intrinsic motivation to learn essay

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Understanding the Power of Intrinsic Motivation

• Stefan Falk

You can use it to unlock your potential.

At some point, we all are assigned to work that we find tedious and unchallenging. If we don’t figure out how to turn these tasks into interesting and challenging problems to solve, we’ll struggle to complete tasks in a timely and reliable manner, sabotaging our own success and growth at work. One skill that can help you do this is intrinsic motivation, or the incentive you feel to complete a task simply because you find it interesting or enjoyable. Learning how to harness this skill early in your career will help you build the resilience you need to reach your goals in any field. Here’s how to get started.

• Look to understand how your job fits into the bigger picture. If you don’t feel like you’re contributing value, you’re more likely to become demotivated. The next time you’re assigned a vague task ask: What problem are we trying to solve by doing this work? How am I helping contribute to the solution? When you know that your contributions have a purpose, your tasks will immediately feel more interesting.
• Perform easy tasks right away. When we check items off our to-do lists, feel-good hormones are released in our brains. This makes us feel accomplished, which makes the task more interesting and rewarding, which in turn, makes us more motivated to do it.
• Avoid too much “mindless” repetition. When a task starts to feel boring, it’s often because the outcome of completing the task is no longer interesting to you. What can you do to change that, and make the outcome feel exciting? For example, can you challenge yourself to execute the task in less time while still achieving the same result or better?
• Look for opportunities to help others. One of the easiest ways to tap into intrinsic motivation is to participate in activities you find inherently rewarding. Helping others is an easy way to do this.

At our jobs, we will inevitably face activities that don’t naturally interest us or that we perceive as boring, irrelevant, uncomfortable, or too difficult. This is rooted in how our brains are designed: Though the brain rewards us for spending mental energy on expanding ourselves , it rewards us even more for conserving our energy — which is why we struggle with activities that don’t immediately spark our curiosity, or why we tend to get bored with things over time.

• SF Stefan Falk is an internationally recognized human performance expert for top business executives, special ops in the armed forces, and elite athletes. He is the author of Intrinsic Motivation: Learn to Love Your Work and Succeed as Never Before (St Martin’s Press; February 2023).

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How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures (2018)

Chapter: 6 motivation to learn, 6 motivation to learn.

Motivation is a condition that activates and sustains behavior toward a goal. It is critical to learning and achievement across the life span in both informal settings and formal learning environments. For example, children who are motivated tend to be engaged, persist longer, have better learning outcomes, and perform better than other children on standardized achievement tests ( Pintrich, 2003 ). Motivation is distinguishable from general cognitive functioning and helps to explain gains in achievement independent of scores on intelligence tests ( Murayama et al., 2013 ). It is also distinguishable from states related to it, such as engagement, interest, goal orientation, grit, and tenacity, all of which have different antecedents and different implications for learning and achievement ( Järvelä and Renninger, 2014 ).

HPL I 1 emphasized some key findings from decades of research on motivation to learn:

• People are motivated to develop competence and solve problems by rewards and punishments but often have intrinsic reasons for learning that may be more powerful.
• Learners tend to persist in learning when they face a manageable challenge (neither too easy nor too frustrating) and when they see the value and utility of what they are learning.
• Children and adults who focus mainly on their own performance (such as on gaining recognition or avoiding negative judgments) are

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1 As noted in Chapter 1 , this report uses the abbreviation “ HPL I ” for How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition ( National Research Council, 2000 ).

less likely to seek challenges and persist than those who focus on learning itself.

• Learners who focus on learning rather than performance or who have intrinsic motivation to learn tend to set goals for themselves and regard increasing their competence to be a goal.
• Teachers can be effective in encouraging students to focus on learning instead of performance, helping them to develop a learning orientation.

In this chapter, we provide updates and additional elaboration on research in this area. We begin by describing some of the primary theoretical perspectives that have shaped this research, but our focus is on four primary influences on people’s motivation to learn. We explore research on people’s own beliefs and values, intrinsic motivation, the role of learning goals, and social and cultural factors that affect motivation to learn. We then examine research on interventions and approaches to instructional design that may influence motivation to learn, and we close with our conclusions about the implications of this research.

The research we discuss includes both laboratory and field research from multiple disciplines, such as developmental psychology, social psychology, education, and cognitive psychology.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

Research on motivation has been strongly driven by theories that overlap and contain similar concepts. A comprehensive review of this literature is beyond the scope of this report, but we highlight a few key points. Behavior-based theories of learning , which conceptualized motivation in terms of habits, drives, incentives, and reinforcement schedules, were popular through the mid-20th century. In these approaches, learners were assumed to be passive in the learning process and research focused mainly on individual differences between people (e.g., cognitive abilities, drive for achievement). These differences were presumed to be fixed and to dictate learners’ responses to features in the learning environment (method of instruction, incentives, and so on) and their motivation and performance.

Current researchers regard many of these factors as important but have also come to focus on learners as active participants in learning and to pay greater attention to how learners make sense of and choose to engage with their learning environments. Cognitive theories, for example, have focused on how learners set goals for learning and achievement and how they maintain and monitor their progress toward those goals. They also consider how physical aspects of the learning environment, such as classroom structures ( Ames, 1986 ) and social interactions (e.g., Gehlbach et al., 2016 ), affect learning through their impacts on students’ goals, beliefs, affect, and actions.

Motivation is also increasingly viewed as an emergent phenomenon , meaning it can develop over time and change as a result of one’s experiences with learning and other circumstances. Research suggests, for example, that aspects of the learning environment can both trigger and sustain a student’s curiosity and interest in ways that support motivation and learning ( Hidi and Renninger, 2006 ).

A key factor in motivation is an individual’s mindset : the set of assumptions, values, and beliefs about oneself and the world that influence how one perceives, interprets, and acts upon one’s environment ( Dweck, 1999 ). For example, a person’s view as to whether intelligence is fixed or malleable is likely to link to his views of the malleability of his own abilities ( Hong and Lin-Siegler, 2012 ). As we discuss below, learners who have a fixed view of intelligence tend to set demonstrating competence as a learning goal, whereas learners who have an incremental theory of intelligence tend to set mastery as a goal and to place greater value on effort. Mindsets develop over time as a function of learning experiences and cultural influences. Research related to mindsets has focused on patterns in how learners construe goals and make choices about how to direct attention and effort. Some evidence suggests that it is possible to change students’ self-attributions so that they adopt a growth mindset, which in turn improves their academic performance ( Blackwell et al., 2007 ).

Researchers have also tried to integrate the many concepts that have been introduced to explain this complex aspect of learning in order to formulate a more comprehensive understanding of motivational processes and their effects on learning. For example, researchers who study psychological aspects of motivation take a motivational systems perspective , viewing motivation as a set of psychological mechanisms and processes, such as those related to setting goals, engagement in learning, and use of self-regulatory strategies ( Kanfer, 2015 ; Linnenbrink-Garcia and Patall, 2016 ; Yeager and Walton, 2011 ).

LEARNERS’ BELIEFS AND VALUES

Learners’ ideas about their own competence, their values, and the preexisting interests they bring to a particular learning situation all influence motivation.

Self-Efficacy

When learners expect to succeed, they are more likely to put forth the effort and persistence needed to perform well. Self-efficacy theory ( Bandura, 1977 ), which is incorporated into several models of motivation and learning, posits that the perceptions learners have about their competency or capabilities are critical to accomplishing a task or attaining other goals ( Bandura, 1977 ).

According to self-efficacy theory, learning develops from multiple sources, including perceptions of one’s past performance, vicarious experiences, performance feedback, affective/physiological states, and social influences. Research on how to improve self-efficacy for learning has shown the benefits of several strategies for strengthening students’ sense of their competence for learning, including setting appropriate goals and breaking down difficult goals into subgoals ( Bandura and Schunk, 1981 ) and providing students with information about their progress, which allows them to attribute success to their own effort ( Schunk and Cox, 1986 ). A sense of competence may also foster interest and motivation, particularly when students are given the opportunity to make choices about their learning activities ( Patall et al., 2014 ).

Another important aspect of self-attribution involves beliefs about whether one belongs in a particular learning situation. People who come from backgrounds where college attendance is not the norm may question whether they belong in college despite having been admitted. Students may misinterpret short-term failure as reflecting that they do not belong, when in fact short-term failure is common among all college students. These students experience a form of stereotype threat, where prevailing cultural stereotypes about their position in the world cause them to doubt themselves and perform more poorly ( Steele and Aronson, 1995 ).

A recent study examined interventions designed to boost the sense of belonging among African American college freshmen ( Walton and Cohen, 2011 ). The researchers compared students who did and did not encounter survey results ostensibly collected from more senior college students, which indicated that most senior students had worried about whether they belonged during their first year of college but had become more confident over time. The students who completed the activity made significant academic gains, and the researchers concluded that even brief interventions can help people overcome the bias of prior knowledge by challenging that knowledge and supporting a new perspective.

Another approach to overcoming the bias of knowledge is to use strategies that can prevent some of the undesirable consequences of holding negative perspectives. One such strategy is to support learners in trying out multiple ideas before settling on the final idea. In one study, for example, researchers asked college students either to design a Web page advertisement for an online journal and then refine it several times or to create several separate ones ( Dow et al., 2010 ). The researchers posted the advertisements and assessed their effectiveness both by counting how many clicks each generated and by asking experts in Web graphics to rate them. The authors found that the designs developed separately were more effective and concluded that when students refined their initial designs, they were trapped by their initial decisions. The students who developed separate advertisements explored the possibilities more thoroughly and had more ideas to choose from.

Learners may not engage in a task or persist with learning long enough to achieve their goals unless they value the learning activities and goals. Expectancy-value theories have drawn attention to how learners choose goals depending on their beliefs about both their ability to accomplish a task and the value of that task. The concept of value encompasses learners’ judgments about (1) whether a topic or task is useful for achieving learning or life goals, (2) the importance of a topic or task to the learner’s identity or sense of self, (3) whether a task is enjoyable or interesting, and (4) whether a task is worth pursuing ( Eccles et al., 1983 ; Wigfield and Eccles, 2000 ).

Research with learners of various ages supports the idea that those who expect to succeed at a task exert more effort and have higher levels of performance ( Eccles and Wigfield, 2002 ). However, some studies have suggested that task valuation seems to be the strongest predictor of behaviors associated with motivation, such as choosing topics and making decisions about participation in training ( Linnenbrink-Garcia et al., 2008 ). Such research illustrates one of the keys to expectancy-value theory: the idea that expectancy and value dimensions work together. For example, a less-than-skilled reader may nevertheless approach a difficult reading task with strong motivation to persist in the task if it is interesting, useful, or important to the reader’s identity ( National Research Council, 2012c ). As learners experience success at a task or in a domain of learning, such as reading or math, the value they attribute to those activities can increase over time ( Eccles and Wigfield, 2002 ).

Learners’ interest is an important consideration for educators because they can accommodate those interests as they design curricula and select learning resources. Interest is also important in adult learning in part because students and trainees with little interest in a topic may show higher rates of absenteeism and lower levels of performance ( Ackerman et al., 2001 ).

Two forms of learner interest have been identified. Individual or personal interest is viewed as a relatively stable attribute of the individual. It is characterized by a learner’s enduring connection to a domain and willingness to re-engage in learning in that domain over time ( Schiefele, 2009 ). In contrast, situational interest refers to a psychological state that arises spontaneously in response to specific features of the task or learning environment ( Hidi and Renninger, 2006 ). Situational interest is malleable, can affect student engagement and learning, and is influenced by the tasks and materials educators use or encourage ( Hunsu et al., 2017 ). Practices that engage students and influence their attitudes may increase their personal interest and intrinsic motivation over time ( Guthrie et al., 2006 ).

Sometimes the spark of motivation begins with a meaningful alignment of student interest with an assignment or other learning opportunity. At other times, features of the learning environment energize a state of wanting to know more, which activates motivational processes. In both cases, it is a change in mindset and goal construction brought about by interest that explains improved learning outcomes ( Barron, 2006 ; Bricker and Bell, 2014 ; Goldman and Booker, 2009 ). For instance, when learner interest is low, students may be less engaged and more likely to attend to the learning goals that require minimal attention and effort.

Many studies of how interest affects learning have included measures of reading comprehension and text recall. This approach has allowed researchers to assess the separate effects of topic interest and interest in a specific text on how readers interact with text, by measuring the amount of time learners spend reading and what they learn from it. Findings from studies of this sort suggest that educators can foster students’ interest by selecting resources that promote interest, by providing feedback that supports attention ( Renninger and Hidi, 2002 ), by demonstrating their own interest in a topic, and by generating positive affect in learning contexts (see review by Hidi and Renninger, 2006 ).

This line of research has also suggested particular characteristics of texts that are associated with learner interest. For example, in one study of college students, five characteristics of informational texts were associated with both interest and better recall: (1) the information was important, new, and valued; (2) the information was unexpected; (3) the text supported readers in making connections with prior knowledge or experience; (4) the text contained imagery and descriptive language; and (5) the author attempted to relate information to readers’ background knowledge using, for example, comparisons and analogies ( Wade et al., 1999 ). The texts that students viewed as less interesting interfered with comprehension in that they, for example, offered incomplete or shallow explanations, contained difficult vocabulary, or lacked coherence.

A number of studies suggest that situational interest can be a strong predictor of engagement, positive attitudes, and performance, including a study of students’ essay writing ( Flowerday et al., 2004 ) and other research (e.g., Alexander and Jetton, 1996 ; Schraw and Lehman, 2001 ). These studies suggest the power of situational interest for engaging students in learning, which has implications for the design of project-based or problem-based learning. For example, Hoffman and Haussler (1998) found that high school girls displayed significantly more interest in the physics related to the working of a pump when the mechanism was put into a real-world context: the use of a pump in heart surgery.

The perception of having a choice may also influence situational interest and engagement, as suggested by a study that examined the effects of classroom practices on adolescents enrolled in a summer school science course

( Linnenbrink-Garcia et al., 2013 ). The positive effect learners experience as part of interest also appears to play a role in their persistence and ultimately their performance (see, e.g., Ainley et al., 2002 ).

Intrinsic Motivation

Self-determination theory posits that behavior is strongly influenced by three universal, innate, psychological needs—autonomy (the urge to control one’s own life), competence (the urge to experience mastery), and psychological relatedness (the urge to interact with, be connected to, and care for others). Researchers have linked this theory to people’s intrinsic motivation to learn ( Deci and Ryan, 1985 , 2000 ; Ryan and Deci, 2000 ). Intrinsic motivation is the experience of wanting to engage in an activity for its own sake because the activity is interesting and enjoyable or helps to achieve goals one has chosen. From the perspective of self-determination theory ( Deci and Ryan, 1985 , 2000 ; Ryan and Deci, 2000 ), learners are intrinsically motivated to learn when they perceive that they have a high degree of autonomy and engage in an activity willingly, rather than because they are being externally controlled. Learners who are intrinsically motivated also perceive that the challenges of a problem or task are within their abilities.

External Rewards

The effect of external rewards on intrinsic motivation is a topic of much debate. External rewards can be an important tool for motivating learning behaviors, but some argue that such rewards are harmful to intrinsic motivation in ways that affect persistence and achievement.

For example, some research suggests that intrinsic motivation to persist at a task may decrease if a learner receives extrinsic rewards contingent on performance. The idea that extrinsic rewards harm intrinsic motivation has been supported in a meta-analysis of 128 experiments ( Deci et al., 1999 , 2001 ). One reason proposed for such findings is that learners’ initial interest in the task and desire for success are replaced by their desire for the extrinsic reward ( Deci and Ryan, 1985 ). External rewards, it is argued, may also undermine the learner’s perceptions of autonomy and control.

Other research points to potential benefits. A recent field study, for example, suggests that incentives do not always lead to reduced engagement after the incentive ends ( Goswami and Urminsky, 2017 ). Moreover, in some circumstances external rewards such as praise or prizes can help to encourage engagement and persistence, and they may not harm intrinsic motivation over the long term, provided that the extrinsic reward does not undermine the individual’s sense of autonomy and control over her behavior (see National Research Council, 2012c , pp. 143–145; also see Cerasoli et al.,

2016 ; Vansteenkiste et al., 2009 ). Thus, teaching strategies that use rewards to capture and stimulate interest in a topic (rather than to drive compliance), that provide the student with encouragement (rather than reprimands), and that are perceived to guide student progress (rather than just monitor student progress) can foster feelings of autonomy, competence, and academic achievement (e.g., Vansteenkist et al., 2004 ). Praise is important, but what is praised makes a difference (see Box 6-1 ).

Other work ( Cameron et al., 2005 ) suggests that when rewards are inherent in the achievement itself—that is, when rewards for successful completion of a task include real privileges, pride, or respect—they can spur intrinsic motivation. This may be the case, for example, with videogames in which individuals are highly motivated to play well in order to move to the next higher level. This may also be the case when learners feel valued and respected for their demonstrations of expertise, as when a teacher asks a student who correctly completed a challenging homework math problem to explain his solution to the class. Extrinsic rewards support engagement sufficient for learning, as shown in one study in which rewards were associated with enhanced memory consolidation but only when students perceived the material to be boring ( Murayama and Kuhbandner, 2011 ). Given the prevalence

BOX 6-1 What You Praise Makes a Difference

of different performance-based incentives in classrooms (e.g., grades, prizes), a better, more integrated understanding is needed of how external rewards may harm or benefit learners’ motivation in ways that matter to achievement and performance in a range of real-world conditions across the life span.

Effects of Choice

When learners believe they have control over their learning environment, they are more likely to take on challenges and persist with difficult tasks, compared with those who perceive that they have little control ( National Research Council, 2012c ). Evidence suggests that the opportunity to make meaningful choices during instruction, even if they are small, can support autonomy, motivation, and ultimately, learning and achievement ( Moller et al., 2006 ; Patall et al., 2008 , 2010 ). 2

Choice may be particularly effective for individuals with high initial interest in the domain, and it may also generate increased interest ( Patall, 2013 ). One possible reason why exercising choice seems to increase motivation is that the act of making a choice induces cognitive dissonance: a feeling of being uncomfortable and unsure about one’s decision. To reduce this feeling, individuals tend to change their preferences to especially value and become interested in the thing they chose ( Izuma et al., 2010 ). Knowing that one has made a choice (“owning the choice”) can protect against the discouraging effects of negative feedback during the learning process, an effect that has been observed at the neurophysiological level ( Murayama et al., 2015 ). The perception of choice also may affect learning by fostering situational interest and engagement ( Linnenbrink-Garcia et al., 2013 ).

THE IMPORTANCE OF GOALS

Goals—the learner’s desired outcomes—are important for learning because they guide decisions about whether to expend effort and how to direct attention, foster planning, influence responses to failure, and promote other behaviors important for learning ( Albaili, 1998 ; Dweck and Elliot, 1983 ; Hastings and West, 2011 ).

Learners may not always be conscious of their goals or of the motivation processes that relate to their goals. For example, activities that learners perceive as enjoyable or interesting can foster engagement without the learner’s

2 The 2008 study was a meta-analysis, so the study populations are not described. The 2010 study included a total of 207 (54% female) high school students from ninth through twelfth grade. A majority (55.5%) of the students in these classes were Caucasian, 28 percent were African American, 7 percent were Asian, 3 percent were Hispanic, 1.5 percent were Native American, and 5 percent were of other ethnicities.

conscious awareness. Similarly, activities that learners perceive as threatening to their sense of competence or self-esteem (e.g., conditions that invoke stereotype threat, discussed below 3 ) may reduce learners’ motivation and performance even (and sometimes especially) when they intend to perform well.

HPL I made the point that having clear and specific goals that are challenging but manageable has a positive effect on performance, and researchers have proposed explanations. Some have focused on goals as motives or reasons to learn ( Ames and Ames, 1984 ; Dweck and Elliott, 1983 ; Locke et al., 1981 ; Maehr, 1984 ; Nicholls, 1984 ). Others have noted that different types of goals, such as mastery and performance goals, have different effects on the cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes that underlie learning as well as on learners’ outcomes ( Ames and Archer, 1988 ; Covington, 2000 ; Dweck, 1986 ). Research has also linked learners’ beliefs about learning and achievement, or mindsets, with students’ pursuit of specific types of learning goals ( Maehr and Zusho, 2009 ). The next section examines types of goals and research on their influence.

Types of Goals

Researchers distinguish between two main types of goals: mastery goals , in which learners focus on increasing competence or understanding, and performance goals , in which learners are driven by a desire to appear competent or outperform others (see Table 6-1 ). They further distinguish between performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals ( Senko et al., 2011 ). Learners who embrace performance-avoidance goals work to avoid looking incompetent or being embarrassed or judged as a failure, whereas those who adopt performance-approach goals seek to appear more competent than others and to be judged socially in a favorable light. Within the category of performance-approach goals, researchers have identified both self-presentation goals (“wanting others to think you are smart”) and normative goals (“wanting to outperform others”) ( Hulleman et al., 2010 ).

Learners may simultaneously pursue multiple goals ( Harackiewicz et al., 2002 ; Hulleman et al., 2008 ) and, depending on the subject area or skill domain, may adopt different achievement goals ( Anderman and Midgley, 1997 ). Although students’ achievement goals are relatively stable across the school years, they are sensitive to changes in the learning environment, such as moving from one classroom to another or changing schools ( Friedel et al., 2007 ). Learning environments differ in the learning expectations, rules, and

3 When an individual encounters negative stereotypes about his social identity group in the context of a cognitive task, he may underperform on that task; this outcome is attributed to stereotype threat ( Steele, 1997 ).

TABLE 6-1 Mindsets, Goals, and Their Implications for Learning

structure that apply, and as a result, students may shift their goal orientation to succeed in the new context ( Anderman and Midgley, 1997 ).

Dweck (1986) argued that achievement goals reflect learners’ underlying theories of the nature of intelligence or ability: whether it is fixed (something with which one is born) or malleable. Learners who believe intelligence is malleable, she suggested, are predisposed toward adopting mastery goals, whereas learners who believe intelligence is fixed tend to orient toward displaying competence and adopting performance goals ( Burns and Isbell, 2007 ; Dweck, 1986 ; Dweck and Master, 2009 ; Mangels et al., 2006 ). Table 6-1 shows how learners’ mindsets can relate to their learning goals and behaviors.

Research in this area suggests that learners who strongly endorse mastery goals tend to enjoy novel and challenging tasks ( Pintrich, 2000 ; Shim et al., 2008 ; Witkow and Fuligni, 2007 ; Wolters, 2004 ), demonstrate a greater willingness to expend effort, and engage higher-order cognitive skills during learning ( Ames, 1992 ; Dweck and Leggett, 1988 ; Kahraman and Sungur, 2011 ; Middleton and Midgley, 1997 ). Mastery students are also persistent—even in the face of failure—and frequently use failure as an opportunity to seek feedback and improve subsequent performance ( Dweck and Leggett, 1988 ).

Learners’ mastery and performance goals may also influence learning and achievement through indirect effects on cognition. Specifically, learners with mastery goals tend to focus on relating new information to existing knowledge as they learn, which supports deep learning and long-term memory for the

information. By contrast, learners with performance goals tend to focus on learning individual bits of information separately, which improves speed of learning and immediate recall but may undermine conceptual learning and long-term recall. In this way, performance goals tend to support better immediate retrieval of information, while mastery goals tend to support better long-term retention ( Crouzevialle and Butera, 2013 ). Performance goals may in fact undermine conceptual learning and long-term recall. When learners with mastery goals work to recall a previously learned piece of information, they also activate and strengthen memory for the other, related information they learned. When learners with performance goals try to recall what they learned, they do not get the benefit of this retrieval-induced strengthening of their memory for other information ( Ikeda et al., 2015 ).

Two studies with undergraduate students illustrate this point. Study participants who adopted performance goals were found to be concerned with communicating competence, prioritizing areas of high ability, and avoiding challenging tasks or areas in which they perceived themselves to be weaker than others ( Darnon et al., 2007 ; Elliot and Murayama, 2008 ). These students perceived failure as a reflection of their inability and typically responded to failure with frustration, shame, and anxiety. These kinds of performance-avoidance goals have been associated with maladaptive learning behaviors including task avoidance ( Middleton and Midgley, 1997 ; sixth-grade students), reduced effort ( Elliot, 1999 ), and self-handicapping ( Covington, 2000 ; Midgley et al., 1996 ).

The adoption of a mastery goal orientation to learning is likely to be beneficial for learning, while pursuit of performance goals is associated with poor learning-related outcomes. However, research regarding the impact of performance goals on academic outcomes has yielded mixed findings ( Elliot and McGregor, 2001 ; Midgley et al., 2001 ). Some researchers have found positive outcomes when learners have endorsed normative goals (a type of performance goal) ( Covington, 2000 ; Linnenbrink, 2005 ). Others have found that achievement goals do not have a direct effect on academic achievement but operate instead through the intermediary learning behaviors described above and through self-efficacy ( Hulleman et al., 2010 ).

Influence of Teachers on Learners’ Goals

Classrooms can be structured to make particular goals more or less salient and can shift or reinforce learners’ goal orientations ( Maehr and Midgley, 1996 ). Learners’ goals may reflect the classroom’s goal structure or the values teachers communicate about learning through their teaching practices (e.g., how the chairs are set up or whether the teacher uses cooperative learning groups) (see Kaplan and Midgley, 1999 ; Urdan et al., 1998 ). When learners perceive mastery goals are valued in the classsroom, they are more likely

TABLE 6-2 Achievement Goals and Classroom Climate

SOURCE: Adapted from Ames and Archer (1988 , Tbl. 1, p. 261).

to use information-processing strategies, self-planning, and self-monitoring strategies ( Ames and Archer, 1988 ; Schraw et al., 1995 ). A mastery-oriented structure in the classroom is positively correlated with high academic competency and negatively related to disruptive behaviors. Further, congruence in learners’ perceptions of their own and their school’s mastery orientation is associated with positive academic achievement and school well-being ( Kaplan and Maehr, 1999 ).

Teachers can influence the goals learners adopt during learning, and learners’ perceptions of classroom goal structures are better predictors of learners’ goal orientations than are their perceptions of their parents’ goals. Perceived classroom goals are also strongly linked to learners’ academic efficacy in the transition to middle school. Hence, classroom goal structures are a particularly important target for intervention ( Friedel et al., 2007 ; Kim et al., 2010 ). Table 6-2 summarizes a longstanding view of how the prevailing classroom goal structure—oriented toward either mastery goals or performance goals—affects the classroom climate for learning. However, more experimental research is needed to determine whether interventions designed to influence such mindsets benefit learners.

Learning Goals and Other Goals

Academic goals are shaped not only by the immediate learning context but also by the learners’ goals and challenges, which develop and change

throughout the life course. Enhancing a person’s learning and achievement requires an understanding of what the person is trying to achieve: what goals the individual seeks to accomplish and why. However, it is not always easy to determine what goals an individual is trying to achieve because learners have multiple goals and their goals may shift in response to events and experiences. For example, children may adopt an academic goal as a means of pleasing parents or because they enjoy learning about a topic, or both. Teachers may participate in an online statistics course in order to satisfy job requirements for continuing education or because they view mastery of the topic as relevant to their identity as a teacher, or both.

At any given time, an individual holds multiple goals related to achievement, belongingness, identity, autonomy, and sense of competence that are deeply personal, cultural, and subjective. Which of these goals becomes salient in directing behavior at what times depends on the way the individual construes the situation. During adolescence, for example, social belongingness goals may take precedence over academic achievement goals: young people may experience greater motivation and improved learning in a group context that fosters relationships that serve and support achievement. Over the life span, academic achievement goals also become linked to career goals, and these may need to be adapted over time. For example, an adolescent who aspires to become a physician but who continually fails her basic science courses may need to protect her sense of competence by either building new strategies for learning science or revising her occupational goals.

A person’s motivation to persist in learning in spite of obstacles and setbacks is facilitated when goals for learning and achievement are made explicit, are congruent with the learners’ desired outcomes and motives, and are supported by the learning environment, as judged by the learner; this perspective is illustrated in Box 6-2 .

Future Identities and Long-Term Persistence

Long-term learning and achievement tend to require not only the learner’s interest, but also prolonged motivation and persistence. Motivation to persevere may be strengthened when students can perceive connections between their current action choices (present self) and their future self or possible future identities ( Gollwitzer et al., 2011 ; Oyserman et al., 2015 ). The practice of displaying the names and accomplishments of past successful students is one way educators try to help current students see the connection.

Researchers have explored the mechanisms through which such experiences affect learning. Some neurobiological evidence, for example, suggests that compelling narratives that trigger emotions (such as admiration elicited by a story about a young person who becomes a civil rights leader for his community) may activate a mindset focused on a “possible future” or values

BOX 6-2 Learners’ Perceptions of the Learning Environment Can Inadvertently Undermine Motivation

( Immordino-Yang et al., 2009 ). Similar research also points to an apparent shifting between two distinct neural networks that researchers have associated with an “action now” mindset (with respect to the choices and behaviors for executing a task during learning) and a “possible future/values oriented”

mindset (with respect to whether difficult tasks are ones that “people like me” do) ( Immordino-Yang et al., 2012 ). Students who shift between these two mindsets may take a reflective stance that enables them to inspire themselves and to persist and perform well on difficult tasks to attain future goals ( Immordino-Yang and Sylvan, 2010 ).

Practices that help learners recognize the motivational demands required and obstacles to overcome for achieving desired future outcomes also may support goal attainment, as suggested in one study of children’s attempts to learn foreign-language vocabulary words ( Gollwitzer et al., 2011 ). Research is needed, however, to better establish the efficacy of practices designed to shape learners’ thinking about future identities and persistence

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON MOTIVATION

All learners’ goals emerge in a particular cultural context. As discussed in Chapter 2 , the way individuals perceive and interpret the world and their own role in it, and their expectations about how people function socially, reflect the unique set of influences they have experienced. The procedures people use to complete tasks and solve problems, as well as the social emotional dispositions people bring to such tasks, are similarly shaped by context and experience ( Elliott et al., 2001 ; Oyserman, 2011 ). In this section, the committee discusses three specific lines of research that illustrate the importance of culturally mediated views of the self and social identities to learners’ perceptions of learning environments, goals, and performance.

Cross-Cultural Differences in Learners’ Self-Construals

Over the past several decades, researchers have attempted to discern the influence of culture on a person’s self-construal, or definition of herself in reference to others. In an influential paper, Markus and Kitayama (1991) distinguished between independent and interdependent self-construals and proposed that these may be associated with individualistic or collectivistic goals. For example, they argued that East Asian cultures tend to emphasize collectivistic goals, which promote a comparatively interdependent self-construal in which the self is experienced as socially embedded and one’s accomplishments are tied to the community. In contrast, they argued, the prevailing North American culture tends to emphasize individualistic goals and an individualistic self-construal that prioritizes unique traits, abilities, and accomplishments tied to the self rather than to the community.

Although assigning cultural groups to either a collectivist or individualistic category oversimplifies very complex phenomena, several large-sample

survey studies have offered insights about the ways learners who fit these two categories tend to vary in their assessment of goals, the goals they see as relevant or salient, and the ways in which their goals relate to other phenomena such as school achievement ( King and McInerney, 2016 ). For example, in cross-cultural studies of academic goals, Dekker and Fischer (2008) found that gaining social approval in achievement contexts was particularly important for students who had a collectivist perspective. This cultural value may predispose students to adopt goals that help them to avoid the appearance of incompetence or negative judgments (i.e., performance-avoidance goals) ( Elliot, 1997 , 1999 ; Kitayama, Matsumoto, and Norasakkunkit, 1997 ).

More recent work has also explored the relationships between such differences and cultural context. For example, several studies have compared students’ indications of endorsement for performance-avoidance goals and found that Asian students endorsed these goals to a greater degree than European American students did ( Elliot et al., 2001 ; Zusho and Njoku, 2007 ; Zusho et al., 2005 ). This body of work seems to suggest that though there were differences, the performance avoidance may also have different outcomes in societies in which individualism is prioritized than in more collectivistic ones. These researchers found that performance-avoidance goals can be adaptive and associated with such positive academic outcomes as higher levels of engagement, deeper cognitive processing, and higher achievement. (See also the work of Chan and Lai [2006] on students in Hong Kong; Hulleman et al. [2010] ; and the work of King [2015] on students in the Philippines.)

Although cultures may vary on average in their emphasis on individualism and collectivism, learners may think in either individualistic and collectivistic terms if primed to do so ( Oyserman et al., 2009 ). For example, priming interventions such as those that encourage participants to call up personal memories of cross-cultural experiences ( Tadmor et al., 2013 ) have been used successfully to shift students from their tendency to take one cultural perspective or the other. Work on such interventions is based on the assumption that one cultural perspective is not inherently better than the other: the most effective approaches would depend on what the person is trying to achieve in the moment and the context in which he is operating. Problem solving is facilitated when the salient mindset is well matched to the task at hand, suggesting that flexibility in cultural mindset also may promote flexible cognitive functioning and adaptability to circumstances ( Vezzali et al., 2016 ).

This perspective also suggests the potential benefits of encouraging learners to think about problems and goals from different cultural perspectives. Some evidence suggests that these and other multicultural priming interventions improve creativity and persistence because they cue individuals to think of problems as having multiple possible solutions. For instance, priming learners to adopt a multicultural mindset may support more-divergent thinking about multiple possible goals related to achievement, family, identity, and

friendships and more flexible action plans for achieving those goals. Teachers may be able to structure learning opportunities that incorporate diverse perspectives related to cultural self-construals in order to engage students more effectively ( Morris et al., 2015 ).

However, a consideration for both research and practice moving forward is that there may be much more variation within cultural models of the self than has been assumed. In a large study of students across several nations that examined seven different dimensions related to self-construal ( Vignoles et al., 2016 ), researchers found neither a consistent contrast between Western and non-Western cultures nor one between collectivistic and individualistic cultures. To better explain cultural variation, the authors suggested an ecocultural perspective that takes into account racial/ethnic identity.

Social Identity and Motivation Processes

Identity is a person’s sense of who she is. It is the lens through which an individual makes sense of experiences and positions herself in the social world. Identity has both personal and social dimensions that play an important role in shaping an individual’s goals and motivation. The personal dimensions of identity tend to be traits (e.g., being athletic or smart) and values (e.g., being strongly committed to a set of religious or political beliefs). Social dimensions of identity are linked to social roles or characteristics that make one recognizable as a member of a group, such as being a woman or a Christian ( Tajfel and Turner, 1979 ). They can operate separately (e.g., “an African American”) or in combination (“an African American male student”) ( Oyserman, 2009 ).

Individuals tend to engage in activities that connect them to their social identities because doing so can support their sense of belonging and esteem and help them integrate into a social group. This integration often means taking on the particular knowledge, goals, and practices valued by that group ( Nasir, 2002 ). The dimensions of identity are dynamic, malleable, and very sensitive to the situations in which people find themselves ( Oyserman, 2009 ; Steele, 1997 ). This means the identity a person takes on at any moment is contingent on the circumstances

A number of studies indicate that a positive identification with one’s racial or ethnic identity supports a sense of school belonging, as well as greater interest, engagement, and success in academic pursuits. For example, African American adolescents with positive attitudes toward their racial/ethnic group express higher efficacy beliefs and report more interest and engagement in school ( Chavous et al., 2003 ). The value of culturally connected racial/ethnic identity is also evident for Mexican and Chinese adolescents ( Fuligni et al., 2005 ). In middle school, this culturally connected identity is linked to higher grade-point averages among African American ( Altschul et al., 2006 ; Eccles et al., 2006 ), Latino ( Oyserman, 2009 ), and Native American students in North

BOX 6-3 Basketball, Mathematics, and Identity

America ( Fryberg et al., 2013 ). The research described in Box 6-3 illustrates the potential and powerful influence of social identity on learners’ engagement with a task.

Stereotype Threat

The experience of being evaluated in academic settings can heighten self-awareness, including awareness of the stereotypes linked to the social group to which one belongs and that are associated with one’s ability ( Steele, 1997 ). The effects of social identity on motivation and performance may be positive, as illustrated in the previous section, but negative stereotypes can lead people to underperform on cognitive tasks (see Steele et al., 2002 ; Walton and Spencer, 2009 ). This phenomenon is known as stereotype threat , an unconscious worry that a stereotype about one’s social group could be applied to oneself or that one might do something to confirm the stereotype ( Steele, 1997 ). Steele has noted that stereotype threat is most likely in areas of performance in which individuals are particularly motivated.

In a prototypical experiment to test stereotype threat, a difficult achievement test is given to individuals who belong to a group for whom a negative stereotype about ability in that achievement domain exists. For example, women are given a test in math. The test is portrayed as either gender-neutral

(women and men do equally well on it) or—in the threat condition—as one at which women do less well. In the threat condition, members of the stereotyped group perform at lower levels than they do in the gender-neutral condition. In the case of women and math, for instance, women perform more poorly on the math test than would be expected given their actual ability (as demonstrated in other contexts) ( Steele and Aronson, 1995 ). Several studies have replicated this finding ( Beilock et al., 2008 ; Dar-Nimrod and Heine, 2006 ; Good et al., 2008 ; Spencer et al., 1999 ), and the finding is considered to be robust, especially on high-stakes tests such as the SAT ( Danaher and Crandall, 2008 ) and GRE.

The effects of negative stereotypes about African American and Latino students are among the most studied in this literature because these stereotypes have been persistent in the United States ( Oyserman et al., 1995 ). Sensitivity to these learning-related stereotypes appears as early as second grade ( Cvencek et al., 2011 ) and grows as children enter adolescence ( McKown and Strambler, 2009 ). Among college-age African Americans, underperformance occurs in contexts in which students believe they are being academically evaluated ( Steele and Aronson, 1995 ). African American school-age children perform worse on achievement tests when they are reminded of stereotypes associated with their social group ( Schmader et al., 2008 ; Wasserberg, 2014 ). Similar negative effects of stereotype threat manifest among Latino youth ( Aronson and Salinas, 1997 ; Gonzales et al., 2002 ; Schmader and Johns, 2003 ).

Stereotype threat is believed to undermine performance by lowering executive functioning and heightening anxiety and worry about what others will think if the individual fails, which robs the person of working memory resources. Thus, the negative effects of stereotype threat may not be as apparent on easy tasks but arise in the context of difficult and challenging tasks that require mental effort ( Beilock et al., 2007 ).

Neurophysiological evidence supports this understanding of the mechanisms underlying stereotype threat. Under threatening conditions, individuals show lower levels of activation in the brain’s prefrontal cortex, reflecting impaired executive functioning and working memory ( Beilock et al., 2007 ; Cadinu et al., 2005 ; Johns et al., 2008 ; Lyons and Beilock, 2012 ; Schmader and Jones, 2003 ) and higher levels of activation in fear circuits, including, for example, in the amygdala ( Spencer et al., 1999 ; Steele and Aronson, 1995 ).

In the short term, stereotype threat can result in upset, distraction, anxiety, and other conditions that interfere with learning and performance ( Pennington et al., 2016 ). Stereotype threat also may have long-term deleterious effects because it can lead people to conclude that they are not likely to be successful in a domain of performance ( Aronson, 2004 ; Steele, 1997 ). It has been suggested that the longer-term effects of stereotype threat may be one cause of longstanding achievement gaps ( Walton and Spencer, 2009 ). For example, women for whom the poor-at-math stereotype was primed reported

more negative thoughts about math ( Cadinu et al., 2005 ). Such threats can be subtly induced. In one classroom study, cues in the form of gendered objects in the room led high school girls to report less interest in taking computer science courses ( Master et al., 2015 ).

Students can maintain positive academic self-concepts in spite of negative stereotypes when supported in doing so ( Anderman and Maehr, 1994 ; Graham, 1994 ; Yeager and Walton, 2011 ). For example, a study by Walton and Spencer (2009) illustrates that under conditions that reduce psychological threat, students for whom a stereotype about their social group exists perform better than nonstereotyped students at the same level of past performance (see Figure 6-1 ).

These findings highlight an important feature of stereotype threat: it is not a characteristic solely of a person or of a context but rather a condition that results from an interaction between the two. To be negatively affected, a person must be exposed to and perceive a potential cue in the environment and be aware of a stereotype about the social group with which he identifies ( Aronson et al., 1999 ). For example, in a study of African American children in an urban elementary school, introduction of a reading test as an index of ability hampered performance only among students who reported being aware of racial stereotypes about intelligence ( Walton and Spencer, 2009 ).

It also appears that the learner must tie her identity to the domain of skills

being tested. For example, students who have a strong academic identity and value academic achievement highly are more vulnerable to academic stereotype threat than are other students ( Aronson et al., 1999 ; Keller, 2007 ; Lawrence et al., 2010 ; Leyens et al., 2000 ; Steele, 1997 ).

Researchers have identified several actions educators can take that may help to manage stereotype threat. One is to remove the social identity characteristic (e.g., race or gender) as an evaluating factor, thereby reducing the possibility of confirming a stereotype ( Steele, 1997 ). This requires bolstering or repositioning dimensions of social identity. Interventions of this sort are likely to work not because they reduce the perception of, or eliminate, stereotype threat, but because they change students responses to the threatening situation ( Aronson et al., 2001 ; Good et al., 2003 ). For example, learners can be repositioned as the bearers of knowledge or expertise, which can facilitate identity shifts that enable learners to open up to opportunities for learning ( Lee, 2012 ). In research that confronted women with negative gender-based stereotypes about their performance in mathematics but prompted them to think of other aspects of their identity, the women performed on par with men and appeared to be buffered against the deleterious effects of gender-based stereotypes. Women who did not receive the encouragement performed worse than their male counterparts ( Gresky et al., 2005 ). Such findings suggest that having opportunities to be reminded of the full range of dimensions of one’s identity may promote resilience against stereotype threats. Notably, interventions that have addressed stereotype threat tend to target and support identity rather than self-esteem. However, clear feedback that sets high expectations and assures a student that he can reach those expectations are also important ( Cohen and Steele, 2002 ; Cohen et al., 1999 ).

Values-affirmation interventions are designed to reduce self-handicapping behavior and increase motivation to perform. Enabling threatened individuals to affirm their talents in other domains through self-affirmations has in some situations strengthened students’ sense of self ( McQueen and Klein, 2006 ). Values-affirmation exercises in which students write about their personal values (e.g., art, sports, music) have bolstered personal identity, reduced threat, and improved academic performance among students experiencing threat ( Cohen et al., 2006 , 2009 ; Martens et al., 2006 ). In randomized field experiments, self-affirmation tasks were associated with better grades for middle school students ( Cohen et al., 2006 , 2009 ) 4 and college students ( Miyake et al., 2010 ). However, other studies have not replicated these findings (e.g., Dee, 2015 ; Hanselman et al., 2017 ), so research is needed to determine for whom and under which conditions values-affirmation approaches may be effective.

Although research suggests steps that educators can take that may help to

4 The 2006 study included 119 African American and 119 European American students; the 2009 study was a 2-year follow-up with the same sample.

eliminate stereotype threat, much of this research has been in highly controlled settings. The full range of factors that may be operating and interacting with one another has yet to be fully examined in real-world environments. However, educators can take into account the influences that research has identified as potentially causing, exacerbating, or ameliorating the effects of stereotype threat on their own students’ motivation, learning, and performance.

INTERVENTIONS TO IMPROVE MOTIVATION

Many students experience a decline in motivation from the primary grades through high school ( Gallup, Inc., 2014 ; Jacobs et al., 2002 ; Lepper et al., 2005 ). Researchers are beginning to develop interventions motivated by theories of motivation to improve student motivation and learning.

Some interventions focus on the psychological mechanisms that affect students’ construal of the learning environment and the goals they develop to adapt to that environment. For example, a brief intervention was designed to enhance student motivation by helping learners to overcome the negative impact of stereotype threat on social belongingness and sense of self ( Yeager et al., 2016 ). In a randomized controlled study, African American and European American college students were asked to write a speech that attributed adversity in learning to a common aspect of the college-adjustment process rather than to personal deficits or their ethnic group ( Walton and Cohen, 2011 ). After 3 years, African American students who had participated in the intervention reported less uncertainty about belonging and showed greater improvement in their grade point averages compared to the European American students.

One group of interventions to address performance setbacks has focused on exercises to help students shift from a fixed view of intelligence to a growth theory of intelligence. For example, in 1-year-long study, middle school students attended an eight-session workshop in which they either learned about study skills alone (control condition) or both study skills and research on how the brain improves and grows by working on challenging tasks (the growth mindset condition). At the end of the year, students in the growth mindset condition had significantly improved their math grades compared to students who only learned about study skills. However, the effect size was small and limited to a small subset of underachieving students ( Blackwell et al., 2007 ).

The subjective and personal nature of the learner’s experiences and the dynamic nature of the learning environment require that motivational interventions be flexible enough to take account of changes in the individual and in the learning environment. Over the past decade, a number of studies have suggested that interventions that enhance both short- and long-term motivation and achievement using brief interventions or exercises can be effective (e.g., Yeager and Walton, 2011 ). The interventions that have shown sustained effects on aspects of motivation and learning are based on relatively brief activities

and exercises that directly target how students interpret their experiences, particularly their challenges in school and during learning.

The effectiveness of brief interventions appears to stem from their impact on the individual’s construal of the situation and the motivational processes they set in motion, which in turn support longer-term achievement. Brief interventions to enhance motivation and achievement appear to share several important characteristics. First, the interventions directly target the psychological mechanisms that affect student motivation rather than academic content. Second, the interventions adopt a student-centric perspective that takes into account the student’s subjective experience in and out of school. Third, the brief interventions are designed to indirectly affect how students think or feel about school or about themselves in school through experience, rather than attempting to persuade them to change their thinking, which is likely to be interpreted as controlling. Fourth, these brief interventions focus on reducing barriers to student motivation rather than directly increasing student motivation. Such interventions appear particularly promising for African American students and other cultural groups who are subjected to negative stereotypes about learning and ability. However, as Yeager and Walton (2011) note, the effectiveness of these interventions appears to depend on both context and implementation.

Studies such as these are grounded in different theories of motivation related to the learners’ cognition, affect, or behavior and are intended to affect different aspects of motivation. Lazowski and Hulleman (2016) conducted a meta-analysis of research on such interventions to identify their effects on outcomes in education settings. The studies included using measures of authentic education outcomes (e.g., standardized test scores, persistence at a task, course choices, or engagement) and showed consistent, small effects across intervention type.

However, this meta-analysis was small: only 74 published and unpublished papers met criteria for inclusion, and the included studies involved a wide range of theoretical perspectives, learner populations, types of interventions, and measured outcomes. These results are not a sufficient basis for conclusions about practice, but further research may help identify which interventions work best for whom and under which conditions, as well as factors that affect implementation (such as dosage, frequency, and timing). Improvements in the ability to clearly define, distinguish among, and measure motivational constructs could improve the validity and usefulness of intervention research.

CONCLUSIONS

When learners want and expect to succeed, they are more likely to value learning, persist at challenging tasks, and perform well. A broad constellation of factors and circumstances may either trigger or undermine students’ desire

to learn and their decisions to expend effort on learning, whether in the moment or over time. These factors include learners’ beliefs and values, personal goals, and social and cultural context. Advances since the publication of HPL I provide robust evidence for the importance of both an individual’s goals in motivation related to learning and the active role of the learner in shaping these goals, based on how that learner conceives the learning context and the experiences that occur during learning. There is also strong evidence for the view that engagement and intrinsic motivation develop and change over time—these are not properties of the individual or the environment alone.

While empirical and theoretical work in this area continues to develop, recent research does strongly support the following conclusion:

CONCLUSION 6-1: Motivation to learn is influenced by the multiple goals that individuals construct for themselves as a result of their life and school experiences and the sociocultural context in which learning takes place. Motivation to learn is fostered for learners of all ages when they perceive the school or learning environment is a place where they “belong” and when the environment promotes their sense of agency and purpose.

More research is needed on instructional methods and how the structure of formal schooling can influence motivational processes. What is already known does support the following general guidance for educators:

CONCLUSION 6-2: Educators may support learners’ motivation by attending to their engagement, persistence, and performance by:

• helping them to set desired learning goals and appropriately challenging goals for performance;
• creating learning experiences that they value;
• supporting their sense of control and autonomy;
• developing their sense of competency by helping them to recognize, monitor, and strategize about their learning progress; and
• creating an emotionally supportive and nonthreatening learning environment where learners feel safe and valued.

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There are many reasons to be curious about the way people learn, and the past several decades have seen an explosion of research that has important implications for individual learning, schooling, workforce training, and policy.

In 2000, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition was published and its influence has been wide and deep. The report summarized insights on the nature of learning in school-aged children; described principles for the design of effective learning environments; and provided examples of how that could be implemented in the classroom.

Since then, researchers have continued to investigate the nature of learning and have generated new findings related to the neurological processes involved in learning, individual and cultural variability related to learning, and educational technologies. In addition to expanding scientific understanding of the mechanisms of learning and how the brain adapts throughout the lifespan, there have been important discoveries about influences on learning, particularly sociocultural factors and the structure of learning environments.

How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures provides a much-needed update incorporating insights gained from this research over the past decade. The book expands on the foundation laid out in the 2000 report and takes an in-depth look at the constellation of influences that affect individual learning. How People Learn II will become an indispensable resource to understand learning throughout the lifespan for educators of students and adults.

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How to Promote the Intrinsic Desire to Learn

Rather than relying on grades as external motivators, teachers can help students develop intrinsic motivation by providing opportunities for autonomy and building their sense of competence.

A case can be made, and researchers have made it, that motivation is one of the keystones of teaching and learning (Dorn et al., 2017).

As an educator, based on my life and professional experience, I may have a fairly solid idea of what I believe students might need to know in order to be successful academically and professionally. However, how much does that matter if my students are not motivated to learn what I am teaching?

Of course, I can try to entice their interest through “dangling carrots” like grades, points, prizes, gold stars, etc, (or threatening “sticks” like detention or negative calls home). This kind of “extrinsic motivation” can work, but usually only for the short term and typically for tasks that don’t require much higher-order thinking (“Daniel Pink on Incentives and the Two Types of Motivation,” n.d.).

On the other hand, “intrinsic motivation” describes a situation where the energy to act comes more from inside the learner. In other words, the reward is the activity itself. The late educator Ken Robinson talked (Ferlazzo, 2012) about how farmers can’t force their crops to grow, but they can create the conditions that support their seeds' ability to grow—providing the right soil, water, and care. This description is similar to the challenge teachers face with encouraging student intrinsic motivation—we can’t make them have it, but we can create the classroom conditions where that kind of motivation is more likely to develop and flourish.

Extensive research documents the benefits of intrinsic motivation over the extrinsic kind. Intrinsic motivation tends to lead to greater academic achievement and a better sense of well-being (Burton et al., 2006) lasts longer, enhances creativity, and cultivates higher-order thinking (Brewster & Fager, 2000).

Extrinsic motivation tends to reduce long-term interest and effort in the topic at hand (Deci et al., 1999; Kohn, 2018; Wehe et al., 2015) and reduce creativity, as well (Hennessey, 2000). Research has found that motivation driven by extrinsic factors tends to lead to “decreased well-being” (Howard et al., 2021). Experiments using student rewards to improve academic achievement have failed repeatedly (Adams, 2014; Dietrichson et al., 2020; Ferlazzo, 2016). If and when incentives have resulted in very limited short-term “success,” researchers have found they tend to increase participants’ focus on the reward itself, not on the task. Work quality then suffers, and task interest tends to decline to previous levels—or below them—after the reward is given (Kohn, 2016).

Students, especially teens, in the United States report exceptionally high feelings of disengagement from school (Sparks, 2020; Yale University, 2020)—and that was before the COVID pandemic. It does not seem to be a stretch to consider that the high levels of extrinsic motivation present in most classes and schools might contribute to these strong negative perspectives.

Emphasizing intrinsic motivation also makes me feel better about myself as a teacher and, I believe, also contributes towards creating an overall class atmosphere of a “community of learners” instead of a “classroom of students.” No one wants to be treated like a rat in a maze, and I certainly don’t want to view myself as a teacher who even vaguely can be described as promoting that kind of system.

Does that mean I never use extrinsic motivation in my classroom? Of course not. I was a community organizer for nineteen years prior to becoming a secondary teacher twenty years ago. Organizers talk about working “in the world as it is” and not in “the world as we’d like it to be.” Creating the conditions to encourage student intrinsic motivation can sometimes be hard and time-consuming. It’s not at all unusual for me to offer extra credit, grade by using points, and offer healthy snacks as game prizes, and I am definitely not above sometimes “threatening” negative consequences for inappropriate behaviors. I am not a Pollyanna with my head up in the clouds, and live “in the world as it is.” However, often (though not always) when I apply “carrots,” I also briefly talk with students about how it is more of an exception to the “rule.” The “rule” is that I hope students generally do things in our class because they want to, and not because they feel a need to pursue rewards.

When it comes to using “sticks,” I try to follow the advice (with a slight adjustment) of Dr. Edward Deci, perhaps the preeminent researcher in the world on intrinsic motivation. He acknowledges that a negative consequence might have to be used, but then “you need to sit down the next afternoon when everyone’s calm, talk it through from both sides, then discuss ways so the behavior doesn’t happen again.... Always use the blow-up as a learning moment the next day” (Feiler, 2013, para. 18). 

My modification to his advice comes from my community organizing experience, where we learned that “polarization” can happen, but that “depolarization” can be most effective if it happens fairly quickly. In that spirit, I try to make that follow-up conversation happen during the same class or track the student down later in the day.

It is also important to keep in mind that students—and the rest of us—can be motivated by both a desire to learn what is being taught and wanting a good grade, just as an interest in being a better teacher motivated me to write this book, as well as the possible additional income I could gain from royalties.

Let’s also recognize the role of what writer Daniel Pink calls “baseline rewards” (“Daniel Pink on Incentives and the Two Types of Motivation,” n.d.) and that is also supported by other research (Ferlazzo, 2015; Kaplan, 2015). The “baseline rewards” concept suggests that basic extrinsic “rewards” in a classroom (a caring teacher, engaging lessons, predictable and fair grading, cleanliness, respectful rules and atmosphere, etc.) or in a job situation (reasonable salary, safe working conditions) must be present for people to have any sort of motivation at all.

Absent those kinds of “baseline rewards” and participants will tend to focus on the inequitable and unfair situation rather than on learning or on being productive.

But even though I recognize the role of extrinsic motivation in the lives of my students and in my life, I am also constantly striving in my classroom to create “the world as I’d like it to be” by creating the conditions where intrinsic motivation can blossom. This book shares what teachers can do to make that world happen more often in our classes.

For effective educators, there is always tension between “the world as it is” and “the world as we’d like it to be.” If we always operate out of the former, we can become transactional pragmatists always settling for what appears to be the easiest short-term solution. If we always operate out of the latter, we can become hopeless sentimentalists who are likely to become disillusioned and burnt-out. But it’s not a question of either/or and, instead, it’s more of one considering which side do you tend to operate on, and if you tend to use the former to lead you to more of the latter. I would suggest that favoring that side of the coin is the perspective that is more likely to keep you—and your students—in a content and effective learning situation.

Researchers have identified four general areas that can contribute towards creating the conditions where intrinsic motivation can be supported (Center on Education Policy, 2012; Ryan & Deci, 2000), and they serve as the basis for the next four chapters in this book:

• Autonomy: having a degree of control over what needs to happen and how it can be done
• Competence: feeling that one has the ability to be successful in doing it
• Relatedness: doing the activity helps the student feel more connected to others, and feel cared about by people whom they respect
• Relevance: the work must be seen by students as interesting and valuable to them, and useful to their present lives and/or hopes and dreams for the future

Not everything we do in the classroom has to involve all four of these elements, but I do think we can include some of them in most of our lessons. There will be times, however, that students are required to do tasks that make it challenging to include even one of them (for example, taking state standardized tests). In those cases, I believe it’s a safe guess that students are likely to be more engaged in them if their teachers have emphasized the conditions for intrinsic motivation most of the rest of the time.

Excerpt from The Student Motivation Handbook: 50 Ways to Boost an Intrinsic Desire to Learn by Larry Ferlazzo, © 2023 Routledge/Taylor & Francis, Used with permission.

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On what motivates us: a detailed review of intrinsic v. extrinsic motivation

Laurel s. morris.

1 Department of Psychiatry, Depression and Anxiety Center for Discovery and Treatment, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029 USA

Mora M. Grehl

2 Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122 USA

Sarah B. Rutter

Marishka mehta, margaret l. westwater.

3 Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510 USA

Motivational processes underlie behaviors that enrich the human experience, and impairments in motivation are commonly observed in psychiatric illness. While motivated behavior is often examined with respect to extrinsic reinforcers, not all actions are driven by reactions to external stimuli; some are driven by ‘intrinsic’ motivation. Intrinsically motivated behaviors are computationally similar to extrinsically motivated behaviors, in that they strive to maximize reward value and minimize punishment. However, our understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms that underlie intrinsically motivated behavior remains limited. Dysfunction in intrinsic motivation represents an important trans-diagnostic facet of psychiatric symptomology, but due to a lack of clear consensus, the contribution of intrinsic motivation to psychopathology remains poorly understood. This review aims to provide an overview of the conceptualization, measurement, and neurobiology of intrinsic motivation, providing a framework for understanding its potential contributions to psychopathology and its treatment. Distinctions between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are discussed, including divergence in the types of associated rewards or outcomes that drive behavioral action and choice. A useful framework for understanding intrinsic motivation, and thus separating it from extrinsic motivation, is developed and suggestions for optimization of paradigms to measure intrinsic motivation are proposed.

Introduction

Motivation is an integral component of human experience. Children spontaneously explore novel items, and adults autonomously engage in new hobbies, even in the absence of clear extrinsic reinforcers. Thus, not all actions are driven by tangible external stimuli or outcomes, known as ‘extrinsic’ motivation, but are driven by more internal drivers, known as ‘intrinsic’ motivation, where the activity is perceived as its own outcome.

Intrinsically motivated behaviors are computationally similar to extrinsically motivated behaviors, in that they strive to maximize goal attainment and minimize punishment, represented mathematically as value and effort cost functions, respectively (Gottlieb, Lopes, & Oudeyer, 2016 ). However, subjective internal value functions are difficult to characterize, and our understanding of how they are computed and integrated is limited (Gottlieb et al., 2016 ).

Dysfunction in intrinsic motivation represents an important transdiagnostic facet of psychiatric symptomology, which is often classified as distinct psychological constructs, such as apathy in neurological disorders, anhedonia in depression, and negative symptoms in schizophrenia. Each of these symptom domains may be underpinned by a shared dysfunction of intrinsic motivation, and interventions targeting intrinsic motivation have the potential to improve treatment outcomes for affected individuals.

However, due to a lack of clear consensus, the contribution of intrinsic motivation to psychiatric disorders remains poorly understood. This review aims to provide an overview of the conceptualization, measurement, and neurobiology of intrinsic motivation, providing a framework for understanding the potential contributions to psychopathology and its treatment.

Historical conceptualizations of intrinsic motivation

During the early 20th century, prominent descriptions of motivation were at odds with each other. Woodworth ( 1918 ) suggested that intrinsic motivation governed activities perpetuated by their own ‘native drive’, whereas Thorndike ( 1911 ) and Watson ( 1913 ) argued that external stimuli governed behavior. Also centered on internal drives, Hull's ( 1943 ) ‘drive theory’ posited that all behaviors were performed to seek or avoid primary biological states, including hunger or pain. However, the drive theory could not explain many behavioral anomalies, such as hungry rats withstanding painful electric shocks to explore a novel environment (Nissen, 1930 ), or rhesus monkeys performing a puzzle task for no biological reason or external reinforcer (Harlow, 1950 ). By narrowly presuming that biological states drive all behavior, drive theory failed to account for instances in which an organism prioritizes higher-order cognitive drives over physiological ones.

The shortcomings of drive theory led to the emergence of alternate theories of intrinsic motivation. Some argued that homeostatic maintenance of optimal biological or cognitive states (Hebb, 1955 ; McClelland & Clark, 1953 ; McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1967 ), or mitigation of incongruency or uncertainty (Festinger, 1957 ; Kagan, 1972 ), drove behavior. However, these theories emphasized external stimuli or cognitive representations of external goal states as key drivers of behavior. In the mid-to-late 20th century, several models underscored the importance of novelty-seeking, interest, and autonomy in driving intrinsic motivation. Novelty-seeking was suggested to energize approach behavior via curiosity and exploration that leads to skill mastery, information attainment, or learning (Kaplan & Oudeyer, 2007 ). Interest and enjoyment in an activity might boost intrinsic motivation by engendering ‘flow’, a prolonged state of focus and enjoyment during task engagement that stretches one's skillset (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975 ; Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2009 ). Finally, self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1980 ) proposed that human needs for competence, achievement, and autonomy drive intrinsic motivation, aligning with observations that intrinsic motivation stems from an internal perceived autonomy during task engagement (DeCharms, 1968 ; Lamal, 2003 ). These models highlight the role of achievement and perceived autonomy (DeCharms, 1968 ) in driving intrinsic motivation, coinciding with current computational frameworks of intrinsic reward (Chew, Blain, Dolan, & Rutledge, 2021 ; Murayama, Matsumoto, Izuma, & Matsumoto, 2010 ).

The introduction of external goals: a shift to extrinsic motivation

While intrinsic motivation has been proposed to be divorced from external reinforcers, our understanding of motivation has been led largely by using external reinforcers as conceptual and experimental tools. Here, we briefly review historical perspectives on external drivers of motivated behavior, outlining prominent goal- and action-focused models of extrinsic motivation.

Early psychological models of extrinsic motivation suggested that ‘will’ and ‘intention’ fostered goal achievement, emphasizing the influence of goal expectation on action and control (Lewin, 1951 ; Tolman, 1932 ). Within this framework, environmental features, as well as an individual's internal state or memory, determine their actions when pursuing a goal, or, more specifically, the cognitive representation of a goal (Kagan, 1972 ). This requires multiple cognitive representations to be developed, maintained, and updated, with a particular reliance on external stimuli and learning (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999 ; Kagan, 1972 ; Kagan & Moss, 1983 ).

Alongside psychological model development, economic models of motivation emerged. These models propose that extrinsic goals, or incentives, elicit motivated behavior via a cost-benefit analysis, where motivated choice occurs when benefits outweigh costs. More recently, behavioral economics has considered how individual personality traits, biases, and irrationalities influence motivated behavior (Strombach, Strang, Park, & Kenning, 2016 ). A recent model (Strombach et al., 2016 ) incorporates various factors into the classical cost-benefit analysis, including traditional intrinsic (e.g. satisfaction) and extrinsic drivers (e.g. money), with negative influences from costs (e.g. effort, pain), which are merged into a single dynamic, subjective and state-dependent factor that drives motivated behavior. Though this approach is powerful, the explicit focus on incentives provides limited explanatory power for various paradoxical behaviors, including rodents overcoming the high cost to self-stimulate certain brain regions (e.g. nucleus accumbens; Nac) or extrinsic reinforcers' dampening effect on intrinsic motivation.

In reinforcement learning models of decision-making, an organism, or agent, learns which actions maximize total reward. This process has been formalized within computational sciences and modern artificial intelligence systems (Sutton & Barto, 1981 ; Witten, 1977 ), where learning and decision-making depend on an extrinsic outcome. One theory suggests that motivated action is driven solely by a need to reduce reward prediction errors (RPEs; Kaplan and Oudeyer, 2007 ), or the mismatch between expectation and outcome (Montague, Dayan, & Sejnowski, 1996 ; Schultz et al., 1997 ). RPEs can also be conceptualized as valuation signals for novel outcomes or unexpected stimuli. RPE-based learning then drives motivated behavior, or action choice, but even if the agent displays intact encoding of action or outcome value, motivated behavior can be dampened by reduced novelty. This highlights the role of novelty, expectation and prediction in learning per se , rather than choice valuation.

In action-focused models of motivation, incentives can trigger approach or avoidance behavior by signaling a potential goal state (Berridge, Robinson, & Aldridge, 2009 ). Incentive motivation thus relies on expectancy, probability, and value of outcomes, which are thought to dictate behavioral choice and decision-making. While greater reliance on stimulus-outcome rather than stimulus-response contingencies has led some to describe incentive motivation as proactive (Beckmann & Heckhausen, 2018 ), others have characterized it as reactive due to the central role of learning from past experience (Bolles, 1972 ). Reliance on an expected outcome was central to behaviorism (Watson, 1913 , 1930 ) and operant conditioning (Skinner, 1938 ), which assume that actions are driven by a reinforcer, and instrumental value is assigned to the behavior itself. Stimulus-response pairs dominate behaviorism and modern theories of habitual behavior (Gläscher, Daw, Dayan, & O'Doherty, 2010 ), where the dependency on previously reinforced actions ultimately governs motivated choice (de Wit et al., 2011 ; Gillan, Robbins, Sahakian, van den Heuvel, & van Wingen, 2016 ; Voon et al., 2014 ). However, this renders behaviors as repetitive, insensitive to punishment and divorced from goals (Robbins, Gillan, Smith, de Wit, & Ersche, 2012 ). Therefore, these action-focused models of motivated behavior almost entirely discount intrinsic motivation since extrinsic motivators usurp control of behavior.

Several limitations of extrinsic motivation models must be considered when attempting to characterize intrinsic motivation. First, for cost-benefit analysis and reinforcement learning, an internal representation of the outcome must first be learned, which requires previous experience of the goal. However, intrinsic motivation can occur for novel outcomes, or behaviors that are uncertain or ambiguous. Second, motivation can occur for activities that may already be fully predictable, marking a significant limitation for reinforcement-learning models of motivation, which assume that reward prediction errors drive learning for motivated action. Third, these frameworks cannot fully explain spontaneous novelty seeking or exploratory behavior, in which no external reward is expected and no cost is overcome (Deci et al., 1999 ; Marsden, Ma, Deci, Ryan, & Chiu, 2014 ).

Separating and integrating intrinsic and extrinsic motivation

A key question is whether intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can, or should, be experimentally or theoretically separated. There is some evidence that they are dissociable constructs at the neural level. The most compelling support comes from case reports of patients with basal ganglia lesions who developed ‘psychic akinesia’, a syndrome characterized by difficulty with self-generated action initiation but no difficulty in performing complex cognitive or motor tasks when prompted (Laplane, Baulac, Widlocher, & Dubois, 1984 ; Lugaresi, Montagna, Morreale, & Gallassi, 1990 ). In patients with alien hand syndrome, medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) lesions lead to a loss of intentional motor control, whereas (pre)-supplementary motor area lesions lead to impairments in implementing motor intentions (Brugger, Galovic, Weder, & Kägi, 2015 ; Nachev, Kennard, & Husain, 2008 ). Preclinical findings further show that photostimulation of GABAergic amygdala projections modulates extrinsic motivation without affecting intrinsically motivated behavior (Seo et al., 2016 ). Together, these findings suggest that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation reflect different cortico-striatal-limbic circuits.

Behavioral research primarily supports the view that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are partially distinct, interacting processes. For example, if the motivation for intrinsic and extrinsic goals were independent constructs, they might demonstrate an additive or subtractive effect on each other (Woodworth, 1921 ). Indeed, the expectation (Liu & Hou, 2017 ) and experience (Badami, VaezMousavi, Wulf, & Namazizadeh, 2011 ) of an extrinsic reinforcer can increase intrinsic motivation. However, reports of the ‘undermining effect’, in which an external reinforcer reduces intrinsic motivation (Cerasoli, Nicklin, & Ford, 2014 ; Deci, 1971 ; Deci, Benware, & Landy, 1974 ; Lepper & Greene, 1978 ; Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973 ) have sparked debate over how extrinsic reinforcers affect internally-motived behaviors (Cameron & Pierce, 2002 ; Lamal, 2003 ; Lepper, Keavney, & Drake, 1996 ). One explanation for the undermining effect suggests that the presence of an external reinforcer shifts one's perception of the locus of control over the behavior from internal to external (Deci & Ryan, 1980 ). This implicates a key role of agency, or the belief of action ownership, in intrinsic motivation. While controversial, mounting evidence supports this account of the undermining effect, where various extrinsic motivators (e.g. food, social observation; Ryan, 1982 ) decrease intrinsic motivation when their delivery is contingent on task-performance.

A useful framework for parsing motivated action into intrinsic and extrinsic is the Rubicon model of action phases (Heckhausen & Heckhausen, 2018 ; Heckhausen, 1989 ). Within this framework, pre-decisional option deliberation occurs, which is followed by choice intention formation and planning, volitional action, outcome achievement, and evaluation ( Fig. 1 ). Husain and Roiser ( 2018 ) recently proposed a complementary model to deconstruct apathy and anhedonia into underlying cognitive processes, including option generation, anticipation, action initiation, prediction, consumption and learning. This parcellation broadly reflects the five main stages of the Rubicon model: (1) pre-decisional deliberation ( option generation ); (2) intention formation, planning, initiation ( anticipation ); (3) volitional action ( action initiation, prediction ), (4) outcome achievement ( consumption ); and (5) evaluation ( learning ; Figure 1 ). Within these overlapping frameworks, the initial pre-decisional deliberation/option generation phase represents the point at which intrinsic and extrinsic facets of motivation diverge, as early drivers of behavior can be intrinsic (e.g. enjoyment, interest, exploration) or extrinsic (e.g. social reward). The differences between these early drivers highlight a key distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, in which the former is a fundamentally proactive process and the latter reactive.

Schematic framework for parsing motivated action. Motivated decision-making and action is parsed into separate phases of choice, action and outcome valuation, combining and building upon separate frameworks including the Rubicon model of action phases, well-established computational mechanisms and a recent cognitive framework describing anhedonia and apathy. During choice valuation, pre-decisional deliberation includes option generation, a cost-benefit analysis and option selection. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation diverges during this early choice valuation phase. Once choice valuation has been computed and an option selected, planning and anticipation occurs. During action valuation, volitional action is initiated and action sustainment or acceleration is maintained. During outcome valuation, outcome achievement and consumption ensue, followed by evaluation based on learning via prediction error (PE) updating. Created with BioRender.com .

If a behavior were intrinsically motivated, the pre-decisional deliberation phase might be determined by biological drives, the need to restore homeostasis (Hebb, 1949 ; Hull, 1943 ), or a state of incongruency resolution (Festinger, 1957 ; Kagan, 1972 ) as described by early theories of intrinsic motivation. In contemporary frameworks, novelty-seeking, exploration, or interest in learning or achievement would render subsequent actions as intrinsically motivated. If a behavior were extrinsically motivated, this pre-decisional deliberation phase would represent the cost-benefit analysis in economic models, prediction-error minimization in reinforcement learning, or effort-reward trade-off computation. Under incentive motivation and behaviorist theories, the pre-decisional deliberation phase would be triggered by conditioned stimuli making conscious deliberation unnecessary and inefficient.

A combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors likely enters into the pre-decisional deliberation phase to guide motivated behavior ( Fig. 1 ). Although intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are conceptually distinct processes, attempts to formally define them have identified several mechanisms by which they interact, leading to questions about their dissociability. Since they can interact in an additive or subtractive fashion, they may indeed be separate, independent drivers of behavior that are amalgamated during a pre-decisional deliberation phase of behavioral choice.

Measuring intrinsic motivation

Human behavior.

Early attempts to quantify intrinsic motivation were largely based on behavioral observation, wherein intrinsic motivation was measured as free choice of an activity in the absence of an external stimulus or performance rating (Butler & Nisan, 1986 ; Daniel & Esser, 1980 ; Liu & Hou, 2017 ). These studies also implemented self-report measures of participants' interest or enjoyment in an activity. While such measures do capture intrinsic motivation as inherent task enjoyment, they are limited by their qualitative and indirect nature, as well as by variability in participant insight. However, more objective measures are difficult to develop due to the inherently unobservable nature of intrinsic motivation.

Since spontaneous novelty-seeking and exploratory behavior reflect intrinsic motivation, one candidate objective measure may be the explore-exploit paradigm (Gittins & Jones, 1979 ; Robbins, 1952 ). In explore-exploit foraging tasks, participants must choose among various options and either exploit a previously reinforced choice or explore a novel alternative option. An individual's tendency to either explore an environment or exploit their pre-existing knowledge is influenced by perseverance (Von Culin et al., 2014 ), which acts as an indicator of confidence in the absence of immediate reward. Healthy adults flexibly employ a mix of exploitative and exploratory choices, where striatal and prefrontal dopamine signaling is proposed to drive exploration and exploitation, respectively (Badre, Doll, Long,, & Frank,, 2012 ; Daw, O'Doherty, Dayan, Seymour, & Dolan, 2006 ; Mansouri, Koechlin, Rosa, & Buckley, 2017 ). While these tasks capture one's willingness to trade-off exploratory v. exploitative behaviors, they do not measure free-choice exploratory behavior in the absence of explicit reinforcers, which would be most consistent with intrinsic motivation.

Paradigms that allow an individual to choose to explore an environment without extrinsic reinforcers, or to engage in a previously enjoyable or interesting activity, would more closely index intrinsic motivation. Additionally, outcomes that relate to achievement or autonomy, without socially rewarding feedback or monetary outcomes, would also putatively engage intrinsic motivation. Task parameters related to exploration, enjoyment, achievement, and autonomy can each be modulated and computationally modeled to determine their effects on free choice or behavioral activation vigor.

Current computational approaches depend on modeling decision-making, outcome learning, or action-outcome associations to drive our understanding of motivation. Traditional decision-making models often rely on softmax functions to compute values of available actions (Wilson & Collins, 2019 ), where action selection is based on the ‘policy’ of the best outcome. Computationally, an action selection process computes the probability of an action occurring in any state and the expected reward. A policy is developed based on the assumption that motivated actions are performed to increase the probability of rewards and decrease the probability of punishment. Yet, in everyday life, our actions can be motivated by an arbitrary cue that may signal an internal rewarding state. For example, a standard algorithm solving for motivated action assumes that all actions have equal probability, yet this discounts the unknown drivers and evaluators of internal rewards. Hence, they act as limiting factors to the applicability of decision-making models in studies of intrinsic motivation.

Neuroimaging

Functional neuroimaging [e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG)] offers a measurement modality that may be particularly apt for the study of internally driven processes like intrinsic motivation. Research using fMRI has characterized the neural correlates of various internal processes that lack clear behavioral indicators (e.g. rumination, emotion regulation, pain perception; Zhou et al., 2020 ; Wagner, N'Diaye, Ethofer, and Vuilleumier, 2011 ), yet few studies have assessed the neural correlates of intrinsic motivation in humans, which likely reflects the limitations in its behavioral measurement. Studies have largely assessed intrinsic motivation via comparisons with neural responses to extrinsic reinforcers during fMRI, which can be correlated with self-reported intrinsic motivation (Bengtsson, Lau, & Passingham, 2009 ; Chew et al., 2021 ; Linke et al., 2010 ). Despite the relative paucity of neuroimaging studies that clearly separate intrinsic v. extrinsic motivation, existing work provides preliminary insight into the neural circuitry of intrinsic motivation.

First, extrinsic reinforcers have elicited amygdala, ACC, ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and ventral striatal (VS) or Nac activity in healthy subjects that was associated with higher self-reported extrinsic motivation but lower self-reported intrinsic motivation (Linke et al., 2010 ). This could suggest that intrinsic motivation relates to a lower sensitivity of these regions to extrinsic reinforcers, general deactivation of these regions, or that the dampening impact of extrinsic reinforcers on intrinsic motivation is subserved by these regions. Others report that intrinsic motivation (operationalized as the amount of free-time spent on a puzzle-task, which did not relate to task enjoyment, interest, or accuracy), was associated with deactivation in the amygdala, dorsal ACC, dorsomedial striatum, and insula during puzzle-task onset (Marsden et al., 2014 ). This is another piece of evidence linking neural deactivation to intrinsic motivation; however, since these tasks were not related to traditional ‘intrinsic motivators’ like task enjoyment, findings may relate to boredom-reduction behavior that might be more related to punishment avoidance rather than intrinsic motivation per se .

Bengtsson et al. ( 2009 ) operationalized intrinsic motivation as task-performance with and without explicit experimental observation during fMRI scanning, which boosted self-reported intrinsic motivation. The authors found greater neural activation of ACC, OFC, and lateral prefrontal cortex during task-performance errors when participants were observed (Bengtsson et al., 2009 ). While implicating a similar network of brain regions as prior studies, these findings cannot be divorced from error-related neural activation modulated by task salience (e.g. observed v. not).

In contrast, Murayama et al . ( 2010 ) provide a more optimal operationalization of intrinsic motivation, in which participants performed a task that was previously rated as inherently interesting, and successful task performance served as the intrinsic reward. During fMRI scanning, feedback for both extrinsic (monetary feedback) and intrinsic (accuracy feedback) rewards elicited VS activation. Participants then had the option to perform the same task without feedback, and intrinsic motivation was operationalized as time spent on the second version of the task. During the second session, VS activation was only diminished for extrinsic rewards, which could reflect reduced VS habituation to intrinsic rewards (Murayama et al., 2010 , 2015 ). Additionally, greater reductions in neural responses to extrinsic reinforcers were related to lower intrinsic motivation (i.e. task engagement time outside of the scanner), suggesting that neural habituation to extrinsic reinforcers may relate to lower intrinsic motivation. A recent computational neuroimaging study modeled intrinsic rewards as successful spatial-motor task performance without experienced errors, which was divorced from learning (Chew et al., 2021 ). This modeling of intrinsic rewards was akin to the accuracy feedback operationalization of Murayama et al . ( 2010 ). Both extrinsic (monetary) reward and intrinsic performance-based rewards (successful task completion) recruited vmPFC activation, which related to subjective happiness (Chew et al., 2021 ). Although limited in their ability to dissociate activation from task performance per se and explicit feedback related to achievement, these studies are the closest examples of objective measures of intrinsic motivation, and they suggest that putative reward-processing regions (VS, vmPFC) encode intrinsic rewards.

Complementary studies have examined how curiosity, or the intrinsic motivation to learn, modulates neural responses and influences memory recall (Gruber, Gelman, & Ranganath, 2014 ; Kang et al., 2009 ). High-curiosity states augment midbrain and v. activity (Gruber et al., 2014 ), as well as bilateral caudate (Kang et al., 2009 ) and anterior insula (Lee & Reeve, 2017 ) responses, which may improve learning and memory. As these paradigms index intrinsic motivation independently from a rewarding outcome, they perhaps provide the strongest support for partially overlapping circuits of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.

The brain's dopamine system supports a range of appetitive and aversive motivational processes, including behavioral activation, exertion of effort, and sustained task engagement (Diederen & Fletcher, 2020 ; Salamone, Yohn, López-Cruz, San Miguel, & Correa, 2016 ). The mesolimbic pathway, projecting from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) to limbic regions, including the Nac, amygdala, and hippocampus, facilitates reinforcement and associative learning by acting as a ‘Go’ signal for foraging or exploration (Huang, Lv, & Wu, 2016 ). Although it has long been known that dopamine transmission subserves motivational processes, some evidence suggests that it is particularly important for intrinsic motivation. For example, mesolimbic dopamine contributes to exploration for the sake of interest (DeYoung, 2013 ; Panksepp & Moskal, 2008 ), and novel and unexpected stimuli elicit phasic dopamine spikes in rodents (Fiorillo, 2003 ; Hooks & Kalivas, 1994 ; Schultz, 1998 ). In patients with depression, deep-brain stimulation of dopaminergic brain regions including the Nac (Schlaepfer et al., 2007 ) and the mesolimbic dopamine projections from the VTA (Fenoy et al., 2018 ) increased subjective interest in, and motivational energy for, previously enjoyable activities (Schlaepfer et al., 2007 ). Dopamine has also been associated with intrinsically motivated flow states (de Manzano et al., 2013 ; Gyurkovics et al., 2016 ).

However, since VTA dopamine spiking is reduced for expected events (Schultz, 1998 ), it may not be a strong candidate neural mechanism for intrinsic motivation, which can occur for predictable activities. Efforts to reconcile the role of dopamine in learning and motivation suggest that while phasic cell firing signals RPEs (Kim et al., 2020 ), phasic dopamine release and local modulation in key regions, such as the VS/NAc, relates to approach motivation (Berke, 2018 ; Mohebi et al., 2019 ). Indeed, while VTA dopamine cell firing occurs during reward prediction, only NAc dopamine release covaries with reward availability and ramps up during approach and consumption of reward (Mohebi et al., 2019 ). Moreover, increasing dopamine in rodents increases their willingness to exert effort, and this has since been replicated across species, including via pharmacological manipulation in humans (Salamone, Correa, Farrar, & Mingote, 2007 ; Treadway & Zald, 2011 ). This suggests that, while VTA dopamine spiking underpins reward prediction and learning, it is local NAc dopamine release that encodes motivational drive.

Opioids, norepinephrine, and related neurotransmitter systems

Though a comprehensive account of the neurotransmitter systems subserving motivated behavior is beyond the scope of this review, we note that endogenous opioid and cannabinoid systems may uniquely modulate intrinsically motivated behavior. For example, mu- and delta-opioid receptor activation underlies the pleasurable effects of opioid and non-opioid drugs of abuse (Berrendero, Robledo, Trigo, Martín-García, & Maldonado, 2010 ; Trigo, Martin-García, Berrendero, Robledo, & Maldonado, 2010 ), as well as primary reinforcers (Hsu et al., 2013 ; Kelley & Berridge, 2002 ). Activation of mu-opioid receptors has also been shown to mediate motivational states following delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) administration in rodents (Ghozland et al., 2002 ), likely via interactions with the mesolimbic dopamine system. Further evidence implicates antidepressant effects of endogenous opioids in both animals and humans (Peciña et al., 2018 ), which many partly reflect improved intrinsic motivation (e.g. time mice spent swimming during the forced swim test; Kastin, Scollan, Ehrensing, Schally, and Coy, 1978 ). Additionally, the endocannabinoid system interacts with both endogenous opioid and dopaminergic systems to influence intrinsic motivation, such as social play (Trezza et al., 2012 ; Trezza & Vanderschuren, 2008 ), and voluntary exercise, in rodents (Dubreucq, Koehl, Abrous, Marsicano, & Chaouloff, 2010 ). Since these systems have been primarily examined in animal models, pharmacological manipulation in humans would be an important next step in delineating the contribution of opioid and endocannabinoid systems to intrinsic v. extrinsic motivation.

Intrinsic motivation and psychiatry: focus on anhedonia

Problems with motivation are observed across many neuropsychiatric disorders, and these often correspond to distinct symptoms ( Table 1 ). This section focuses on anhedonia, a reduced ability to experience pleasure (Ribot, 1986 ), as a prevalent clinical manifestation of deficient intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Explicit studies of ‘intrinsic motivation’ in neuropsychiatric disorders

Note: Cohort abbreviations: AUD, alcohol use disorder; FEP, first-episode psychosis; MDD, major depressive disorder; PD, Parkinson's disease; SCZ, schizophrenia; SUDs, substance use disorders; SZA, schizoaffective disorder. Evidence abbreviations: EM, extrinsic motivation; IM, intrinsic motivation.

In the Diagnostic and Statistical Model of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM- 5 ), anhedonia serves as one of two cardinal symptoms of depressive disorders, where it is defined as the ‘loss of interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities’, (American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ). The second cardinal symptom relates to persistent depressed mood. Approximately one-third of individuals with depression report clinically significant anhedonia (Pelizza & Ferrari, 2009 ), and these individuals are at-risk for poorer treatment outcomes, including nonresponse, relapse, and increased suicidality, relative to their non-anhedonic peers (Morris, Bylsma, & Rottenberg, 2009 ; Nierenberg et al., 1999 ).

Anhedonia remains an important clinical target that, by definition, implicates perturbations in intrinsically-motivated behavior, yet most empirical studies of anhedonia and motivation have investigated their relationship using extrinsic reinforcers. Findings broadly support theories of reward dysfunction in depression (reviewed by Sescousse, Caldú, Segura, and Dreher, 2013 ; Roiser & Husain, 2018; Borsini, Wallis, Zunszain, Pariante, and Kempton, 2020 ), where anhedonia has been associated with a reduced bias toward a monetary reward in individuals with depression (Liu et al., 2011 ) and their first-degree relatives (Liu et al., 2016 ). Children who are at-risk for depression show reduced VS and anterior insula responses to monetary gains, implicating blunted reward sensitivity as an antecedent to anhedonia (Luking, Pagliaccio, Luby, & Barch, 2016 ). Moreover, vmPFC responses during unexpected reward receipt may indirectly relate to anhedonia in depressed patients by modulating task motivation (Segarra et al., 2016 ). Interestingly, reward sensitivity disturbances in depression might not extend to aberrant reward learning (Huys, Pizzagalli, Bogdan, & Dayan, 2013 ) where adults with moderate depression show intact VS RPE-signaling during probabilistic learning (Rutledge et al., 2017 ). Nevertheless, there have been suggestions that perturbations in domains more related to intrinsic motivation, such as model-based future planning or effort initiation and invigoration, may be key in underlying anhedonia (Berwian et al., 2020 ; Cooper, Arulpragasam, & Treadway, 2018 ; Rutledge et al., 2017 ). Finally, affect can also alter both the valence and evaluation of an activity, which can, in turn, modulate the likelihood of selecting a more inherently interesting task (Isen & Reeve, 2006 ). Anhedonic individuals have more pessimistic likelihood estimates and reduced positive affective forecasts relative to controls while also demonstrating greater reliance on negative emotion during future-oriented cognition (Marroquín & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2015 ).

While few studies have implemented objective measures of intrinsic motivation in studying anhedonia, recent work links this symptom with difficulties with representations of future states during early stages of motivated behavior (Moutoussis et al., 2018 ). Since intrinsic motivation is driven more by proactive factors as opposed to the more reactive domain of extrinsic motivation, parsing future-oriented decision-making might provide novel insights not only into mechanisms of intrinsic motivation but also anhedonia. When considering the pre-decisional deliberation phase of motivated action ( Fig. 1 ), the representation of a future state may be critical for distinguishing intrinsic v. extrinsic motivation. For example, disrupted representations of intrinsic reinforcers (e.g. autonomy, achievement, task enjoyment, novelty seeking), energy expenditure (Treadway, Cooper, & Miller, 2019 ; Winch, Moberly, & Dickson, 2014 ), or fatigue (Müller, Klein-Flügge, Manohar, Husain, & Apps, 2021 ) might disrupt choice deliberation and interrupt ensuing stages of motivation. This could critically determine the capacity for self-generated, intrinsically-motivated actions (Husain & Roiser, 2018 ). However, relatively few studies have examined this distinction. One study developed a cognitive task that aimed to capture separate measures of self-generated ( intrinsic ) v. externally generated ( extrinsic ) motivation during the option-generation phase (Morris et al., 2020 ). This distinction linked self-generated option generation (intrinsic motivation) to anhedonia symptoms in healthy adults (Morris et al., 2020 ). However, this task still relies on extrinsic rewards, and there is a need for improved tasks that index both behavioral and neural correlates of intrinsic drivers of motivated behavior.

Summary and future directions

In this review, we summarize how intrinsic motivation has been conceptualized, measured, and related to neural function to elucidate its role in psychopathology. In contrast to extrinsic motivation, which has been rapidly incorporated into prominent cognitive, computational, and neurobiological models of human behavior, knowledge of intrinsic motivation remains limited due to evolving conceptualizations, imprecise measurement, and incomplete characterization of its biological correlates. We identify three potential areas of interest for future research.

First, additional objective measures of intrinsically motivation should be developed. This remains challenging experimentally since even the closest approximations of intrinsic motivation (Murayama et al., 2010 ; Rutledge et al., 2017 ) define the construct relative to extrinsic motivation, and other paradigms (e.g. exploration/exploitation tasks) rely on the presence of extrinsic reinforcers. Rather than defining motivated behavior as intrinsic or extrinsic, a more tractable approach might be to consider separate drivers of behavior that can be intrinsic or extrinsic. Future paradigms could index intrinsic motivation by characterizing the effects of intrinsic v. extrinsic reinforcers on motivation for an activity that is enjoyable. Such a design would enable more complex modeling of the effects of distinct reinforcers, and interactions between them, on motivated behavior, which would resolve inconsistencies surrounding the impact of extrinsic reinforcers on intrinsic motivation. For example, monetary incentives might reduce motivation only when a perceived agency is low, or when task enjoyment is high. These interactions might explain paradoxical observations like the undermining effect.

Second, computational models are needed to characterize intrinsic motivation. Computational models of motivation have been successfully implemented in studies of extrinsic motivation, yet few are appropriate for intrinsic motivation due to a focus on action-outcome associations. However, if the intrinsic reward were operationalized as a measurable outcome (e.g. completion of an enjoyable task), reinforcement-learning models could estimate how intrinsic reward value is represented. Advancements in the computational area could significantly improve understanding of the latent processes underlying (ab)normal decision-making, thereby identifying novel therapeutic targets.

Third, although evidence supports the bifurcation of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation at the psychological level, findings at the neural level are more equivocal. Given the overarching role of the mesolimbic dopamine system in learning, reward value estimation, and exploratory behavior, it is perhaps unsurprising that current evidence supports largely overlapping neural circuits for intrinsically and extrinsically motivated behavior. One potential avenue involves targeted pharmacological manipulations or neuromodulation of cortico-limbic circuits to determine if intrinsically and extrinsically motivated behaviors can be systematically modulated in humans. By elucidating the neural circuits of distinct motivational processes and their associations with specific symptom profiles, this approach would improve targeted interventions for highly heterogenous and debilitating disorders like depression.

Financial support

All authors report no financial disclosures. This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (LSM, grant number K01MH120433) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (MLW, T32DA022975).

• DOI: 10.1007/BF03340978
• Corpus ID: 143214598

Intrinsic Motivation to Learn: The Nexus Between Psychological Health and Academic Success

• J. Froiland , E. Oros , +1 author Tyrell Hirchert
• Published in Contemporary School… 1 January 2012
• Psychology, Education

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Theories of Motivation

Motivation  describes the wants or needs that direct behavior toward a goal, but, why do we do the things we do? What motivations underlie our behaviors? Is motivation an inherited trait or is motivation influenced by reinforcement and consequences that strengthen some behaviors and weaken others? Is the key to motivating learners a lesson plan that captures their interest and attention? In other words, is motivation something innate that we are born with that can be strengthened by reinforcers external to the learning task, or is it something interwoven with the learning process itself?

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Some motives are biological, like our need for food or water. However, the motives that we will be more interested in are more psychological. In general, we discuss motivation as being  intrinsic  (arising from internal factors) or  extrinsic  (arising from external factors). Intrinsically motivated behaviors are performed because of the sense of personal satisfaction that they bring, while extrinsically motivated behaviors are performed in order to receive something from others.

Video 6.1.1.  Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Motivation  explains the difference and provides examples of these types of motivation.

Think about why you are currently in college. Are you here because you enjoy learning and want to pursue an education to make yourself a more well-rounded individual? If so, then you are intrinsically motivated. However, if you are here because you want to get a college degree to make yourself more marketable for a high-paying career or to satisfy the demands of your parents, then your motivation is more extrinsic in nature.

In reality, our motivations are often a mix of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors, but the nature of the mix of these factors might change over time (often in ways that seem counter-intuitive). There is an old adage: “Choose a job that you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life,” meaning that if you enjoy your occupation, work doesn’t seem like . . . well, work. Some research suggests that this isn’t necessarily the case (Daniel & Esser, 1980; Deci, 1972; Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999). According to this research, receiving some sort of extrinsic reinforcement (i.e., getting paid) for engaging in behaviors that we enjoy leads to those behaviors being thought of as work no longer providing that same enjoyment. As a result, we might spend less time engaging in these reclassified behaviors in the absence of any extrinsic reinforcement. For example, Odessa loves baking, so in her free time, she bakes for fun. Oftentimes, after stocking shelves at her grocery store job, she often whips up pastries in the evenings because she enjoys baking. When a coworker in the store’s bakery department leaves his job, Odessa applies for his position and gets transferred to the bakery department. Although she enjoys what she does in her new job, after a few months, she no longer has much desire to concoct tasty treats in her free time. Baking has become work in a way that changes her motivation to do it. What Odessa has experienced is called the overjustification effect—intrinsic motivation is diminished when extrinsic motivation is given. This can lead to extinguishing intrinsic motivation and creating a dependence on extrinsic rewards for continued performance (Deci et al., 1999).

Other studies suggest that intrinsic motivation may not be so vulnerable to the effects of extrinsic reinforcements, and in fact, reinforcements such as verbal praise might actually increase intrinsic motivation (Arnold, 1976; Cameron & Pierce, 1994). In that case, Odessa’s motivation to bake in her free time might remain high if, for example, customers regularly compliment her baking or cake decorating skills.

These apparent discrepancies in the researchers’ findings may be understood by considering several factors. For one, physical reinforcement (such as money) and verbal reinforcement (such as praise) may affect an individual in very different ways. In fact, tangible rewards (i.e., money) tend to have more negative effects on intrinsic motivation than do intangible rewards (i.e., praise). Furthermore, the expectation of the extrinsic motivator by an individual is crucial: If the person expects to receive an extrinsic reward, then intrinsic motivation for the task tends to be reduced. If, however, there is no such expectation, and the extrinsic motivation is presented as a surprise, then intrinsic motivation for the task tends to persist (Deci et al., 1999).

In addition, culture may influence motivation. For example, in collectivistic cultures, it is common to do things for your family members because the emphasis is on the group and what is best for the entire group, rather than what is best for any one individual (Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001). This focus on others provides a broader perspective that takes into account both situational and cultural influences on behavior; thus, a more nuanced explanation of the causes of others’ behavior becomes more likely. (You will learn more about collectivistic and individualistic cultures when you learn about social psychology.)

In educational settings, students are more likely to experience intrinsic motivation to learn when they feel a sense of belonging and respect in the classroom. This internalization can be enhanced if the evaluative aspects of the classroom are de-emphasized and if students feel that they exercise some control over the learning environment. Furthermore, providing students with activities that are challenging, yet doable, along with a rationale for engaging in various learning activities can enhance intrinsic motivation for those tasks (Niemiec & Ryan, 2009). Consider Hakim, a first-year law student with two courses this semester: Family Law and Criminal Law. The Family Law professor has a rather intimidating classroom: He likes to put students on the spot with tough questions, which often leaves students feeling belittled or embarrassed. Grades are based exclusively on quizzes and exams, and the instructor posts the results of each test on the classroom door. In contrast, the Criminal Law professor facilitates classroom discussions and respectful debates in small groups. The majority of the course grade is not exam-based but centers on a student-designed research project on a crime issue of the student’s choice. Research suggests that Hakim will be less intrinsically motivated in his Family Law course, where students are intimidated in the classroom setting, and there is an emphasis on teacher-driven evaluations. Hakim is likely to experience a higher level of intrinsic motivation in his Criminal Law course, where the class setting encourages inclusive collaboration and a respect for ideas, and where students have more influence over their learning activities.

Think About It

Schools often use concrete rewards to increase adaptive behaviors. How might this be a disadvantage for students intrinsically motivated to learn? What are the educational implications of the potential for concrete rewards to diminish intrinsic motivation for a given task?

We would expect to see a shift from learning for the sake of learning to learning to earn some reward. This would undermine the foundation upon which traditional institutions of higher education are built. For a student motivated by extrinsic rewards, dependence on those may pose issues later in life (post-school) when there are not typically extrinsic rewards for learning.

Like motivation itself, theories of it are full of diversity. For convenience in navigating through the diversity, we have organized the theories around two perspectives about motion. The first set of theories focuses on the innateness of motivation. These theories emphasize instinctual or inborn needs and drives that influence our behavior. The second set of theories proposes cognition as the source of motivation. Individual motivation is influenced by thoughts, beliefs, and values. The variation in these theories is due to disagreement about which cognitive factors are essential to motivation and how those cognitive factors might be influenced by the environment.

Innate Motivation Theories

First, we will describe some early motivational theories that focus on innate needs and drives. Not all of these theories apply to the classroom, but learning about them will show you how different theorists have approached the issue of motivation. You are sure to find some elements of your own thinking about motivation in each of them. We will examine instinct theory, drive theory, and arousal theory as early explanations of motivation. We will also discuss the behavioral perspective on motivation and the deficiency-growth perspective, as exemplified by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Cognitive Theories of Motivation

Cognitive theories of motivation assume that behavior is a result of cognitive processes. These theories presume that individuals are interpreting information and making decisions, not just acting on basic needs and drives. Cognitive motivation theories share strong ties with the cognitive and social learning theories that we discussed previously. We will examine several cognitive motivation theories: interest, attribution theory, expectancy-value theory, and self-efficacy theory. All emphasize that learners need to know, understand, and appreciate what they are doing in order to become motivated. Then, along with these cognitive motivation theories, we will examine a motivational perspective called self-determination theory, which attempts to reconcile cognitive theory’s emphasis on intrinsic motivation with more traditional notions of human needs and drives.

Video 6.1.2.  Instincts, Arousal, Needs, Drives  provides a brief overview of some of the major motivational theories.

Candela Citations

• Theories of Motivation . Authored by : Nicole Arduini-Van Hoose. Provided by : Hudson Valley Community College. Retrieved from : . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Educational Psychology. Authored by : Kelvin Seifert and Rosemary Sutton. Provided by : The Saylor Foundation. Retrieved from : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/educationalpsychology. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Educational Psychology. Authored by : Borlin. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Psychology 2e. Authored by : Rose M. Spielman, William J. Jenkins, Marilyn D. Lovett. Provided by : Open Stax. Retrieved from : https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Extrinsic vs Intrinsic Motivation. Provided by : ASCatRIT. Retrieved from : https://youtu.be/kUNE4RtZnbk. License : All Rights Reserved

Educational Psychology Copyright © 2020 by Nicole Arduini-Van Hoose is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Intrinsic Motivation vs. Extrinsic Motivation: What's the Difference?

Verywell / Joshua Seong

What Are Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation?

• Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation refer to the forces that drive behavior. Internal motivation arises from within, while external motivation comes from outside forces.

That means that if you are intrinsically motivated, you'll engage in a behavior because you enjoy doing it. If you are extrinsically motivated, you'll do it to get a reward .

Researchers have found that each type has a different effect on a person's behavior and pursuit of goals. To better understand the influence of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on human behavior, it will help to learn how each type works.

At a Glance

Why do we do the things we do? What drives our behavior? Psychologists have proposed different ways of thinking about motivation, including looking at whether motivation arises from outside (extrinsic) or inside (intrinsic) an individual. Intrinsic motivation comes from within, and extrinsic motivation from without.

Sometimes you're better off doing things for enjoyment, but in other cases, you might need a little extra outside motivation. However, it pays to be careful since excessive external rewards can sometimes dampen intrinsic motivation.

Is It Extrinsic or Intrinsic Motivation?

Intrinsic motivation is when you engage in a behavior because you find it rewarding. You are performing an activity for its own sake rather than from the desire for some external reward. The behavior itself is its own reward.

Extrinsic motivation is when we are motivated to perform a behavior or engage in an activity because we want to earn a reward or avoid punishment. You will engage in behavior not because you enjoy it or because you find it satisfying, but because you expect to get something in return or avoid something unpleasant.

Participating in a sport to win awards

Cleaning your room to avoid being reprimanded by your parents

Competing in a contest to win a scholarship

Studying because you want to get a good grade

Participating in a sport because you find the activity enjoyable

Cleaning your room because you like tidying up

Solving a word puzzle because you find the challenge fun and exciting

Studying a subject you find fascinating

Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation: Which Is Best?

Extrinsic motivation arises from outside of the individual, while intrinsic motivation comes from within. Research has shown that each type has a different effect on human behavior.

Studies have demonstrated that offering excessive external rewards for an already internally rewarding behavior can reduce intrinsic motivation—a phenomenon known as the overjustification effect .

For example, in a 2008 study, children who were rewarded for playing with a toy they had already expressed interest in playing with became less interested in the item after being externally rewarded.  

This is not to suggest that extrinsic motivation is a bad thing—it can be beneficial in some situations. For example, extrinsic motivation can be particularly helpful when a person needs to complete a task that they find unpleasant.

Additionally, external rewards can:

• Be a source of feedback to let people know when their performance has achieved a standard that is deserving of reinforcement
• Induce interest and participation in an activity an individual was not initially interested in
• Motivate people to acquire new skills or knowledge (once these early skills have been learned, people might become more intrinsically motivated to pursue an activity)

Extrinsic motivators should be avoided in situations where:

• An individual already finds the activity intrinsically rewarding
• Offering a reward might make a "play" activity seem more like "work"

Motivate a person to learn something new

Make a person more interested in an activity that they are not interested in

Provide feedback to people to let them know their performance is worthy of recognition

A person is already interested in the topic, task, or activity

Offering a reward would make the activity feel like "work" instead of "play"

When to Use Extrinsic Motivation

Most people assume that intrinsic motivation is best, but it is not always possible in every situation. Sometimes a person simply has no internal desire to engage in an activity. Offering excessive rewards can be problematic as well.

However, when they are used appropriately, extrinsic motivators can be a useful tool. For example, extrinsic motivation can get people to complete a work task or school assignment that they are not interested in.

Researchers have arrived at three primary conclusions regarding extrinsic rewards and their influence on intrinsic motivation:

Rewarding Minimal Effort Reduces Intrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation will decrease when external rewards are given for completing a particular task or only doing minimal work. In other words, if you get rewarded for doing very little, you aren't likely to find the activity intrinsically rewarding.

If parents heap lavish praise on their child every time they complete a simple task, the child will become less intrinsically motivated to perform that task.

Praise Can Increase Internal Motivation

Researchers have found that offering positive praise and feedback when people do something better than others can improve intrinsic motivation.

Unexpected Rewards Don't Hurt Intrinsic Motivation

Unexpected external rewards do not decrease intrinsic motivation. If you get a good grade on a test because you enjoy learning about a subject and the teacher decides to reward you with a gift card to your favorite pizza place, your underlying motivation for learning about the subject will not be affected.

However, rewarding in this situation must be done with caution because people will sometimes come to expect rewards.

How Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation Impact Learning

Both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation play a significant role in learning. Experts have argued that education's traditional emphasis on external rewards (such as grades, report cards, and gold stars) undermines any existing intrinsic motivation that students might have.

Others have suggested that extrinsic motivators help students feel more competent in the classroom, which in turn enhances their intrinsic motivation.  

Experts suggest that rewards don't imperil intrinsic motivation when they are used to indicate that a person has performed well. In such cases, extrinsic rewards can help people feel proud and competent, which increases how much they enjoy the task.

When used appropriately, such rewards can help boost motivation, creativity, and performance. Consider how extrinsic rewards like promotions, scholarships, and bonuses can help students and employees feel more encouraged to perform well.

Both extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation drive human behavior. There are several key differences between motivation that comes from external rewards and the kind that is driven by an individual's genuine interest, including the influence of each type on a person's behavior and the situations in which each type will be most effective.

Understanding how each type of motivation works and when it is likely to be useful can help people perform tasks (even when they do not want to) and improve their learning.

Morris LS, Grehl MM, Rutter SB, Mehta M, Westwater ML. On what motivates us: a detailed review of intrinsic  v.  extrinsic motivation .  Psychol Med . 2022;52(10):1801-1816. doi:10.1017/S0033291722001611

Tranquillo J, Stecker M. Using intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in continuing professional education. Surg Neurol Int. 2016;7(Suppl 7):S197-9. doi:10.4103/2152-7806.179231

Lee W, Reeve J, Xue Y, Xiong J. Neural differences between intrinsic reasons for doing versus extrinsic reasons for doing: an fMRI study. Neurosci Res. 2012;73(1):68-72. doi:10.1016/j.neures.2012.02.010

Di domenico SI, Ryan RM. The emerging neuroscience of intrinsic motivation: A new frontier in self-determination research. Front Hum Neurosci. 2017;11:145. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2017.00145

Warneken F, Tomasello M. Extrinsic rewards undermine altruistic tendencies in 20-month-olds. Dev Psychol. 2008;44(6):1785-8. doi:10.1037/a0013860

Levy A, Deleon IG, Martinez CK, et al. A quantitative review of overjustification effects in persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities. J Appl Behav Anal. 2017;50(2):206-221. doi:10.1002/jaba.359

Henderlong J, Lepper MR. The effects of praise on children's intrinsic motivation: a review and synthesis. Psychol Bull . 2002;128(5):774-95.

Czaicki NL, Dow WH, Njau PF, Mccoy SI. Do incentives undermine intrinsic motivation? Increases in intrinsic motivation within an incentive-based intervention for people living with HIV in Tanzania. PLoS ONE . 2018;13(6):e0196616. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0196616

Oudeyer PY, Kaplan F. What is Intrinsic Motivation? A Typology of Computational Approaches. Front Neurorobot. 2007;1:6. doi:10.3389/neuro.12.006.2007

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

How to Increase Intrinsic Motivation (According to Science)

Such intrinsic motivation is not a given; it is conditional on satisfying feelings of competence, autonomy, and relatedness.

Finding new and changing existing environments to align with our basic psychological needs can maintain and sustain our motivation and allow us to flourish (Ryan & Deci, 2017).

This article explores how to build such motivation using techniques and strategies to realize our human capacities and talents.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients create actionable goals and master techniques to create lasting behavior change.

This Article Contains:

How to foster intrinsic motivation 101, 5 foolproof methods and strategies, 9 techniques to use in your therapy sessions, tips & questionnaires for employees, a note on using rewards, our 4 favorite ted talks, 4 books on the topic, positivepsychology.com’s relevant resources, a take-home message.

To persist at anything, we need mechanisms in the brain that initiate and maintain effort. Without them, we cannot start or sustain action (Deci & Ryan, 2008).

Yet, according to Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, the variation  in motivation we see across individuals is not found in such psychological mechanisms, but rather in sociocultural conditions.

Deci and Ryan’s (2008) Self-Determination Theory (SDT) of motivation assumes that “humans are by nature active and self-motivated, curious and interested, vital and eager to succeed because success itself is personally satisfying and rewarding.”

However, circumstances and environments can leave us “alienated and mechanized, or passive and disaffected” (Deci & Ryan, 2008).

But we can change them for better ones.

Intrinsic motivation  involves doing something because it is both interesting and deeply satisfying. We perform such activities for the positive feelings they create, and they typically lead to optimal performances (Deci & Ryan, 2008).

Extrinsic motivation  involves engaging in an activity because it leads to a tangible reward or avoids punishment.

Studies have consistently shown that intrinsic motivation leads to increased persistence, greater psychological wellbeing, and enhanced performance (Deci & Ryan, 2008).

And the good news is that we can develop it.

Fostering perceptions of competence , autonomy , and relatedness to others  supports people’s intrinsic motivation and behavior . Indeed, satisfying these three basic and universal psychological needs promotes optimal motivation and leads to better psychological, behavioral, and developmental outcomes (Deci & Ryan, 2000).

Increased autonomy – having the perception of control over what we do – as opposed to a lack of control is important in achieving intrinsic goals in all areas of our lives. Indeed, it has also been consistently proven to increase psychological health in Eastern and Western cultures, education, workplaces, home, and sports (Deci & Ryan, 2008).

1. Satisfying our basic psychological needs

Satisfying each one leads to engaged, passionate individuals doing high-quality work in any domain.

Increased intrinsic motivation can be encouraged by building environments that promote:

• Have a say in what they are doing.
• Frame goals as being essential to individual success.
• Let people choose to perform rather than being pressured to deliver.
• Identify how people feel regarding what they do.
• Encourage people to develop their values while working.
• Connect their work to a higher cause (political, moral, spiritual, or corporate).
• Make resources available for learning.
• Set learning goals rather than result-oriented goals
• Ask “ how did you grow today and what do you need for tomorrow? ” rather than “ what did you achieve today? ”

Such practices and environments are applicable in most contexts and should not be limited to the workplace.

2. Engage in great storytelling

Engaging people with a narrative can be motivating; creating a story around what they do encourages a sense of connection.

How we feel about our work is typically less about the activity and more about how we frame it . For example, are you a bricklayer merely putting one brick on top of another, or are you part of a team building a church?

Is the task mundane and pointless, or are you creating a better environment for others?

The medical student studying their anatomy books late on a Friday night is either preparing for an in-class test on Monday or readying themselves to save lives in a future hospital placement (Grenny, 2019). Perception is everything.

3. Find your one sentence

Most of us live a life of many goals with our time spread thinly across each one.

In his book, Drive , Daniel Pink (2018) challenges readers to regain focus and clarify their purpose.

He asks us to define a sentence that sums up our life.

To help, he offers two examples from U.S. Presidents:

• Abraham Lincoln’s sentence might be He preserved the Union and freed the slaves .
• Franklin Roosevelt’s might be He lifted us out of the Great Depression and helped us win the war .

What’s yours?

Each day, ask yourself, Am I closer to my goals than I was the day before? What do I need to do tomorrow to move forward in the right direction?

4. A strategy for educators

While there are aspects of education that students will inevitably not find enjoyable, showering them with rewards is unlikely to be the answer.

Instead, to increase intrinsic motivation, we should engage children according to their basic psychological needs.

Pink (2018) suggests that in any teaching environment (school, home, youth group, etc.), content is more crucial than the volume of work, and we should ask ourselves:

• Am I providing students with a degree of autonomy regarding when and how they do their work?
• Is this task engaging, novel, and encouraging mastery ( competence )? Or, is it unthinking, bland, and learning by rote?
• Do the students understand the relevance  or purpose of this piece of work? For example, perhaps it leads to something further down the line or a larger piece of work within the class.

Set aside time for the child to develop their own problem or project to work on. This will give them the autonomy to work on something of their choosing.

5. Giving praise

We should be cautious regarding how we offer praise.

If we are not careful, praise becomes a series of “if you do X, then you will get Y reward”  statements that can damage creativity and intrinsic motivation.

Instead, in her book Mindset , Carol Dweck (2017) says we should give praise with the following points in mind:

• Praise effort and strategy rather than being smart. It is vital that children (and adult learners) are recognized for the challenges they take on and the effort they put in.
• Praise must be specific. What has the individual done that deserves special attention?
• Praise in private. Provide praise in a one-on-one encounter. After all, it is not a ceremony but a personal show of gratitude for what someone has done.
• Only praise when there is a good reason. Do not praise everything; instead, recognize extra effort and be sincere.

Praise is a powerful tool for motivation, yet poorly handled, it can negate many of the positives.

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The following techniques can help to encourage perceptions of autonomy, relatedness, and competence and support positive outcomes in psychotherapy and behavioral change (Ryan & Deci, 2017).

• Motivational interviewing is a valuable counseling technique that helps patients overcome ambivalence.
• The therapeutic alliance between therapist and client has been shown to increase a sense of autonomy and encourage behavioral change.
• An internal frame of reference, encouraged through empathic and careful listening, can identify the client’s motivations and values, validate their curiosity, and develop reasons for change.
• A focus on feelings and emotions to understand the client’s perspective can identify those experiences that interfere with the satisfaction of needs while uncovering and addressing resistance to change.
• Taking an interest in the client shows engagement with their experiences and encourages feelings of relatedness.
• By maintaining authenticity and transparency, the therapist is perceived as honest, interested, and open, fostering feelings of relatedness in the client.
• It is crucial to focus on setting optimal challenges for the client, rather than unduly stressful, demanding, or even impossible ones.
• Offering relevant, rich, and informational feedback supports the perception of competence.
• Promoting internal evaluation of performance by the client helps them recognize gaps between their skills and mastery.

So, how do you tackle a lack of intrinsic motivation in the workplace?

To improve motivation at work , we need a change in mindset. There are strong correlations between “believing in the mission, enjoying the job, and performing at a high level” (Su, 2019).

There are several techniques that leaders can adopt to encourage increased intrinsic motivation in their staff (Su, 2019; Bolino & Klotz, 2019):

• Servant leader mindset A servant leader adopts a mindset where they serve  their staff; putting their employees’ needs first and helping them develop.

Perhaps surprisingly, it takes strength as a manager to be in the “service of a larger vision, mission, or shared purpose beyond their own agenda or ego” (Su, 2019).

• Questions that can uncover people’s passion Good managers provide opportunities for their staff to reflect on what drives them.

They ask their staff:

Before a piece of work:

• What excites you about the new project?
• How might you develop, learn, and grow with this new piece of work?

Once the work is complete:

• What were you most proud of?
• What was rewarding or meaningful?
• What aspect did you find most enjoyable and inspiring?

In annual reviews:

• What did you most enjoy working on over the past year and why?
• What would you like to get more involved in next year?
• Encourage work where passion and contribution meet Identify where an employee’s passion meets what they can contribute to the team or organization. Also, recognize when it is time to move the employee to something new.
• Encourage citizenship behaviors Provide employees with the opportunity to go beyond their (defined) role, helping out coworkers, taking on special assignments, and introducing new working practices.
• Understand employee motivation, engagement, and disengagement Use questionnaires such as those included in our article Intrinsic Motivation in the Workplace to gain insight into the degree to which staff is intrinsically motivated and how engaged they are in what they are doing.

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While it is typical for parents to give their children rewards for studying well, and companies typically incentivize their staff for going the extra mile, extrinsic recognition can damage intrinsic motivation.

Research has shown that rewarding someone who is intrinsically motivated using extrinsic rewards, such as money or awards, can reduce intrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, 2008).

The unintended effect is that individuals lose interest in what they are doing, especially when the reward is contingent on successful performance.

Watch some of these fascinating talks, backed up by science and research into motivation , to understand how to promote performance.

1. The puzzle of motivation

Author Daniel Pink gives an excellent talk on how incentives (especially financial ones) can have a negative, even demotivating, impact when people are engaged in solving complex problems.

Instead, feeling interested in what we do and having a sense of importance is crucial to motivation. By encouraging employees to be the best they can be at something while showing their relevance to the overall company, we can address the mismatch between what science knows and what business does.

2. The happy secret to better work

If you think that working hard and achieving success make you happy, you may have it the wrong way around.

In Shawn Achor’s hilarious video, he explores how being happy makes us productive, more intelligent, creative, and bursting with energy.

He suggests that by adjusting organizational culture and focusing on positivity, we can leverage what he calls the “happiness advantage” and improve personal and business outcomes.

3. How motivation can fix public systems

Abhishek Gopalka’s wonderful talk on motivating change in the public sector explores how to improve what is fundamentally broken.

Through Gopalka’s work with India’s public health system, he learned how to use accountability to the citizen to trigger motivation and fix the system.

It worked. Following a series of promises made to patients, failure was no longer an option.

4. What makes us feel good about our work

Dan Ariely suggests that while happiness is precious, we flourish most when we have a sense of purpose and see progression in what we do.

While salary is important, research shows it is not sufficient to motivate employees.

According to Dan, it is increasingly crucial that organizations set up environments where work feels more meaningful and workers feel increasingly invested and care more about what they do.

There are many books available about motivation; we have chosen some of our favorites.

They are all evidence based and focus on the realities of the environment in which they are relevant.

1. Self-Determination Theory: Basic Psychological Needs in Motivation, Development, and Wellness – Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci

Written by the creators of the Self-Determination Theory, this book synthesizes over four decades of research into human motivation.

The text stands as perhaps the ultimate guide to understanding the essence of motivation behind our growth and wellbeing and the psychological needs upon which it is based.

Find the book on Amazon .

2. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

This book is a beautifully written classic in psychological literature. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi takes us on a journey through the science and research of flow and offers a potential path for ongoing motivation.

The many anecdotes and stories included increase readability and add color and depth to the psychological insights.

3. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us – Daniel H. Pink

Bestselling author Daniel Pink states the case for motivating people through the need to take control of our lives, create and learn, and make things better for ourselves and the world.

Packed full of techniques for fostering intrinsic motivation in education , family, and workplace environments, this is a valuable resource for any individual or counselor.

4. HBR Guide to Motivating People (HBR Guide Series) – Harvard Business Review

Containing 28 chapters, this easy-to-read, insightful book tells us what to do and what not to do  to create organizational cultures to foster motivation.

The author(s) of each chapter offer different yet complementary advice, giving practical examples of organizational changes that can have the most significant positive impact.

We have many motivation tools and techniques available to gain a greater awareness of your psychological needs, along with multiple approaches for promoting intrinsic motivation and making behavioral changes.

• Basic Needs Satisfaction in General Scale – Score a series of 21 statements to understand your level of autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
• Building New Habits – A better understanding of how our habitual behaviors work can help build healthier ones.
• Finding My Values – Awareness of the intrinsic values that support our goals can help us overcome the obstacles that impede us from achieving them.
• Identifying Your Ikigai – Finding your ikigai can lead you to discover meaning and purpose in life while acting as an intermediary between a sense of flow and coherence.
• Advantages And Disadvantages Of Changing – While we may wish to change, it is rarely straightforward. Understanding the pros and cons of doing so can assist therapy and improve the outcome for the client.
• Action Brainstorming – This exercise helps you identify, evaluate, and then break or change habits that may be getting in the way of making desired changes or moving closer to your goals.

If you’re looking for more science-based ways to help others reach their goals, this collection contains 17 validated motivation & goals-achievement tools for practitioners. Use them to help others turn their dreams into reality by applying the latest science-based behavioral change techniques.

17 Tools To Increase Motivation and Goal Achievement

These 17 Motivation & Goal Achievement Exercises [PDF] contain all you need to help others set meaningful goals, increase self-drive, and experience greater accomplishment and life satisfaction.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

Intrinsic motivation energizes and directs who we are and what we do. Through meeting our basic psychological needs, including having a sense of control, competence, and relatedness, we set ourselves up to flourish (Ryan & Deci, 2017).

Creating the right environment to satisfy each factor results in highly engaged, passionate individuals ready to flourish and perform high-quality work in any domain.

Our perception of control in any given situation is crucial “in terms of effective performance, especially on heuristic tasks, psychological wellbeing, and healthy development” (Deci & Ryan, 2008). Indeed, autonomy supports motivation in multiple domains, including healthcare, education, parenting, and relationships.

Along with relatedness and competence, fulfilling our basic needs leads to more intrinsic motivation and readiness to engage with the world and experience better psychological health.

Why not try out some methods and strategies within this article yourself or with your clients? Changing your perception or the environment itself can lead to a more positive and more complete life that fosters growth and achievement.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Goal Achievement Exercises for free .

• Bolino, M. C, & Klotz, A. C. (2019). How to motivate employees to go beyond their jobs. In HBR guide to motivating people.  Harvard Business Review.
• Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008).  Flow: The psychology of optimal experience.  Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry , 11 , 227–268.
• Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2008). Facilitating optimal motivation and psychological well-being across life’s domains. Canadian Psychology , 49 (1), 14–23.
• Dweck, C. S. (2017). Mindset . Robinson.
• Fowler, S. (2019). What Maslow got wrong about our psychological needs. In HBR guide to motivating people . Harvard Business Review.
• Grenny, J. (2019). Great storytelling connects employees to their work. In HBR guide to motivating people . Harvard Business Review.
• Pink, D. H. (2018). Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us . Canongate Books.
• Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness . Guilford Press.
• Su, A. J. (2019). Help someone discover work that excites them. In HBR guide to motivating people . Harvard Business Review.

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I have struggled with intrinsic motivation my whole life.

“Humans are by nature active and self-motivated, curious and interested, vital and eager to succeed because success itself is personally satisfying and rewarding.”

This statement is not true for me. I am not active or self-motivated, I possess little curiosity or interest in most things, and I do not find success to be satisfying or rewarding. I laugh when I read that people tend to enjoy things when they are good at them, because this has not been my experience. I am fortunate to be good at a few things, but I do not enjoy any of them and I do not find them intrinsically rewarding. They are just tasks. I feel anxiety when they need to be completed and relief when they are done, nothing more.

After years of reading up on the subject, I have come to the conclusion that my lack of intrinsic motivation is a result of my upbringing, which punished failure but did not reward success. When I succeeded at a task all it brought be was more and harder tasks. What is the incentive to achieve if doing so offers no reward? I believe that the neurological reward system of my brain never properly developed. It has left me with no passions and no idea what to do with my life.

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Understanding Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation in the Classroom

What’s the magic formula?

In today’s fast-paced world, engaging students is a major challenge for teachers. Oftentimes, it’s all about finding the proper motivation. But which type of motivation are we talking about? Intrinsic motivation? Extrinsic motivation? Or perhaps a combination of both? Here, some clarification of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and a few suggestions to help you inspire your students. 

What is intrinsic motivation?

Intrinsic motivation is doing something for the sake of personal satisfaction. The primary motivator is internal (i.e. you don’t expect to get anything in return). You are intrinsically motivated when you do something simply because it makes you feel good, is personally challenging, and/or leads to a sense of accomplishment. For example, a student may be intrinsically motivated to read because it satisfies their curiosity about the world and brings them a sense of calm. Intrinsic motivation is doing something “just because.”  

What is extrinsic motivation?

Extrinsic motivation is doing something to earn a reward or to avoid a punishment. The primary motivator is external (i.e. you expect to get something for completing a certain task, or you want to avoid a consequence for not doing something). For example, a student studies for a test because they want to earn a good grade. Or they mind their behavior because they don’t want to lose their recess. Students choose behaviors not because they enjoy them or find them satisfying, but in order to get something in return or avoid an adverse outcome.

Does extrinsic motivation work?

As educators, we have heard a lot about the downside of extrinsic motivation. Studies have shown that extrinsic motivation produces only short-term effects, at best. One study out of Princeton University goes so far as to say, “External incentives are weak reinforcers in the short run, and negative reinforcers in the long run.”  

Does it create dependencies?

Another criticism is that sometimes kids get hooked on the rewards that come with extrinsic motivation. According to Monica Frank, PhD , “The more children are provided rewards for activities that have natural reward, the more they will expect reward and be unable to set or achieve goals without that extrinsic motivation.” We’ve all had students that demand to know “What are we doing this for?” or “What do we get if we complete this task?” If we provide the “why” for our students too frequently, we stand in the way of them becoming independent learners.

Does extrinsic motivation affect a student’s self-esteem?

When children rely too much on external motivation, they learn to compare themselves to others and may give too much weight to other people’s opinions. Do I have as many stickers as Mary? Is my teacher happy with me because I did the assignment the right way? If students are always looking outside of themselves for validation, they will be unhappy and unproductive when that validation is not readily available, and their self-esteem can suffer.   

Is there room for both?

Common sense shows us that extrinsic motivation is not always a bad thing, particularly when it comes to teaching children. In fact, it can sometimes be extremely beneficial, particularly in situations where students need to complete a task that they find unpleasant . In the classroom, just as in real life, there are many things we have to do that, if given the choice, we would not. Sometimes the right incentive serves as the hook that gets students invested in learning. And, we can’t forget: Kids are still developing and building up their bank account of experiences that provide the basis for intrinsic motivation. So if they need a little external motivation to master a new skill or tread into unfamiliar territory, that’s okay.

Bottom line: The key is finding the right balance.

So how can teachers spark their students’ intrinsic motivation?

The word intrinsic means to come from inside, so it seems counterintuitive to imply that we can train a student to be intrinsically motivated. While we cannot change who a student is as an individual, we can can create the optimum environment to encourage students to develop their own motivation muscles. Here are a few suggestions to get you started. 

1. Know your students.

Get to know your kids as individuals and discover what they’re interested in and how they learn best. Then design your instruction around these motivating factors. Change up your instruction to keep kids engaged and interested. Provide a mix of independent, partner, and group work. Use technology. Incorporate art. Keep your finger on the pulse of your students and adjust as necessary.

2. Give them ownership of their environment.

Involve your students in creating the guiding principles of your classroom community. Work together to establish the optimal learning environment for that particular group of individuals. Like all humans, your students are more likely to take care of something they helped to create.

3. Make sure they have a solid foundation.

Explicitly teach basic skills so that students have a solid foundation of knowledge to build upon. Intrinsic motivation will come from being able to tackle complex tasks. Build up students’ confidence and make sure they have the resources they need before they begin.

4. Practice setting goals.

Tap into the power of setting goals with—not for—your students. According to literacy consultant Lindsey Barrett, “Research spanning decades shows that setting student goals improves both motivation and achievement, encourages a growth mindset, and also supports the development of skills students need to be prepared for their future careers.”

5. Give specific feedback.

Give students feedback that focuses on their strengths instead of their weaknesses and be as specific as you possibly can. Instead of saying “great job!” or “you’re so smart,” tie your comments directly to the student’s effort. For example, “Your essay turned out so well because you created an excellent outline to work from,” or “Your conclusion from the science lab was so insightful because you made very keen observations.”

6. Tap into their innate curiosity.

Encourage students to take on assignments simply because they want to know more, instead of feeling required to do so just to receive a grade. Establish a Genius Hour as part of your curriculum to give students the opportunity to direct their own learning. 

7. As much as possible, allow students choice in their work.

In his book The Highly Engaged Classroom , Dr. Robert Marzano touts the importance of student choice. He states that when students are given choices, they perceive classroom activities as more important. This increases their intrinsic motivation for putting in effort and going deeper with their learning. 

8. Make the connection between classroom activities and real-world situations.

Maybe one of your students wants to be an engineer when they grow up. If so, they need to have a solid understanding of math concepts. Knowing that what they’re studying will help them meet their goals in the future will boost your students’ intrinsic motivation.

9. Get out of the way.

Trust your students to find their own way as often as possible. Your work as a teacher is to lay the groundwork and provide a framework for the work to be done. Michael Linsin shares this gentle but powerful way to increase students’ learning, motivation and independence: “Prepare them for success with spot-on instruction, to be sure,” he advises. “But then fade into the background. Independent practice is critical to learning, and offering too much help is often more problematic than not giving enough.”

What are your thoughts on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation? Come share your ideas on our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE.

And for more tips on motivating your students, check out 24 Ways to Motivate Beginning Readers and Students’ Biggest Motivation Killers.

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The Structure of Intrinsic Motivation

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Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation: What’s the Difference?

Charlotte Nickerson

Research Assistant at Harvard University

Undergraduate at Harvard University

Charlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.

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Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

On This Page:

Key Takeaways

• Intrinsic motivation describes the undertaking of an activity for its inherent satisfaction, while extrinsic motivation describes behavior driven by external rewards or punishments, abstract or concrete.
• Intrinsic motivation comes from within the individual, while extrinsic motivation comes from outside the individual.
• Psychologists such as Skinner and Thorndike have been creating models of externally-motivated learning since the early 20th century; however, theories of intrinsic motivation emerged a century later. Whether intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are mutually exclusive is a popular debate in motivational psychology.
• Academics and professionals alike have applied theories of motivation to management principles as well as educational situations.
• Research suggests that when something we love to do, like icing cakes, becomes our job, our intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to do it may change.

Scholars have described several key differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (Mitchell, 2013):

What is Intrinsic Motivation?

Intrinsic motivation involves the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfaction rather than for any obvious external reward (Oudeyer and Kaplan, 2009).

If we are intrinsically motivated, the reward is the sheer challenge and enjoyment of the task and the satisfaction of seeing it through.

Intrinsic motivation is defined as the doing of an activity for its inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence. When intrinsically motivated, a person is moved to act for the fun or challenge entailed rather than because of external products, pressures, or rewards. Ryan and Deci (2000, p. 56),

Types of Intrinsic Motivation

Researchers identified several different types of intrinsic motivation. One of the most notable of these frameworks is the “4 C’s” — challenge, curiosity, control, and context.

White (1959) described the idea of the effectance or mastery motives, which suggests that people seek out challenges and new skills to master solely because of the pleasure of accomplishment.

For example, as White notes, young children may spend great amounts of time learning how to walk and talk without extensive extrinsic reinforcement (Sansone and Harackiewicz, 2000).

Achievement-based motivation aims to achieve a goal for personal development reasons. People with achievement motivation may feel worthy when the feat is achieved.

For example, someone may undertake a multi-day hike up a mountain because of the feeling of accomplishment that reaching the peak gives them.

Berlyn (1960) described curiosity and other forms of motivation involving learning as inherent to people’s constant process of getting to know their worlds.

For example, hiding something from a child generally creates a very strong motive for the child to discover what has been hidden (Sansone and Harackiewicz, 2000).

Competence motivation, also called learning motivation, is an intrinsic motivation driven by curiosity and a willingness to develop skills. For example, when a salesperson learns new sales techniques because they want to learn something new and improve their work, they expect an external reward.

The first person to explicitly coin the term intrinsic motivation was Hunt (1961). Hunt focused on the motivational value of having a sense of control.

Following Piaget’s observations that even infants seem to undergo a systematic process of experimentation and exploration, Hunt emphasized that people find exercising control over the environment to be inherently motivating.

In the field of educational psychology, Bruner (1961) wrote about the importance of contextualizing learning — showing students the relevance and utility of skills taught in school for solving problems or accomplishing intrinsic goals in the larger world.

What is Extrinsic Motivation?

Extrinsic motivation describes behavior driven by external rewards or punishments. These consequences can be tangible, such as monetary loss or shame, or abstract, such as social respect or shame.

Extrinsic motivation is a construct that pertains whenever an activity is done in order to attain some separable outcome. Extrinsic motivation thus contrasts with intrinsic motivation, which refers to doing an activity simply for the enjoyment of the activity itself, rather than its instrumental value. Ryan and Deci (2000)

The fundamental difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is that intrinsic motivation comes from within, while extrinsic motivation comes from the outside.

However, the two are not mutually exclusive — for instance, someone working on completing a project may be extrinsically motivated to finish to meet a teammate’s deadline but intrinsically motivated because they enjoy the project and want to produce high-quality work (Sennett, 2021).

Therefore, our motivations are often a mix of both intrinsic and extrinsic factors.

Researchers have suggested the importance of high initial interest in deliberately selecting activities that are of high intrinsic interest.

While expected tangible rewards can undermine interest in activities of high initial interest, they can enhance interest in tasks originally of little initial interest (Calder & Staw, 1975; Danner & Lonky, 1981; Loveland and Olley, 1979; Sansone & Harackiewicz, 2000).

Types of Extrinsic Motivation

• Reward-Based Motivation : reward-based motivation describes motivation resulting from external rewards, tangible or abstract. For example, an employee may be motivated to meet a sales target because of the promise of a bonus.
• Power-Based Motivation : power-based motivation is a form of extrinsic motivation reliant upon the desire to exert control over others. For example, a leader may be motivated to lead and inspire people to overcome challenges.
• Fear-Based Motivation : Finally, fear-based motivation describes the desire to avoid an extrinsically negative result. For example, a manager may threaten to fine those who are late to work, or a student may study for a test out of fear of a bad grade.

When to Use Extrinsic Motivation

Intrinsically motivated behaviors are performed because of the sense of personal satisfaction that they bring, while extrinsically motivated behaviors are performed in order to receive something from others.

Sansone and Harackiewicz suggest that there are three variables that can affect the effect of rewards on later motivation (2000):

Perceptions of Continued Instrumental Value

Receiving extrinsic rewards can convey information about the likelihood of further tangible or socially extrinsic rewards in future related situations. Those who receive a tangible reward for a particular activity or accomplishment in one setting may expect a similar reward for a similar activity or accomplishment in the future.

Receiving a reward, regardless of whether or not it is available in the future, can convey that an individual, group, or institution would be pleased by and is likely to approve of one’s engagement in similar tasks in the future.

The promise of continued extrinsic tangible or social rewards can motivate one to engage in a previously rewarded activity, regardless of whether it was of initial intrinsic interest to the person (Sansone and Harackiewicz, 2000).

Perceptions of Personal Competence  

Extrinsic rewards can also communicate information about competence, and receiving a reward can enhance someone’s perceptions of competence. Thus, increasing someone’s perceived competence can lead to increases in intrinsic motivation (Sansone, 1986).

These perceptions are more likely if rewards are based on performance rather than merely engagement or completion (Sansone and Harackiewicz, 2000).

Perceptions of External Control

extrinsic rewards can also convey information about someone’s level of personal control or autonomy. Receiving extrinsic rewards can decrease perceptions of autonomy and, thus, subsequent intrinsic motivation.

Subsequently, people may be less likely to engage in similar tasks when they do not expect tangible or social extrinsic rewards (Sansone and Harackiewicz, 2000).

Empirical Research

Psychologists have posited two types of motivation theories: dualistic and multifaceted. While dualistic theories divide motivation into two types, intrinsic and extrinsic, multifaceted theories recognize a number of genetically distinct motives, such as hunger, curiosity, positive self-regard, fear, sex, and power (Reiss, 2004).

For the first half of the 20th century, psychologists focused primarily on instrumental learning and extrinsic motivation. Typically, psychologists who conducted such studies attempted to link the receipt of an arbitrary reinforcer to the performance of an arbitrary response.

For example, Thorndike’s early studies of problem-solving in cats (2017) and Skinner’s work on elementary learning in rats and pigeons (2019) involved rats, cats, or pigeons being taught to press a bar, nudge a panel, or peck keys in order to obtain food, water, or relief from pain.

These researchers were able to teach animals to perform complex sequences of actions (Sansone and Harackiewicz, 2000).

However, in the latter half of the 20th century, psychologists posited a number of challenges to this model of extrinsic motivation.

Particularly, theorists sought to champion forms of “intrinsic motivation” — motivations seemingly intrinsic to many activities regardless of rewards (Sansone and Harackiewicz, 2000).

Shortly after psychologists differentiated between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, they created various hypotheses about the relationships between these two types of motivation.

Summary of Research Findings

• Noncontingent external rewards are less likely to produce detrimental effects and more likely to produce positive effects on later intrinsic motivation than rewards contingent on task engagement, completion, or performance.
• Expectation and receipt of an extrinsic reward for engaging in an activity was sufficient to produce decreased intrinsic interest in the activity (Lepper & Greene, 1975).
• Intangible extrinsic rewards (such as verbal feedback) are less likely to produce adverse effects than tangible rewards.
• Rewards providing evidence of someone’s competence have more positive effects on intrinsic motivation than rewards that do not provide information about competence.
• Researchers have also suggested the importance of high initial interest in deliberately selecting activities that are of high intrinsic interest to participants in the original experiments; while expected tangible rewards can undermine interest in activities of high initial interest, they can enhance interest in tasks originally of little initial interest (Calder and Staw, 1975; Danner and Lonky, 1981; Loveland and Olley, 1979; Sansone and Harackiewicz, 2000).

The effects of extrinsic rewards on children’s intrinsic motivation

In the early 1970s, three laboratories found that offering extrinsic rewards for something of intrinsic interest to someone actually undermined subsequent intrinsic interest in those activities (Deci, 1971; Kruglanski, Friedman, and Zeevi, 1971; Lepper, Greene, and Nisbett, 1973; Sansone and Harackiewicz, 2000).

In Deci’s 1971 experiment, researchers offered undergraduate students $1 for each three-dimensional manipulative puzzle that they solved correctly.

While doing this, Deci observed the amount of time that students spent working with the same activity when the experimenter left the laboratory, meaning that there was no longer a monetary reward for completing the activity.

While students who did not receive payment dependent upon whether or not they solved the puzzles continued to work on the same puzzles after the researchers left, students in the extrinsic incentive condition spent less time with the puzzles, as they no longer held an incentive value.

According to Deci and Ryan’s (1985) self-determination theory, extrinsic incentives can undermine intrinsic interest. For example, consider a boy who loves to play football for the sake of playing football who is then offered money for winning.

According to self-determination theory, extrinsic incentives — such as money and winning — undermine the boy’s intrinsic enjoyment of football. In the future, according to this theory, the boy will be less likely to play football in the absence of an extrinsic reward (Reiss, 2012).

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as distinct constructs

Generally, early experimental research suggests that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are opposed (Deci, 1971; Kruglanski, Friedman, and Zeevi, 1971; Lepper, Greene, and Nissbett, 1973).

Deci (1971) examined the effect of verbal rewards for performance on the puzzle task. After solving the puzzle task, researchers gave students the feedback that their time to the solution was “much better than average” than their peers.

The receipt of these verbal rewards increased later intrinsic motivation (Sansone and Harackiewicz, 2000). Another study supporting that extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are opposed was conducted by Kruglanski et al. (1971), who offered half of a sample of Israeli high school students an extrinsic incentive for participating in a series of experiments in the laboratory.

Those given an extrinsic incentive for participating in the tasks described themselves as less interested in the activities, and their performance on the tasks themselves suffered.

For example, they showed less creativity in listing unusual uses for everyday objects, lower recall of the activities they had just undertaken, and were less likely to show significant Zeigarnik effects (a higher recall of uncompleted or interrupted tasks) (Sansone and Harackiewicz 2000).

The last of the initial experiments to show extrinsic and intrinsic motivation’s opposition was conducted by Lepper et al. (1973). In these experiments, Lepper et al. selected children on the basis of their high levels of intrinsic interest in drawing pictures with markers in preschool classrooms.

The researchers then asked the children to do the same activity under one of three conditions: the expected award condition, where children were shown a reward and asked if they would like to work on the activity in order to win one of the rewards; the unexpected-award condition, where children received the reward and feedback at the end of the session; and the no-award condition, where children received verbal feedback but no tangible reward.

Again, upon observing the children later, the researchers found that only those in the expected-reward condition lost interest in drawing with the markers (Sansone and Harackiewicz, 2000). These findings shaped Deci and Ryan’s (1985) self-determination theory .

Despite an early line of research arguing that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are mutually exclusive, more recent findings, such as those of Lepper et al. (1997), have found that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are not necessarily in negative correlation with each other.

For example, Lepper et al. ‘s studies of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation in students found that there was a significant positive correlation between curiosity and interest (intrinsic motivators) and attempting to please the teacher or receive a good grade (extrinsic motivators).

This persisted when the studies were replicated in larger populations of students (Sansone and Harackiewicz, 2000).

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as a continuum

Ryan and Deci (2000) stressed the notion that extrinsic and intrinsic motivators can combine in the self-determination continuum.

According to the self-determination continuum, people can be motivated — where their psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness are not met, intrinsically motivated (where all of these needs are met), or somewhere in between.

Ryan and Deci describe the last case as extrinsic motivation in the form of external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, or integrated regulation (2000).

How Do Intrinsic Motivation and Extrinsic Motivation Influence Learning?

Western thinkers ranging from Willliam Blake to Charles Dickens and Mark Twain have traditionally portrayed schools as a source of drudgery, ennui, and misery (Sansone and Harackiewicz, 2000), and educational scholars have acknowledged the lack of motivation students seemingly display in American classrooms (e.g., Bruner, 1962; Silberman, 1970).

In the face of the poor performance of American students in cross-national comparisons of academic accomplishment (e.g., Stevenson, Chen, and Lee, 1993; Stevenson and Stigler, 1994), developmental decrease in motivation in American schools had been of theoretical interest.

One set of explanations for the decline in children’s intrinsic motivation is the role of social control in the American classroom (Winnett and Winkler, 1971).

Some authors have noted that social control can increase as children progress through school (Condry, 1978). In particular, Eccles et al. note that as early adolescents develop a thirst for increased autonomy and personal growth, schools seem to increase their focus on discipline, provide fewer opportunities for decision-making, and assign less cognitively challenging coursework (1993).

In educational settings, students are more likely to experience intrinsic motivation to learn when they feel a sense of belonging and respect in the classroom. This internalization can be enhanced if the evaluative aspects of the classroom are de-emphasized and if students feel that they exercise some control over the learning environment.

Furthermore, providing students with activities that are challenging yet doable, along with a rationale for engaging in various learning activities, can enhance intrinsic motivation for those tasks (Niemiec & Ryan, 2009).

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Silberman, C. E. (1970). Crisis in the classroom: The remaking of American education.

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Stevenson, H., & Stigler, J. W. (1994). Learning gap: Why our schools are failing and what we can learn from Japanese and Chinese educ: Simon and Schuster.

Stevenson, H. W., Chen, C., & Lee, S.-Y. (1993). Mathematics achievement of Chinese, Japanese, and American children: Ten years later. Science, 53-58.

Thorndike, L., & Bruce, D. (2017). Animal intelligence: Experimental studies: Routledge.

White, R. W. (1959). Motivation reconsidered: the concept of competence. Psychological Review, 66 (5), 297.

Winett, R. A., & Winkler, R. C. (1972). Current behavior modification in the classroom: Be still, be quiet, be docile. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 5 (4), 499-504.

Further Reading

Herzberg’s Motivation Theory (Two-Factor Theory)

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary educational psychology, 25(1), 54-67.

Niemiec, C. P., & Ryan, R. M. (2009). Autonomy, competence, and relatedness in the classroom: Applying self-determination theory to educational practice. Theory and research in Education, 7(2), 133-144.

Oudeyer, P. Y., & Kaplan, F. (2009). What is intrinsic motivation? A typology of computational approaches. Frontiers in neurorobotics, 1, 6.

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Intrinsic Motivation — Importance of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation for Students

Importance of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation for Students

• Categories: Intrinsic Motivation Motivation Student

About this sample

Words: 428 |

Published: Aug 30, 2022

Words: 428 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

• Intrinsic Motivation During Educational Process
• Extrinsic Motivation During Educational Process

Works Cited:

Intrinsic motivation during educational process, extrinsic motivation during educational process.

• Ezeanu, E. (2011). Generalization: A Key Element of Human Thinking. Art of Wellbeing.
• Raskoff, S. (2017). Understanding Generalizations and Stereotypes. Everyday Sociology Blog.
• Rubin, M., & Hewstone, M. (1998). Social identity theory's self-esteem hypothesis: A review and some suggestions for clarification. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2(1), 40-62.
• Saucier, G. (2000). Isms and the structure of social attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 366-385.
• Schein, V. E. (2007). Women in management: Reflections and projections. Women in Management: Current Research Issues, 1-35.
• Sidanius, J., Pratto, F., & Bobo, L. (1996). Racism, conservatism, affirmative action , and intellectual sophistication: A matter of principled conservatism or group dominance?. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(3), 476-490.
• Steele, C. M., Spencer, S. J., & Aronson, J. (2002). Contending with group image: The psychology of stereotype and social identity threat. Advances in experimental social psychology, 34, 379-440.
• Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. The social psychology of intergroup relations, 33-47.
• Vescio, T. K., Snyder, M., & Butz, D. A. (2003). The impact of ethnicity and gender on the evaluation of achievement-related traits. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 33(8), 1653-1679.
• Vorauer, J. D., & Kumhyr, S. M. (2001). Is this about you or me? Self-versus other-directed judgments and feelings in response to intergroup interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(2), 476-493.

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14 Examples of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation and How to Use Both

• Post author: Michelle Liew, B.A.
• Post published: August 20, 2019
• Reading time: 6 mins read
• Post category: Brain Power / Self-Improvement / Success Skills

We all need that push to complete mundane or overwhelming tasks. That’s what motivation provides. These are big words, but we’ll make them more digestible. We’ll also show you examples of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and explain how to use both types .

What is extrinsic and intrinsic motivation

People may have asked you, “Why do you do what you do?” You’re probably just as curious to find out what drives your behaviors, just as psychologists are. Many of them have studied the concept of motivation, mainly how intrinsic and extrinsic motivation impacts our actions.

Both types of motivation are crucial for our emotional growth and maturity . Researchers have discovered that both have different effects on our behaviors. It’s essential to know how each of them works to understand how they affect us.

A person is extrinsically motivated by external sources to perform expected behaviors . For example, a child may complete their homework because their parents will reward them with ice-cream. Extrinsic motivation happens when people behave as they should to get rewards or avoid punishments.

Intrinsic motivation comes about when people engage in behaviors because they are fulfilling . They perform them for their own sake instead of an external reward. In other words, the action itself is the reward.

The difference between the two is the reason for doing a task . Your motivation is intrinsic if you do something just for enjoyment and, it fulfills you. It is extrinsic if you expect a reward at the end of it.

Examples of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Anyone would find ‘ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation ‘ a mouthful term, so it would help to know examples of these .

Extrinsic motivation stems from the possibility and includes:

• Participating in a basketball event because you want to win the trophy;
• Studying especially hard to win a scholarship;
• Studying hard because your parents promised you that they would buy you your favorite toy if you got a good grade;
• Helping to wash dishes to get extra pocket money;
• Completing tasks at work to get a promotion;
• Taking ballet lessons because your parents expect you to do so;
• Cleaning your room to avoid punishment;
• Organizing your home because your spouse told you that both of you would be having dinner at a romantic restaurant

Intrinsic motivation includes:

• A sense of accomplishment because you’ve learned a new scale on the piano;
• A sense of fulfillment because you see progress in your work;
• Feeling that you belong when you participate in group activities;
• You wash the dishes because you like it when things are spotless;
• Feeling fulfilled when you volunteer at a shelter;
• You are feeling gratified when you complete your homework because you’ve had the chance to practice your skills.

Which type works better, intrinsic or extrinsic motivation?

Intrinsic motivation indeed gets better results because of one key element – passion . You do a task well because you enjoy doing it, and will be motivated to keep pushing even when you face challenges.

You understand the purpose of a task when you are intrinsically motivated . You’d want to increase your knowledge so that you can complete your job, and improve your memory as well. It helps educators to teach more effectively. The public sectors of many countries, which face productivity challenges, need it sorely.

Intrinsic motivation has clear advantages. However, it may not be relevant if you have to complete a task that you have no desire to do.

Extrinsic motivation doesn’t appear useful, at least not in the short term. But we may need to rely on it when we are trying to get people to do tasks that don’t appeal to them .

How to Use Internal and External Motivation

The examples of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation given above explain why both types of motivation are essential and should be in balance . Achieving this is the challenge. Overcoming, it depends on the individual and his or her goals.

Nobody solely depends on either form of motivation.

Both are motivating us at any one time because there are usually aspects of a situation that we enjoy and others that we dislike. It is the best strategy. You’re maximizing your motivation if you want a promotion because you want a pay raise and the challenges that a new job entails. Both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are at play.

 As mentioned earlier, inherent motivation seems to work best.

No one can rob you of the possibility of success if you are self-motivated . Self-motivated individuals are typically fulfilled and happier than those whose motivation depends on external factors.

For example, if you are a company employee, you will feel contented if you enjoy your job. Then consider your boss, who may only accept the promotion because he needed the money to support his family.

It’s essential to pursue goals that motivate both ways.

Extrinsic motivation increases internal motivation. For example, you hate going to the gym, but do it because you want to lose weight. Shedding pounds is an external motivator, but you may find working out enjoyable because you enjoy the endorphin rush. It’s like chasing after a carrot, but you come to enjoy the process over time.

Too many external rewards, however, can reduce your internal motivation.

It’s always better to be motivated internally than externally. As you try to keep both types of motivation balanced, don’t depend too much on external rewards to keep you moving forward. For example, while a promotion is excellent, it’s essential to enjoy the work first.

In short, a person needs both types of motivation, kept in balance, to attain their goals.

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This Post Has One Comment

To encourage others to increase production. Managers will use raises and bonuses as external motivators for employees to work harder. However, extrinsic motivators only go so far, and to increase the quality of work, increasing the employees’ intrinsic motivations is much more effective.

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NeurIPS 2024 Datasets and Benchmarks Track

If you'd like to become a reviewer for the track, or recommend someone, please use this form .

The Datasets and Benchmarks track serves as a venue for high-quality publications, talks, and posters on highly valuable machine learning datasets and benchmarks, as well as a forum for discussions on how to improve dataset development. Datasets and benchmarks are crucial for the development of machine learning methods, but also require their own publishing and reviewing guidelines. For instance, datasets can often not be reviewed in a double-blind fashion, and hence full anonymization will not be required. On the other hand, they do require additional specific checks, such as a proper description of how the data was collected, whether they show intrinsic bias, and whether they will remain accessible. The Datasets and Benchmarks track is proud to support the open source movement by encouraging submissions of open-source libraries and tools that enable or accelerate ML research.

The previous editions of the Datasets and Benchmarks track were highly successful; you can view the accepted papers from 2021 , 2002 , and 2023 , and the winners of the best paper awards 2021 , 2022 and 2023

CRITERIA. W e are aiming for an equally stringent review as the main conference, yet better suited to datasets and benchmarks. Submissions to this track will be reviewed according to a set of criteria and best practices specifically designed for datasets and benchmarks , as described below. A key criterion is accessibility: datasets should be available and accessible , i.e. the data can be found and obtained without a personal request to the PI, and any required code should be open source. We encourage the authors to use Croissant format ( https://mlcommons.org/working-groups/data/croissant/ ) to document their datasets in machine readable way.   Next to a scientific paper, authors should also submit supplementary materials such as detail on how the data was collected and organised, what kind of information it contains, how it should be used ethically and responsibly, as well as how it will be made available and maintained.

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SUBMISSIONS.  There will be one deadline this year. It is also still possible to submit datasets and benchmarks to the main conference (under the usual review process), but dual submission to both is not allowed (unless you retracted your paper from the main conference). We also cannot transfer papers from the main track to the D&B track. Authors can choose to submit either single-blind or double-blind . If it is possible to properly review the submission double-blind, i.e., reviewers do not need access to non-anonymous repositories to review the work, then authors can also choose to submit the work anonymously. Papers will not be publicly visible during the review process. Only accepted papers will become visible afterward. The reviews themselves are not visible during the review phase but will be published after decisions have been made. The datasets themselves should be accessible to reviewers but can be publicly released at a later date (see below). New authors cannot be added after the abstract deadline and they should have an OpenReview profile by the paper deadline. NeurIPS does not tolerate any collusion whereby authors secretly cooperate with reviewers, ACs or SACs to obtain favourable reviews.

SCOPE. This track welcomes all work on data-centric machine learning research (DMLR) and open-source libraries and tools that enable or accelerate ML research, covering ML datasets and benchmarks as well as algorithms, tools, methods, and analyses for working with ML data. This includes but is not limited to:

• New datasets, or carefully and thoughtfully designed (collections of) datasets based on previously available data.
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Read our original blog post for more about why we started this track.

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• Release of reviews and start of Author discussions on OpenReview: Aug 07, 2024
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Q: My work is in scope for this track but possibly also for the main conference. Where should I submit it?

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A: This will be possible on the condition that a credentialization is necessary for the public good (e.g. because of ethically sensitive medical data), and that an established credentialization procedure is in place that is 1) open to a large section of the public, 2) provides rapid response and access to the data, and 3) is guaranteed to be maintained for many years. A good example here is PhysioNet Credentialing, where users must first understand how to handle data with human subjects, yet is open to anyone who has learned and agrees with the rules. This should be seen as an exceptional measure, and NOT as a way to limit access to data for other reasons (e.g. to shield data behind a Data Transfer Agreement). Misuse would be grounds for desk rejection. During submission, you can indicate that your dataset involves open credentialized access, in which case the necessity, openness, and efficiency of the credentialization process itself will also be checked.

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A submission consists of:

• Please carefully follow the Latex template for this track when preparing proposals. We follow the NeurIPS format, but with the appropriate headings, and without hiding the names of the authors. Download the template as a bundle here .
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• Reviewing is in principle single-blind, hence the paper should not be anonymized. In cases where the work can be reviewed equally well anonymously, anonymous submission is also allowed.
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• Dataset documentation and intended uses. Recommended documentation frameworks include datasheets for datasets , dataset nutrition labels , data statements for NLP , data cards , and accountability frameworks .
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• URL to Croissant metadata record documenting the dataset/benchmark available for viewing and downloading by the reviewers. You can create your Croissant metadata using e.g. the Python library available here: https://github.com/mlcommons/croissant
• Author statement that they bear all responsibility in case of violation of rights, etc., and confirmation of the data license.
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• Links to access the dataset and its metadata. This can be hidden upon submission if the dataset is not yet publicly available but must be added in the camera-ready version. In select cases, e.g when the data can only be released at a later date, this can be added afterward (up to a year after the submission deadline). Simulation environments should link to open source code repositories
• The dataset itself should ideally use an open and widely used data format. Provide a detailed explanation on how the dataset can be read. For simulation environments, use existing frameworks or explain how they can be used.
• Long-term preservation: It must be clear that the dataset will be available for a long time, either by uploading to a data repository or by explaining how the authors themselves will ensure this
• Explicit license: Authors must choose a license, ideally a CC license for datasets, or an open source license for code (e.g. RL environments). An overview of licenses can be found here: https://paperswithcode.com/datasets/license
• Add structured metadata to a dataset's meta-data page using Web standards (like schema.org and DCAT ): This allows it to be discovered and organized by anyone. A guide can be found here: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/dataset . If you use an existing data repository, this is often done automatically.
• Highly recommended: a persistent dereferenceable identifier (e.g. a DOI  minted by a data repository or a prefix on identifiers.org ) for datasets, or a code repository (e.g. GitHub, GitLab,...) for code. If this is not possible or useful, please explain why.
• For benchmarks, the supplementary materials must ensure that all results are easily reproducible. Where possible, use a reproducibility framework such as the ML reproducibility checklist , or otherwise guarantee that all results can be easily reproduced, i.e. all necessary datasets, code, and evaluation procedures must be accessible and documented.
• For papers introducing best practices in creating or curating datasets and benchmarks, the above supplementary materials are not required.
• For papers resubmitted after being retracted from another venue: a brief discussion on the main concerns raised by previous reviewers and how you addressed them. You do not need to share the original reviews.
• For the dual submission and archiving, the policy follows the NeurIPS main track paper guideline .

Use of Large Language Models (LLMs): We welcome authors to use any tool that is suitable for preparing high-quality papers and research. However, we ask authors to keep in mind two important criteria. First, we expect papers to fully describe their methodology, and any tool that is important to that methodology, including the use of LLMs, should be described also. For example, authors should mention tools (including LLMs) that were used for data processing or filtering, visualization, facilitating or running experiments, and proving theorems. It may also be advisable to describe the use of LLMs in implementing the method (if this corresponds to an important, original, or non-standard component of the approach). Second, authors are responsible for the entire content of the paper, including all text and figures, so while authors are welcome to use any tool they wish for writing the paper, they must ensure that all text is correct and original.

REVIEWING AND SELECTION PROCESS

Reviewing will be single-blind, although authors can also submit anonymously if the submission allows that. A datasets and benchmarks program committee will be formed, consisting of experts on machine learning, dataset curation, and ethics. We will ensure diversity in the program committee, both in terms of background as well as technical expertise (e.g., data, ML, data ethics, social science expertise). Each paper will be reviewed by the members of the committee. In select cases where ethical concerns are flagged by reviewers, an ethics review may be performed as well.

Papers will not be publicly visible during the review process. Only accepted papers will become visible afterward. The reviews themselves are also not visible during the review phase but will be published after decisions have been made. Authors can choose to keep the datasets themselves hidden until a later release date, as long as reviewers have access.

The factors that will be considered when evaluating papers include:

• Utility and quality of the submission: Impact, originality, novelty, relevance to the NeurIPS community will all be considered. 
• Reproducibility: All submissions should be accompanied by sufficient information to reproduce the results described i.e. all necessary datasets, code, and evaluation procedures must be accessible and documented. We encourage the use of a reproducibility framework such as the ML reproducibility checklist to guarantee that all results can be easily reproduced. Benchmark submissions in particular should take care to ensure sufficient details are provided to ensure reproducibility. If submissions include code, please refer to the NeurIPS code submission guidelines .  
• Was code provided (e.g. in the supplementary material)? If provided, did you look at the code? Did you consider it useful in guiding your review? If not provided, did you wish code had been available?
• Ethics: Any ethical implications of the work should be addressed. Authors should rely on NeurIPS ethics guidelines as guidance for understanding ethical concerns.  
• Completeness of the relevant documentation: Per NeurIPS ethics guidelines , datasets must be accompanied by documentation communicating the details of the dataset as part of their submissions via structured templates (e.g. TODO). Sufficient detail must be provided on how the data was collected and organized, what kind of information it contains,  ethically and responsibly, and how it will be made available and maintained. 
• Licensing and access: Per NeurIPS ethics guidelines , authors should provide licenses for any datasets released. These should consider the intended use and limitations of the dataset, and develop licenses and terms of use to prevent misuse or inappropriate use.  
• Consent and privacy: Per  NeurIPS ethics guidelines , datasets should minimize the exposure of any personally identifiable information, unless informed consent from those individuals is provided to do so. Any paper that chooses to create a dataset with real data of real people should ask for the explicit consent of participants, or explain why they were unable to do so.
• Ethics and responsible use: Any ethical implications of new datasets should be addressed and guidelines for responsible use should be provided where appropriate. Note that, if your submission includes publicly available datasets (e.g. as part of a larger benchmark), you should also check these datasets for ethical issues. You remain responsible for the ethical implications of including existing datasets or other data sources in your work.
• Legal compliance: For datasets, authors should ensure awareness and compliance with regional legal requirements.

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

The following committee will provide advice on the organization of the track over the coming years: Sergio Escalera, Isabelle Guyon, Neil Lawrence, Dina Machuve, Olga Russakovsky, Joaquin Vanschoren, Serena Yeung.

DATASETS AND BENCHMARKS CHAIRS

Lora Aroyo, Google Francesco Locatello, Institute of Science and Technology Austria Lingjuan Lyu, Sony AI

Contact: [email protected]