Increasing intrinsic motivation
Pick carrots that look tastier
The overjustification effect occurs when extrinsic motivation “crowds out” intrinsic motivation. In another post, I summarized a few classical papers that provide evidence for the effect, but I think the dishwashing example (as described in that post) gets the point across:
Imagine you’re a kid, and you just ate dinner with your family. You’re in a good mood, so you decide to voluntarily wash the dishes. As you stand up, your mother says, “If you do the dishes, you can watch a movie before bed!”
What a great deal — you were about to do the dishes anyway! But what does your mother think? You could explain your original intent — “Just so you know, I was about to do the dishes anyway” — but she might not believe you (or worse, rescind the offer), so you don’t say anything. As a result, she probably thinks that you’re only in it for the movie. And interestingly, as you wash the dishes, you notice that you’re feeling the same way. Tomorrow night, as you finish dinner, you’re not so eager to voluntarily wash the dishes.
The possibility of watching a movie overjustified washing the dishes, so even though you still did it, you lost some intrinsic motivation to wash the dishes. More generally, I think people don’t like being told to do something, even — perhaps especially — if they were about to do that thing.
In the context of education, the overjustification effect is cited as an argument against incentives such as gold stars, pizza parties, or even good grades. But sometimes, students simply don’t have enough intrinsic motivation to learn something. In that case, from a pedagogical perspective, it is not sufficient to merely avoid the overjustification effect.
Instead, can educators increase students’ intrinsic motivation? This is certainly a huge topic. In this post, we’ll focus on “The Structure of Intrinsic Motivation,” an article by Ayelet Fishbach and Kaitlin Woolley published in the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior in 2022. In particular, we’ll explore the three strategies they discuss for increasing intrinsic motivation (IM) and potential implications in the classroom. The article focuses on the context of work (i.e., employers and employees), but I think it’s interesting to consider what their studies suggest for teachers and students.
1. “Factoring Intrinsic Motivation into Choice”
In one of the authors’ studies, some participants chose a weight-lifting exercise that they most enjoyed, while others chose one that they believed was most effective. Even though the exercises were similarly difficult, the former group persisted longer (approximately 50% more repetitions) than the latter. Similarly, in another study, participants who did a relatively enjoyable task (evaluating photos of cute animals) persisted longer than those who did a relatively boring task (counting letters in a series of words), even though the latter task paid more ($0.40 instead of $0.30 per minute). Both studies suggest that enjoyment increases IM, which the authors track by measuring persistence. (The authors state that all three strategies are meant to “increase IM and hence persistence.”)
For teaching, I believe the studies suggest that students would persist longer if they got to choose an option that they enjoyed. For example, maybe the instructor could allow each student to pick the topic and/or format (e.g., paper, video, talk) of their course project. On the administrative side, teaching assistants might feel more IM if they get to choose the problems they’ll grade.
2. “Bringing In Immediate Benefits”
As described above, the risk of the overjustification effect makes it tricky to introduce rewards. But the authors claim that immediate incentives “could make people experience the activity as its own end,” thus increasing IM. For example, in one of their studies, a teacher provided snacks, colored pens, and music to students in a high school math class; those students attempted to solve more problems than students in a classroom without the incentives. This is somewhat surprising because it seems plausible that the incentives would distract the students, causing them to attempt fewer problems — but that didn’t happen.
This strategy is similar to “temptation bundling” (e.g., listening to an audiobook while exercising), which other studies have shown to be effective at building habits. In fact, one paper suggests that incentives for exercising can work even after the incentives are removed, potentially because the incentives increased IM.
I’m not sure I should provide snacks, colored pens, or music to college students. (I do write in multiple colors when I lecture, which at least increases my engagement.) However, possible alternatives might include a fun, in-class poll once in a while, a tangent about a neat application of the course content, or an occasional joke or anecdote.
3. “Attentional Focus on Immediate Benefits or Positive Experience”
Unlike the other two strategies, this one does not involve any changes to the activity. Instead, it’s based on changing the target of the participants’ attention. In one of the authors’ studies, participants had to choose between two bags of carrots. One group was asked to pick the carrots that looked tastier, and another group was asked to pick the carrots that looked healthier. As the authors put it, “Unbeknownst to participants, the bags were identical.” The results are similar to the exercise study from the first strategy: the first group ate almost 50% more carrots than the second group. This suggests that asking people to focus on the immediate, positive experience of an activity can boost IM.1
The paper then cites multiple studies, in a variety of domains, that suggest mindfulness (i.e., “bringing awareness to the immediate subjective experience”) as an effective way to increase persistence. These domains include exercising on a treadmill, eating habits, taking breaks during work, and a few others. Experiencing “joint engagement” with team members can also increase IM, but unfortunately, I think group projects have a notoriously bad reputation among college students (see, e.g., here and here).
Applying this strategy in a classroom setting seems tough because it’s hard to ignore the challenging aspects of learning. But I think these studies suggest that rather than focusing on the outcomes of education (e.g., getting good grades, getting a job), perhaps students should consider focusing on the experience of learning. It’s not always easy, but it might be worthwhile.
This strategy only works if an immediate, positive experience is even available. In another study, the authors did something similar with spinach; there, participants who were asked to “focus on the positive taste of plain spinach leaves” did not eat more spinach than a control group who did not receive those instructions.