Intrinsic Motivation vs. Extrinsic Motivation
The Academic Research Broken Down
Reading academic research about intrinsic motivation is something we do on our team. Maybe it’s because Progress and Rationality are two of the highest intrinsic motivators among our team. It’s just something we do.
But we know that reading academic research is not joy-inducing for everyone. Even with all the extra time we have during the pandemic, not having to commute (or go anywhere else), picking up a dense academic paper, where you often have to re-read sentences to get the meaning, is not the first thing hands reach for.
So here, we are going to break down an important research paper about extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation, and try to make it more accessible.
Why are we doing this? Well, if more managers knew the difference between intrinsic motivation vs. extrinsic motivation, and understood when each was most useful, they could make work a more meaningful part of life. And that’s what we’re passionate about.
The paper we are looking at today is:
“Do intrinsic and extrinsic motivation relate differently to employee outcomes?”
from Journal of Economic Psychology 61 (2017) 244-258
Authors: Bard Kuvaas, Robert Buch, Antoinette Weibel, Anders Dysvik, Christina G.L. Nerstad
KEY TAKEAWAY: FOCUS ON INTRINSIC MOTIVATION
The base idea of this paper is that intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation are different. They are “separate motives”, and need to be addressed differently.
The key conclusion is that “organizations should focus on increasing employees’ intrinsic motivation”. The research finds that “increasing extrinsic motivation” is not “advantageous to either individuals or organizations.”
Let’s explore how they got here.
INTRINSIC MOTIVATION AND EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION AT WORK
Extrinsic motivation is connected to outside incentives. The authors knock back the need for incentives saying that, “incentives signal that the task at hand needs additional reinforcement to be completed - presumably because it is not an enjoyable task.”
Many managers usually reach for their bag of incentives to inspire their team, but unwittingly they are signaling to the team that the task being asked is not inherently pleasurable.
Managers should think twice before reaching for that extrinsic incentive again.
Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, comes with a lot of good stuff, being “linked to high energy levels and persistence… intrinsic motivation is positively associated with enthusiasm and engagement, thriving, and well-being.”
Not bad, right?
On top of that we can add creative work: “intrinsic motivation has also been shown to have positive associations with contextual work performance and creativity.”
The research is showing a lot of positive associations for intrinsic motivation at work, and fewer for extrinsic motivation.
But it wouldn’t be much of a debate if there were not some positive aspects to the use of extrinsic motivations to drive performance.
Experiments with “simple and standardized” tasks, do show higher levels of performance when extrinsic motivation is used. But (it is an important but that should be underlined), and especially for the creative classes, extrinsic motivation incentives have a “small but significant negative effect for interesting tasks.”
The benefits of intrinsic motivation are extensive. Intrinsic motivation is linked to positive emotions and attitudes. And it is inversely related to notorious workplace baddies such as burnout, work-family conflict, continuance commitment, and turnover intention. Not only does intrinsic motivation deliver all of the good promised in the intrinsic motivation definition - enjoying a task for its own pleasure - but you avoid a whole lot of stress and bad outcomes.
It’s like exercise; not only do you get all the positive mental chemical benefits while you are exercising, the higher endorphin levels, but you also strengthen your body’s ability to ward off sickness. Intrinsic motivation does the same for our psychological well-being.
INTRINSIC AND EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION OUTSIDE OF WORK
The positives of cultivating intrinsic motivation in yourself and your team extend well beyond the workplace. “Employees who are intrinsically motivated experience control over their own behavior and are therefore more likely to be able to balance their work and family lives.”
Conversely, the research has showed us that extrinsic motivation makes us not only worse at creative tasks, but it also leads to worse outcomes in our family lives: “An extrinsic work-value orientation has negative associations with life satisfaction and life happiness”. This outlook also leads to more conflict between work and family lives, and a higher likelihood that people will leave their jobs. Extrinsic motivation seems to deliver more “ands” followed by a “bad outcome”.
The research conducted by this team is definitive in that extrinsic motivation leads to poorer states of well-being. In stark contrast, intrinsic motivation leads to lasting, robust, and happier outcomes - it extends beyond the individual, beyond the team, all the way to the families.
If you are a manager that can cultivate your members intrinsic motivations you’ll be making happier families. That’s a beautiful thing. That’s meaningful work.
WHEN TO USE INTRINSIC VS. EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION TO DRIVE PERFORMANCE
Whether it’s history, inertia from the Taylorism theory of management, improper educational emphasis, or over-exposure we have come to think of extrinsic motivation incentives too often - a simple lever to pull to get the best out of our people. It’s not that simple. We’ve got to be careful. We should use these incentives sparingly, and only when the task we are incentivizing is repeatable and simple. Keep extrinsic motivation incentives far, far away from creative work.
We’ve created a simple flow chart to help give you a mental model of when to use extrinsic and intrinsic motivational tools to increase performance:
If we can all internalize when to emphasis extrinsic motivations (almost never!) vs intrinsic motivation (do the best you possibly can!) the world of work will be a more enjoyable, and creative place.
We are certainly biased. After all, we created a solution powered by intrinsic motivation, but, boy, is it reaffirming and validating to all the work that we’ve done on Attuned to see the importance of intrinsic motivation in psychology so clearly stated.
Put one in the win column for intrinsic motivation in the debate on extrinsic motivation vs intrinsic motivation.
If you’d like to understand more about intrinsic motivation theory beyond the highlights here, we encourage you to purchase and read in detail the full academic paper. If you’re feeling meta, read our cliff notes on a 40-year analysis of academic research on extrinsic motivation vs extrinsic motivation.
Download The State of Motivation Report 2024. It’s free!
