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motivation
Rewards often destroy your interest in things you enjoyed.
The overjustification effect demonstrates that when you are incentivized to perform a task you already like, your intrinsic motivation for that task decreases.
When a task is associated with an external reward, your brain reclassifies the activity as 'work' instead of 'play.' Once the reward is removed, your desire to perform the task drops below your original baseline.
Adding external pressure to a passion can extinguish it.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Lepper, Greene, and Nisbett (1973)
- What the check found
- The claim accurately captures the seminal 1973 finding, though it omits that this effect is highly sensitive to reward framing and contingency, rather than occurring every time a reward is introduced.
- 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.