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motivation
Rewards can turn your favorite hobby into a chore.
Extrinsic incentives often reduce the intrinsic motivation you initially felt for an activity.
A 1973 study found that children who were rewarded for drawing were later less interested in drawing when the rewards stopped. The brain reclassifies the activity as work done for a gain. Your passion becomes a transaction.
The moment you start tracking the output, you change the nature of the work.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973
- What the check found
- The attribution is correct. While the specific methodology (children/drawing) is not in the provided snippet, the study is the canonical source for the overjustification effect in psychological literature.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.