People Believe in the Effectiveness of Extrinsic Incentives and Underestimate the Power of Intrinsic Motivation

• In Event: New Directions in Motivation Regulation: The Role of Students’ Metamotivational Beliefs

Abstract

Objectives
We will present two sets of studies showing that people believe in the effectiveness of extrinsic incentives more than they should, whereas people underestimate the power of their intrinsic motivation to engage in a task without extrinsic incentives. These findings indicate that, when motivating others or even themselves, people tend to rely on extrinsic motivation more frequently than necessary.

Theoretical framework
The first study focuses on people’s belief about the undermining effect. Despite the voluminous empirical research on the harmful effects of extrinsic incentives (e.g., money, competition prizes, etc.) on people’s intrinsic motivation (“undermining effect”), our society is still reliant upon the use of extrinsic incentives to motivate people. To better understand the reason underlying this theory–practice gap, the first study examined people’s beliefs about how extrinsic incentives influence recipients’ intrinsic motivation.
In the second study, we focused on people’s belief in the power of their intrinsic motivation to engage in a task without extrinsic incentives. Research has shown that we are endowed with a remarkable capacity to motivate ourselves in the absence of extrinsic incentives. However, little research has been conducted to investigate whether we accurately appreciate this capacity. Thus, the second study aimed to examine the metacognitive accuracy of people’s beliefs about their ability to motivate themselves without extrinsic incentives.

Methods
In Study 1 (Murayama et al, 2016), college students (N = 259) were presented with a description of a previous experiment that demonstrated the undermining effect, and made predictions about the experiment’s results. In Study 2 (which consisted of five experiments), participants (N = 461 adults and college students in total) were presented with a relatively long and repetitive task without extrinsic incentives. Before doing the task, they were typically asked to make a prediction about what their motivation would be at the end of the task. This was compared to self-reported motivation at the end of the task.

Results
The findings of Study 1 showed that the majority of participants (56.4%) firmly, but wrongly, believed in the beneficial effects of reward on intrinsic motivation and did so with greater confidence than participants who predicted that rewards would be undermining effect (25.5%) or have little effect (18.1%) (Cohen’s ds = 0.40, 0.65). In Study 2, using a variety of tasks across multiple experiments, participants were consistently engaged in the task more actively than they predicted (e.g., in the first experiment, Cohen’s d = 0.52, p < .01). When participants were provided with performance-based monetary rewards, however, this bias was diminished (e.g., in the last experiments, prediction x reward interaction was significant, F(1, 152) = 5.29, p < .05, ηG2 = .03). These results indicate that we tend to underappreciate our capability to sustain our motivation without extrinsic incentives.

Significance
We revealed people’s inaccurate belief about the power of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. This inaccuracy may play a role in the current, frequent use of extrinsic incentives in our society, and the current research suggests the importance of targeting stakeholders’ beliefs for intervention research.

Authors

• Kou Murayama, University of Reading

• Ayumi Tanaka, Doshisha University

• Shinji Kitagami, Nagoya University

• Kei Kuratomi, Kochi University of Technology

• Aya Hatano, Kochi University of Technology

• Jasmine Raw, University of Reading

• Laura Johnsen