Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation

Ideas surrounding intrinsic motion pop into my mind occasionally. For example, I’ve made several attempts at de-emphasizing grades in the hope of increasing intrinsic motivation, although it’s unclear if this has been successful. There might be an apparent relationship between creativity and intrinsic motivation, and that extrinsic and intrinsic motivation might compete. I’ve heard the meme that one should try to minimize providing rewards to students because it decreases intrinsic motivation, but apparently this assertion is questionable. At least that’s the claim of Cameron, Banko and Pierce in a 2001 paper.

The abstract essentially captures the main conclusions of the article. In many cases, providing rewards has a negligible or even positive effect on intrinsic motivation. However, rewards can have a negative effect if the task to be performed is “high-interest” and the rewards are both tangible and expected. Now, the conclusions drawn came from a meta-analysis, and the article essentially argues against the opposite results from a related meta-analysis in 1999, which argued against yet an earlier meta-analysis from 1994. I suppose that’s how research proceeds in some cases. Also note that the way most of these studies measured motivation is by comparing time-on-task with some sort of control. Spending less time on a task is the measured proxy for lower intrinsic motivation.

It reminds me as someone in the physical sciences, that things can be much more complicated in other areas particularly having to do with human behavior. The molecules I study behave much more consistently! Reading the article also made me think about three things related to teaching and student learning: (1) What are rewards? (2) Are my classes high-interest or low-interest? (3) Can I gauge intrinsic motivation in my students?

What are the rewards for the student? I suppose getting a degree and finding a job might count. Finding a fulfilling career could be a long-term reward. I suspect that getting an ‘A’ in my class is what most students would have in mind as a motivating reward. “If I work hard, I can do well in this class.” That’s the mantra of at least some students. There might be a few students who find reward simply in learning about chemistry. That’s as intrinsic as it gets, but I think these students would also have additional extrinsic motivations, which is not a bad thing. The article also suggests that verbal rewards have a positive effect in “high interest” situations.

Are my classes high or low interest? The two classes I teach practically every year are General Chemistry and Physical Chemistry. In General Chemistry, the majority of the students are not chemistry or biochemistry majors. I’d gauge 20% are our majors in my typical G-Chem class; some years more, other years less. I’d say that from the students’ point of view, interest is low. I don’t meet many students who find chemistry interesting but choose to major in something else. In P-Chem, all the students are our majors, however the majority are decidedly not interested in physical chemistry with all that physics and math. I would classify both these classes as “low interest”. I’ve also taught many sections of non-majors chemistry which also clearly fall in the low-interest category. By and large I would say that students in most of my classes are taking them to fulfil a requirement and they’re not all that interested in it. (In my special topics classes, most of the students are inherently interested!)

If my classes are “low interest”, then it seems that rewards of different sorts don’t have a negative effect on intrinsic motivation. Some might even have a positive effect, at least according to Cameron, Banko and Pierce. Students will almost always do something for extra credit, and everyone is always happy when there are “free points” for some activity. That’s the carrot approach. There’s also the stick approach – I’ve written about another article from the same journal on Emphasizing Grades and Aversive Control. When there’s little intrinsic motivation anyway, perhaps that’s where one needs extrinsic motivation.

I haven’t considered a formal assessment to gauge intrinsic motivation in my students, although this might be something interesting to try. I’m sure I could find some generic pre- and post- question sets that could be easily modified to gauge this. I suppose it will depend on what proxy is used and how much one trusts self-reporting from students. In any case, it’s not something I will be trying this semester because classes start on Monday!