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The present study examined how rewards affect people's intrinsic motivation when the rewards are tied to meeting increasingly demanding performance standards. The experiment was a 2 x 2 factorial design with 2 levels of performance standard (constant, progressive) and 2 levels of reward (reward, no reward). Using a puzzle-solving task, 60 undergraduate university students were randomly assigned to the experimental conditions. In the constant conditions, participants were required to solve 3 puzzle problems on each of 3 trials; in the progressive conditions, participants were asked to solve 1, 3, and 5 problems over the trials. Half the participants were offered and given $1.00 for each correct solution; those in the no-reward condition were not offered pay. The major finding was that participants in the progressive reward condition spent more time on the task in a free-choice session than those in the other conditions. The findings are discussed in terms of different theoretical accounts of rewards and intrinsic motivation and are most consistent with an extension of Eisenberger's (1992) theory of learned industriousness.
For over thirty years, researchers in social psychology have argued that rewarding people for doing activities produces detrimental effects. The claim is that when individuals are rewarded for performing a task, they will come to like the task less and spend less time on it once the rewards are no longer forthcoming. Rewards are said to destroy people's intrinsic motivation. A recent meta-analytic review of experiments on the topic, however, shows that under some conditions, rewards actually enhance people's motivation and performance (Cameron, Banko, & Pierce, 2001). Specifically, when people are offered a tangible reward (e.g., money) to meet a designated performance level, studies show increases in measures of intrinsic motivation. The present study is designed to determine how rewards affect motivation and performance when the rewards are tied to meeting increasingly demanding performance standards.
Since the 1970s, more than 140 experiments have examined the effects of reward on intrinsic motivation. A number of meta-analyses have been conducted on the experimental studies. Some researchers argue that negative effects of rewards are pervasive (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999); others contend that negative effects are limited (Cameron & Pierce, 1994, 2002; Eisenberger & Cameron, 1996). The major area of disagreement in the various meta-analyses...