Immunizing children against the negative effects of reward: A further examination of intrinsic motivation training techniques

Abstract

An investigation was conducted to extend previous research on the effect of intrinsic motivation focus sessions on children's subsequent motivational orientation and creativity in an expected‐reward situation. Numerous earlier studies have demonstrated the over justification effect: Initially interested in an activity, an individual who is led to engage in that activity in the presence of some salient extrinsic constraint will judge him‐ or herself to be motivated by the constraint and not by his own interest. This phenomenon has been demonstrated across the life span. Even very young children who work on an interesting task in order to obtain a reward evidence lower subsequent intrinsic motivation than do children not working for a reward. Other research has shown similar negative effects on creativity. However, two recent investigations indicated that the usual over justification effect need not always occur. These studies demonstrated that the undermining of school children's intrinsic motivation and creativity may be counteracted by means of videotaped modeling and directed discussion sessions that explicitly (a) deal with ways to cognitively distance oneself from reward contingencies and (b) focus on intrinsic reasons for working in school. The present study incorporates important refinements of these earlier immunization attempts and provides particularly strong evidence for the hypothesis that children participating in sessions designed to focus on intrinsic reasons for doing things in school will later treat reward as an actual augmentation of intrinsic motivation. Theoretical and practical implications of this phenomenon are discussed.