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motivation
Rewarding a behavior you enjoy will make you quit.
The overjustification effect occurs when external incentives decrease your intrinsic motivation to perform an activity.
In a 1973 study, children who were rewarded for drawing lost interest in drawing once the reward was removed. The brain shifts its focus from the pleasure of the task to the benefit of the incentive.
You are losing your internal drive by turning your hobbies into jobs.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Lepper, Greene, and Nisbett, 1973, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- What the check found
- The definition is standard and the citation matches the seminal 1973 paper on the topic.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.