Do Immediate External Rewards Really Enhance Intrinsic Motivation?

Frontiers in Psychology 13 (2022)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Researchers have conducted many studies on the relationship between external rewards and intrinsic motivation. A recent study showed that, compared with delayed rewards, rewards delivered immediately after the experiment enhanced the participants’ intrinsic motivation. However, this study did not rule out the possibility of a misattribution effect of extrinsic motivation. The present research conducted three studies to explore whether immediate rewards actually enhance intrinsic motivation. To rule out the interference of the misattribution effect of extrinsic motivation, according to the different characteristics of extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation, Study 1 and Study 2 improved the prior experimental paradigm, and the results indicated that the intrinsic motivation of participants who received extra rewards immediately after completing experimental tasks was stronger than that of participants who received the delayed extra reward. Furthermore, to rule out the potential interference of temporal discounting, Study 3 introduced a new variable—reward magnitude. The results showed that the delivery time of the extra reward had an independent effect on intrinsic motivation and that the immediacy of the extra reward could enhance intrinsic motivation. In all, the three studies strongly demonstrated that immediate external extra rewards could truly enhance intrinsic motivation.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 99,245

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The effects of extrinsic reward timing on intrinsic motivation.William L. Croll & R. Mark Smith - 1984 - Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 22 (5):415-417.

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-05-18

Downloads
18 (#998,967)

6 months
4 (#1,192,475)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Xue Bai
University College London

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations