Benefits of Intrinsic Motivation Over Extrinsic

As living beings, we can accomplish many things if we have the motivation for it, but we don't always have that in us. We can be passionate and spend hours and hours on a project or be driven by a goal we could do a lot for. But there are also a lot of abandoned projects, so what differentiate the motivation for all these works. One parameter could be the kind of motivation and here I will explain their differences and why the establishment in our lives have taught us to use the wrong kind of motivation to lead the majority of our lives.

First of all, when people are given a goal, a reward or any sort of positive reinforcement given be because and if they finish certain tasks is what we call extrinsic motivation. The more general example of this kind of motivation is a job, with the reward being the salary. This method increases someone's drive to finish the assigned task but as soon as the promise of reward is gone the motivation will disappear as well. Furthermore as well as extrinsic motivation is for motivating for a simple goal, a lack of creativity is noticeable during experiment. But despite those disadvantages, it is the primary motivation we find in school for example, which imposes a system of reward and punishment in the form of grades, something that indeed makes some students work but can backfire and cause them to stop caring for the reward even under the threat of punishment.

Extrinsic motivation is not a healthy or effective way to get work quality or efficiency in some condition. But people still get driven to do weeks, months or years long projects, all on their own. Those situations are most probably examples of intrinsic motivation, a motivation driven by our own wants, something we do because we wanted to do it in the first place. We can divide it in three different types. In the first case we achieve something because the process was enjoyable as much as the end goal if there even is any. This includes most hobbies, like painting, reading or skiing. The second example is “a matter of meeting a standard for their own sake”, for example ethical standards or or ideas of team spirit. Finally the third type of intrinsic motivation is the ones set by our own challenges. That anything with a hard and often not enjoyable process but has a reward worth fighting for. Mountain climbing is a good example, the climb is a hard and maybe perioush one but the view at the top is worth, or even enhanced by, the work put in. All of these manifest for something that an individual would personally invest time and effort into without being prompted, and has the potential to last longer and be more efficient than extrinsic motivation driven goals would get. It also leads on average to better quality since the person is willing to spend much more of their time on something they like working with. But it is also noticeable that neither school or any common work prioritises intrinsic motivation, giving grades or salaries for completing what they ask. This counterintuitive system leads people to almost never using intrinsic motivation which leads most people to be slightly more unhappy and less productive overall.

Combining both information of these paragraphs, it would be logical to assume the best way to motivate someone would be to both use intrinsic and extrinsic motivation but that is not always the case. Indeed if you work on a project on your own and for a reason you are to receive a reward that you will end up expecting, then the initial intrinsic motivation can disappear. Indeed, in an experiment in which a group of kids who liked to draw were separated into three different groups, one who would be left to draw on their own, another where the children were promised a reward at the end and the last group who were offered a surprise gift at the end. The result showed a decrease in motivation in the second group after they stopped receiving rewards. Similarly, as Dan Pink explains it with The candle problem, extrinsic motivation can be more effective for simple and straightforward tasks but it also leads to an enormous drop in creativity, solving a creative problem three and a half minutes longer than average if they were promised money if they had a good performance. But it is possible to combine the best of both worlds. In the first experiment, the only group who began drawing more after the test was group three. The only difference they had was the surprise gift given, meaning a combination of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation did, in that case, give way to a better result than any type of motivation on their own.

In conclusion, both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can be used efficiently in some situations but intrinsic is better a vast majority of the time. It could even be harmful to use extrinsic motivation or both methods at the same time. However there is also a way to further improve on motivation by changing it slightly and not posing the expectation of the reward but rather making it a sporadic surprise on top of the work done by intrinsic motivation.

Work Cited

• Deci, E. L. (1971). Effects of externally mediated rewards on intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Pink Dan, director. Dan Pink Sur La Surprenante Science De La Motivation. TED, 25. Aug. 2009.
• “The Psychological Trick That Can Make Rewards Backfire” Game Maker's Toolkit, 13 Sept. 2020
• Sansone, Carol. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: the Search for Optimal Motivation and Performance. Academic Press, 2007.
• Frey, Bruno S., and Margit Osterloh. Successful Management by Motivation: Balancing Intrinsic and Extrinsic Incentives. Springer, 2011.