more socially responsible
than those with little curiosity. But, obviously, too much concern for social
order as with mere stimulus input will be counter-productive. Much more follows
in various fields, and hopefully the practical consequences of an empirically
supported and well developed understanding of curiosity will help to improve
conditions of work and learning so as to make a number of professions more
effective. Practical applications of the general principles of intrinsic
motivation will normally occur within a social system in which extrinsic
rewards are managed for purposes of production. It is
at this point that the management of incentives for intrinsically motivated
behaviour becomes critically important if the positive effects of intrinsic
motivation are not to be lost.
Personality dynamics which moderate the effects of rewards
At
the centre of the debate about the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic
motivation is the question of how making a task into a means to an end reduces
the sense people can have of being an effective agent in what is important to
them. In this way it is a component in worker alienation. There have been a
number of theories which use the value of freedom and autonomy to explain the
negative effects. They predict that when extrinsic rewards are used to harness
work for some purpose that is not in harmony with the interests of the worker,
it will be experienced as a loss of freedom. Power has moved from the person
who undertakes the task to some other person or impersonal agency which defines
or controls the rewards. Concepts of personal causation (deCharms 1987; deCharms 1992a) self-determination (Deci 1980; Deci and Ryan 1985; Deci and Ryan
2002) and responsibility (Winter 1992) have been applied in attempts to
understand the process. Theories developed from these concepts have been
advanced to indicate how improvements can be made to the management of
incentives to retain the valuable contribution of intrinsically motivated
behaviour, especially in any enterprise which requires originality and
creativity.
There
is a history of more than thirty years in which the relevant issues have been
studied in personality and social psychology. Before Deci's
original experiment, deCharmes had suggested (deCharms 1968; deCharms 1984) at about the same time as Kelly (Kelly 1967) that adding an extrinsic incentive
to intrinsically motivated behaviour would reduce the experience of what he
called personal causation. Deci demonstrated
the phenomenon of suppressed intrinsic motivation experimentally a few years
later (Deci 1975) and his work has led to many
further studies to define the conditions under which it occurs. Deci later combined with Ryan (Deci and Ryan 1985) to develop a theory of self
determination and intrinsic behavior to explain the suppression effect and to
suggest conditions of personal development and purposive behaviour in which it
might be avoided. Deci has written a good deal on
management principles to provide practical guidance on the management of
productive systems in ways which can maintain the most effective motivation,
notably in a book with the catchy title Why we do what we do (Deci and Flaste 1995). Recently similar purposes have
been addressed by Amabile (Amabile 1993; Amabile 1996; Amabile 1998) with particular reference to the
necessary conditions for maintaining intrinsic motivation in a business culture
which is conducive to creativity.
In
general, successful strategies have been claimed to include some means of
integrating the rewarded behaviour and the rewards with personal goals and
development processes. Deci and Ryan (Deci and Ryan 1985) have written in terms a theory of self
determination which we consider further below. In his earlier work deCharmes had defined personal causation as “a
primary motivational propensity to be effective in producing changes in the
environment” which looks a little like power motivation in the McClelland,
Atkinson and Veroff tradition. Associated with this
tradition was the seminal paper of (White 1959) on effectence
motivation which is acknowledged my almost all subsequent authors in this
field. As noted above, White drew attention to the fact that people typically
gain pleasure and satisfaction from the sheer sense of being able to do
something, to be effective in it, whether it be in play or work, physical or
mental. In his later work, while still retaining the value of people feeling
effective in what they did, deCharmes dropped the
motivational quality and saw personal causation more simply: “personal
causation means doing something intentionally to produce a change”. It was
described largely in term of a personal experience of people having a sense of
being the origin of their own actions.
DeCharmes had taken the idea of personal causation
from Heider’s concept of “perceived internal locus of
causality for behaviour” (Heider 1958). He later preferred “personal” to
“internal” causation, to remove ambiguities in the loose term “internal” and in
order to differentiate this concept from Rotter’s
“locus of control of reinforcements” (Rotter 1954) with its internal and external
orientations. DeCharmes made a distinction between Heider’s phrase “for behaviour” and Rotter’s
“of reinforcements” (deCharmes 1992), and following
McClelland he put emphasis directly on the actions of a person rather than the
results of an action in a means-ends relationship. Rotter’s
measure of internal vs. external control is a self-report measure of perceived
control over reinforcements that is uncorrelated with deCharmes
and Plimpton’s origin scale (deCharms and Plimpton
1992b).
The
concept of origin is crucial to deCharmes'
understanding of personal causation. To some extent this approach flies in the
face of centuries of philosophical discussion about agency, responsibility,
causation and determination. The authors in this field generally and deCharmes in particular have not been concerned with the
question whether or in what sense a person may be independently responsible as
a causal agent rather than having his or her behaviour determined by many
interacting contingencies. Whatever might be seen by an independent observer,
and regardless of whether some might think a person’s sense of agency is a delusion,
deCharmes has focussed attention on a person’s own
experience of being the origin of his or her actions. He sought to “describe a personal
experience that accompanies a behavioural episode of personal causation”.
The elements of this experience have been used to provide an operational
definition of it in a scoring manual for content analysis of fantasy material
with reference to sequences of images for “goal setting” and “responsibility”.
Goal setting was seen to be evident in a sequence which included at least some
of the following:- independent determination of one’s
goals; free choice of means to achieve the goals; realistic assessment of
abilities and relationships with others and the environment; and
self-confidence in one’s ability to initiate successful behaviour leading to a
positive conclusion. The same elements, combined with a responsibility
sequence, were used to train children so as to increase their sense of being
origins rather than pawns in a classroom situation. Effects that were evident
some years later included improved achievement test results and increased rates
of graduation from high school (deCharmes 1976 cited
in deCharmes 1992) , (Jackson 1976) (deCharms 1992a)).
Although
it was not expressed this way it seems to have been understood by the authors
that external incentives such as encouragement and social approval could be
used, for example by parents and teachers, to reinforce children’s self
understanding of their being causal agents in important aspects of their lives.
In a manner similar to the work on the development of need for achievement by
Rosen and D’Andrade (Rosen and D'Andrade
1959) it was shown by (Jackson 1973), (deCharms 1992a) that warm commendation and
encouragement of children in a building block task could increase their sense
of personal causation. There was a curvilinear relationship between the number
of a mother’s directive statements and the origin score of the child. The greatest
sense of personal causation was found in that study to occur when mothers gave
moderate amounts of help but did not dominate or ignore the child. This points
to the close affinity between research on personal causation and the extensive
studies of need for achievement by McClelland and his associates, in which
extrinsic rewards can play a positive role provided that they function to
provide information relevant to people achieving their own standards of
excellence.
The
beneficial effects of a sense of being the origin of one’s actions,
are not due simply to an interest in achievement or the exercise of power. This
is important in fields like education and health today because we often hear
talk of empowerment in the context of creativity and personal development, but
in so far as these things are intrinsically motivated, it is not simply a
matter of acquiring or defending personal power . The relationship of
conditions which enhance rather suppress intrinsic motivation to those which
enable satisfaction of need for achievement requires more study in detail, but
the key point of similarity is in McClelland's description of need for
achievement in terms of competition with an internalised standard of
excellence. So, in so far as the function of an extrinsic reward is to provide
evidence relevant to the attainment of such a standard, it will have positive
effects. The person whose behaviour is being rewarded needs to feel responsible
for the outcome as a free agent who is achieving his or her own goals and who
is the origin of the achieving behaviour. Responsibility is a related
concept that has been studied in this context.
It
was in the tradition of McClelland and Atkinson’s studies of individual
differences in personality dimensions such as need for achievement, need for
affiliation and need for power, that Winter developed
his understanding of responsibility. Its operational definition included
senses of self-control, awareness of the consequences of one’s
actions, “owning” one’s behaviour and taking responsibility for
others (Winter 1992). Responsibility, as Winter measured it, was conceived as a stable disposition,
not as a motive which might energize and direct behaviour but rather as a
cluster of cognitions (believes and values) that act to shape the ways in which
motives are expressed. The highly responsible person's regard for consistent
individual differences in preferred cognitive processes has some similarity
with other cognitive theories of dispositions such as curiosity and need for
cognition, which might otherwise be considered as motives, and of course with deCharmes concept of origin. “Need for cognition” is
a variable for which there is reliable measurement that is closely correlated
with some measures of intrinsic motivation (Cacioppo, Petty et
al. 1996). The extensive research on this measure
needs more extended treatment than it can be given it here, but work in that
area leads to similar conclusions.
Winter
developed his measure of responsibility as a result of having worked previously
on distinguishing “good” expressions of the power motive in socially
responsible leadership from “bad” expressions which he and McClelland termed
“profligate expansive impulsivity” (McClelland and Boyatzis
1982 cited in (Winter 1992), (Winter 1973).
Results of the measurement studies indicate that responsibility has two
components which differentiate between criterion groups in the same direction
but consist of unrelated clusters. There is a self critical “must” referring to
moral standards, obligation and concern for others, and an
altruism that is oriented towards consequences for the future. Winter has
suggested that the latter perhaps develops with cognitive growth, which fits
with our conception of the intrinsic motivation at the macro level. Winter's
measure of responsibility has been found in validation studies to act as a
moderating variable in the effects of power motivation. So, for example, among
men and women who scored high on the responsibility measure, power motivation
predicted office holding, effective and “conscientious” functioning, and
openness to experience, while for those low in responsibility power motivation
predicted “profligate” behaviours such as drinking, reading sex-oriented
magazines, and sexual possessiveness. (In regard to openness to experience,
similar results have been found for the relationship between curiosity and
social responsibility, as noted elsewhere in reference to the early work of Maw
and later studies of the “need for cognition”.) Winter found in a re-scoring of
earlier data from McClelland and Boyatzis that the
combination of high responsibility with high power motivation predicted
managerial success eight years later (Winter 1992).
The
way responsibility acts as a moderator of the effects of power motivation helps
to explain the function of personal causation in the operation of intrinsic
motivation. It might be that it is important for a person to be able to exercise
some power, but it is not simply a matter of will, or of being able to exercise
one’s own will, or of freedom to act in one’s own interest. McClelland, (deCharms 1992a), did find an association of the deCharmes origin scale with power motivation, but only for
children who were high in “Activity Inhibition”. The point of theoretical
interest is that intrinsic motivation is expected to remain effective, not
simply when a person is able to exercise personal power, but rather when power
is exerted within a social and personal context that is controlled and
purposeful. Behaviour in a means-ends sequence that is rewarded extrinsically
will not be experienced as reducing the person to a pawn, to the extent that at
the same time it is rewarding within the person’s own understanding of who they
are and where they are heading as an integrated responsible agent. That is,
that while a reward that is extrinsic to the task for which a person was
intrinsically motivated might come to function as a reinforcement for that
behaviour but at the cost of responsibility being seen to have been transferred
to some other agency which controls the reward, it is an implication of
Winter's theory of responsibility that if at the same time the reward is
intrinsic to the person’s self understanding and purposeful development in
which they can own their own behaviour the inhibiting effect on intrinsic
motivation will be reduced or perhaps eliminated. A person having a sense of
responsibility for his or her actions and being the origin of purposeful
behaviour will be better able to gain those benefits than one who experiences
manipulation at the hands of an external agent.
Where
in this context we refer to people understanding who they are and where they
are heading as integrated responsible agents we see the need to understand
further function of a sense of identity and becoming. This is being developed,
or at least as start is being made, in a separate paper, From
curiosity to identity.
The
findings and implications of research on personal causation and responsibility
confirmed my preference for a general theory of the operation of intrinsic
motivation which combines the micro level of engagement in an intrinsically
rewarding task with a macro level of intrinsically satisfying sequences of behaviour
which make sense within a person’s self understanding and purposes. At both the
macro and micro levels there are basic processes of integration and development
which are intrinsically satisfying. At both levels there is the development of
a new order, a new whole or gestalt, whether it be in that part of a person's
map of the world which was affected by engagement in the task or in the broader
concept of the self and one's place in the world.
Deci and his associates (Deci and Ryan 1985;
Ryan and Deci 2000; Deci, Koestner et al. 2001) have put forward a cognitive
evaluation theory as part of their self-determination theory to explain the
reduction of intrinsic motivation by extrinsic rewards. This leads in much the
same direction as the theories already discussed. It has been further
elaborated (Ryan and Deci 2000) in ways which point to the same
convergence in different approaches as is suggested by the generalisation of
cognitive process theory from the micro to the macro level of intrinsic
motivation. From their point of view, events which increase a sense of
competence or self-determination will enhance intrinsic motivation, while
rewards for taking part or completing an activity, which thus were task-contingent,
would reduce intrinsic interest by lessening self-determination. However, they
claimed that quality-dependent extrinsic rewards could increase rather than
decrease feelings of competence and thus be less likely to suppress intrinsic
interest. Their contribution has been controversial and before taking it
further it is necessary to see it in the context of the debate on the general
implications of over 100 empirical studies of the effects of extrinsic rewards
on intrinsic motivation.
The recent debate on the effects of extrinsic rewards
Debate
on the suppression of intrinsic motivation by extrinsic rewards in
psychological journals over recent years is too big a topic to be reviewed here
except in the briefest terms, but some aspects of it are informative for our
immediate purpose. Meta-analyses of a large number of studies have been
published by Cameron and Pierce (Cameron and Pierce 1994) and Eisenberger
and Cameron (Eisenberger and
Cameron 1996) who approached the subject from a
“behaviourist” perspective. Their findings indicate support from these many
studies for the view that tangible rewards like money tend to suppress
intrinsic motivation in so far as it is evident in subsequent time spent on the
task, but not when it is measured by verbal expressions of attitude. They found
from their classification of many investigations, that the effect tended to occur when the reward was expected and independent of
performance. They also concluded that tangible rewards had a small positive
affect on attitude to the task if the reward was quality dependent. Verbal
rewards, praise and the like, tended to have a positively reinforcing effect on
both free time on the task and attitudes to the task. They also questioned the
inhibiting effects on creativity, citing evidence for the positive
reinforcement of divergent thinking by extrinsic rewards and arguing for the
generalisation of such effects:
The research on creativity shows, as with intrinsic
task interest, that the decremental effects of reward
occur under limited conditions that are easily avoided. Rewards can be used to
either enhance or diminish creative performance depending on the way they are
administered (Eisenberger
and Selbst 1994)
Whether
conditions which produce the negative effect are very limited or quite common
is one the points of several critical notes (Hennessey and Amabile
1998; Sansone and Harackiewicz
1998), Amabile
and Hennesy 1996), and there is no doubt that we are
dealing with matters of emphasis. Most people in the field are trying to deal
with the complexities of conditions which interact to produce effects that are
not universal. Eisenberger and Cameron held the view
is that too much has been made of the suppressing effect of extrinsic rewards
on intrinsic motivation because of the popularity of individualistic values,
pursuing personal goals, and exploring one’s creative potential. They see the
work of Deci, Amabile and
others as appealing to a romantic view of human nature and the high value
placed on personal freedom in Western society, as in the introduction to their
review:
Romantic individualism plays a major role in Western
culture's emphasis on individual freedom, self-expression, and self-fulfillment, as reflected in the writings of humanistic
psychologists (most notably, Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers', see (Rogers and Skinner 1956; Hergenhahn 1992) and many cognitive-social
psychologists who study intrinsic task interest and creativity (e.g., (deCharms
1968; Amabile 1983a; Deci
and Ryan 1985)).
Implicit Romantic conceptions about human motivation (Hogan 1975; Geller 1982) are contained in major
explanations for the decremental effects of reward.
Individuals are presumed (a) to identify themselves primarily as unique rather
than as an integral part of a social collective, (b) to possess potentialities
that are better fostered through self-determined exploration than social
influence, and (c) to have an aversion to constraints on freedom of action.
Systems of reward for improved task performance, as promoted by behaviorally oriented psychologists are seen as inherently
self-defeating because they interfere with the desire to explore one's own potential.
They are further viewed as incompatible with the spontaneity and flexibility of
self-initiated behavior required for creativity (McGraw 1978; Deci and Ryan 1985; Amabile,
Hennessey et al. 1986).
Deci and colleagues (Deci, Koestner et al. 1999) published a later review directly
contradicting the conclusion by Einsberger and
Cameron that the suppressing effect of tangible rewards was limited to
conditions in which rewards were independent of performance. From another
meta-analysis they concluded that “all expected tangible rewards made contingent
on task performance do reliably undermine intrinsic motivation”. The following
year Ryan and Deci (Ryan and Deci 2000) published a general article on
self-determination theory, restating their cognitive evaluation theory,
focussing attention “on the fundamental needs for competence and
autonomy". They saw competence and autonomy as different
variables, having different but complementary effects. So feedback and
communication rewards that induce feelings of competence during action can
enhance intrinsic motivation for that action. But they believed that feelings
of competence would not enhance intrinsic motivation unless accompanied by a
sense of autonomy, or could be experienced as internal locus of causality (the
sense of origin in deCharmes’ terms). Social
support or long term personal development will provide conditions for
maintenance of intrinsic motivation, as this effect of personal causality
requires either immediate contextual support for autonomy or abiding inner
resources that are typically the result of prior developmental supports. So in
addition to competence and autonomy, relatedness is a further
contributing factor in interpersonal settings, with intrinsic motivation more
likely to flourish where there is a sense of personal security in relationship
with others.
Ryan
and Deci conclude that extrinsic motivation can vary
greatly in its relative autonomy. For example, students who do their homework
because they see its value for their chosen career are extrinsically motivated,
as are those who do the work only because they are adhering to their parents control. The effects on intrinsic motivation for the
learning task will differ according to whether the extrinsic rewards entail
personal endorsement and a feeling of choice or whether they result from
compliance with external regulation. Noting such effects of personally
meaningful extrinsic rewards, Ryan and Deci proposed
what they called “organismic integration theory” to
detail different types of extrinsic motivation and contextual factors and how
they could either promote or hinder internalisation and integration of the
regulation of behaviour.
This
theory of integration has much in common with the general processes of
integration in what I have called the macro level of intrinsic motivation. Ryan
and Deci say that integration occurs when identified
regulations are fully assimilated to the self, which
means that they have been evaluated and brought into congruence with one’s
other values and needs. The generalised form of the cognitive process theory
suggests that social conditions and tangible rewards will have a facilitating effect
on intrinsic motivation when they enable further development of an integrated
person through personally meaningful purposive behaviour. In the same way that
intrinsically motivated behaviour at the task or micro level functions to
resolve conflicts and gaps through the achievement of a newly integrated
cognitive map in that limited domain, the processes of integration at the level
of the whole personality will tend to resolve conflicts and gaps at the macro
level.
In a suitable riposte to the charge of romantic individualism, Ryan and Deci say “we do not equate autonomy with independence or
individualism”. Rather they refer to the satisfaction of basic needs for
competence, autonomy and relatedness in a social context across the life span.
They also recognize the developmental aspect when they say that the range of
behaviour that can be assimilated to the self increases over time with
increased cognitive capacities and ego development. That would parallel the
increased capacity of the highly curious person to carry out the instrumental
acts required in the cognitive process theory of curiosity to gather and
process the additional information required to achieve a good resolution of
conceptual gaps and conflicts. There is, however, a significant difference at
the starting point. Ryan and Deci simply accept
intrinsic motivation as a given quality, saying “our theory of intrinsic
motivation does not concern what causes intrinsic motivation”, while I have
attempted to give an account of what gives rise to it and how it functions at
the task level. In the absence of a general theory of basic processes they have
offered organismic integration theory to account for
the otherwise puzzling effects of extrinsic rewards. The cognitive process
theory can give an account of intrinsic motivation at the micro level of
interesting tasks which can be applied in parallel terms at the macro level of
personal development in such a way as to account for the effects of extrinsic
rewards. It should therefore provide general guidance for the management of
incentives for academic work and other forms of creative endeavour.
While the creation, maintenance and resolution of conceptual conflicts and
perceived gaps can be described in terms of cognitive processes in a way which
gives some explanatory power at the task level and in a generalisation of the
theory to the macro level of purposive strivings for personal development, the
theory nevertheless includes an assumption of a primitive tendency to integrate
experiences. There seems to be no escape from the need for some such starting
point, presumably given by a basic quality in the way the brain works, but in
the cognitive process theory it is moved back a step or two from Ryan and Deci’s unanalysed acceptance of intrinsic motivation as a
given quality. If we know how it works, given the primitive tendency towards
integration, it should be easier to specify conditions under which intrinsic
motivation can be developed, protected, increased and made more effective. In
the generalised form of the theory the information value of feedback for
intrinsically motivated behaviour plays an important part, which is illustrated
by a new review of studies on the effects of praise (Henderlong and Leper
2002) which followed the above mentioned
reviews and debate on the effects of extrinsic rewards.
Henderlong and Lepper argue
against a purely behavioural definition of praise as verbal reinforcement and
in favour of the view that praise may serve to undermine, enhance or have no
effect on children’s intrinsic motivation.
Everything depends on how it is done.
Praise can be understood in some circumstances as a means of control by
an external agent, and in the light of findings already discussed which point
to the moderating effects of personal causation, a sense of agency and
self-determination, we could expect praise to suppress or enhance intrinsic
motivation depending upon how favourable such conditions might be in the way
praise is given. The conclusion of their
review, while noting the complexity of the effects, was in general along those
lines. To have positive effects on
intrinsic motivation, besides being sincere, praise needs to encourage
performance being attributed to controllable causes, to promote autonomy,
enhance competence without an over-reliance on social comparisons, and convey
attainable standards and expectations.
These conditions, the latter two in particular, remind one of
McClelland’s theory achievement motivation (McClelland, Atkinson et al. 1953; McClelland
1985) as competition with an internalized
standard of excellence. The associated information value of feedback on
performance is incorporated into achievement motivation theory by Atkinson’s
model of expectancy value theory (Atkinson 1958; Atkinson and Raynor 1974).
At the same time praise as feedback which encourages attention to
competence and to causes of behaviour under the control of the individual as an
effective agent are in line with predictions from personal causation and
cognitive evaluation theory (Ryan and Deci 2000).
We might prefer a more open view of purposive behaviour with the
potential for unexpected yet satisfying outcomes than a strict notion of
preconceived goal attainment which might be implied in the idea of
self-determination, and that more open view is not excluded by these results,
but the overall pattern is consistent with the previous meta-analytic findings
of the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. It is a central tenet of attribution theory
as developed originally by Heider, Kelly and others (Heider 1958; Kelly
1967; Kelly 1973) that people search for the causes
of achievement outcomes. As Henderlong and Lepper see it
causal inferences then guide behaviour and emotional reactions in ways that
make praise effective, and that is consistent with our cognitive process theory.
It
is a relevant consideration to ask in regard to the conditions under which
praise has an enhancing effect on intrinsic motivation whether praise is
properly described as an extrinsic reward when it is given in a way which
functions as helpful feedback on behaviour that is directed towards personally
meaningful and intrinsically satisfying goals.
Is the effect due to whatever happens in the emotional influence of
praise which may have social significance or to the information value of praise
that is effective in pointing to things a person can do? Perhaps the emotion and the information value
cannot be neatly separated, and that is a topic for another day, but the
completion of a process of developing a new order in one’s cognitive map could
have signals in which emotion is a sign not so much of an externally managed
reward as a sign of what is effective in a process of internal
integration. In terms of the conceptual
system advanced in this paper, the evidence from many studies of the effects of
praise appears to be that a great deal depends upon how the information in the
praise communication equips recipients to take actions for which they are
responsible with means which are at their disposal, so that the person
receiving this kind of praise is an effective agent. Then, in reference to the supposed general
tendency to seek integration of disparate elements in one’s experience, with
the overcoming of conceptual conflicts and gaps in knowledge, it would seem
that creative integration at the macro level within the person is dependent
upon active personal engagement. There
may be a clue here to reasons why autonomy and personal causation appear to be
necessary conditions for effective integrative solutions which produce a new
cognitive order including a positively appreciated self-concept.
[Note:
The cognitive process theory of curiosity presented in this paper and
generalized to higher order cognitive functions has been further developed
since the major part of this paper was written.
As originally conceived it did not incorporate the function of gaps in
knowledge with the operation of conceptual conflict, it failed to account for
the role of emotion and it was too much focussed on individual
differences. A general theory of
cognitive motivation incorporating curiosity, purpose and meaning, is being
prepared for publication.]
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