When there’s a task at hand that’s less than enthralling, we often use rewards as motivation. This inclination is drilled into us from a young age, when we learn that working hard leads to the reward of good grades, and that completing chores will earn us an allowance (or, if you were like me, the reward of not being grounded). Relying on something outside ourselves for motivation is effective at getting us to act in the present, but how does it affect us in the long run? And what happens when we’re offered rewards for jobs we actually enjoy doing? According to research throughout the years, rewards systems might do more harm than good.
If It Comes with a Reward, It’s Gotta Be Bad
There are times when extrinsic motivation—motivation that comes from an outside source, such as money or something equally valuable to us—works wonders for our behavior. An experiment performed in Sweden called the Fun Theory, in which good but mundane acts, like taking the stairs or recycling bottles,were made more enjoyable, showed that behavior really can be changed for the better. Only time will tell if making the experiences more fun actually enacts lasting behavioral changes, but based on previous studies on the matter, prospects don’t look good.
In 1973, a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology explored a phenomenon researchers called “overjustification.” That’s when the natural pleasure derived from a certain activity or behavior is dulled when an external reward is offered. To analyze this, the researchers took fifty-one preschoolers who enjoyed drawing and divided them up into three sections. Those in the first group were told they’d get a prize for spending six minutes drawing. The second section received the prize after drawing, but weren’t told about it beforehand. The last group received nothing for their efforts; they were merely asked to draw for six minutes.
The point was to see how many of the kids would continue drawing, which they already liked to do, after the six-minute deadline passed. After a few days of observation, researchers found that those who were promised a reward for their efforts continued drawing about half as much as the rest of the group. Not only did the study conclude that their initial enjoyment had decreased, but their drawings were deemed less aesthetically pleasing than everyone else’s as well. (Though one wonders how the researchers went about judging the art of three- and four-year-olds.) This could explain why some people have bad experiences turning their hobbies into careers—getting paid for it makes it work, which tends to make things seem less fun.
Prizes Can Have the Opposite Effect
Countless studies over the years have coincided with what the 1973 study suggested—that extrinsic rewards can actually hurt results over time. A 1976 study called “Overjustification and Weight Loss: The Effects of Monetary Reward” found that participants who were given money each week if they lost weight ended up gaining the weight back, while the other group lost more weight overall. The rewards worked well initially—the rewarded subjects started out losing weight quickly—but they didn’t do much in the long term. A 1990 study at the Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound that focused on people trying to quit smoking reached similar results. In the beginning, the smokers given rewards as incentives did better than the intrinsically motivated ones, but after three months, their success rates dropped significantly.
Performing the same way after the extra payoff is taken away can actually make reaching goals harder than having no payoff in the first place. In 1976, the 1973 study’s researchers tested their theory again, this time by rewarding fourth and fifth graders for playing certain games instead of others. Kids played these games the most when doing so benefited them tangibly, but once that incentive was taken away, they were even less interested in the games than the children who hadn’t been rewarded at all. Losing the prize not only made the first group less motivated to play, but it actually turned them off to the games completely.
