The Truth: Getting paid for doing what you already enjoy will sometimes cause your love for the task to wane because you attribute your motivation as coming from the reward, not your internal feelings.
In 1980, David Rosenfield, Robert Folger and Harold Adelman at Southern Methodist University revealed a way you can defeat the over justification effect. Seek employers who dole out reward – paychecks, bonuses, promotions, etc. – based not on quotas or task completions but instead based on competence. They ran an experiment in which they told subjects the goal was to find fun and interesting ways to improve vocabulary skills in schools. They placed participants in two categories and two groups per category. In one category, subjects would be paid for being good at their task. In the other category, the subjects would be paid for completing a task. The subjects received 26 dice with letters on their faces instead of dots and a stack of index cards each with 13 random letters. The subjects hit a timer and used their dice to make words from the letters on the cards. Once they had used nine letters or spent a minute-and-a-half trying, they moved on to the next index card and kept repeating until the experiment ended. It was difficult but fun, and as the players kept going they started to improve in their abilities.
In the payment for competence category, Group A was told they were being paid based on how well they did compared to the average score. In Group B, the subjects were told the same thing, but there was no mention of any reward. In the payment for completion category, the scientists told Group C each completed puzzle would increase their payout, and Group D was told they would be paid by the hour.
After the games, the experimenters pretended to tally up the subjects’ scores and showed Groups A and B how well they did. No matter how they actually performed, the scientists told half of Groups A and B they did poorly and half they were amazing at the game. Groups C and D, the ones who were paid for completions, were also split. Half got low pay and half high pay. The subjects then filled out a questionnaire and sat alone in the room with the dice and cards for three minutes. During that alone time the real study began. The scientists wanted to see who would keep playing the game for fun and for how long.
The people in Groups A and B, the ones who were paid for being better than average, they picked up the game and played it for over two minutes, but slightly less than that if they were told they weren’t that good. The people in groups C and D, the ones paid for completions, didn’t play it for fun for as long as did the people in the competency groups, and they tended to play longer the less they were paid.
The results of the study suggested when you get rewarded based on how well you perform a task, as long as those reasons are made perfectly clear, rewards will generate that electric exuberance of intrinsic validation, and the higher the reward, the better the feeling and the more likely you will try harder in the future. On the other hand, if you are getting rewarded just for being a warm body, no matter how well you do your job, no matter what you achieve, the electric feeling is absent. In those conditions greater rewards don’t lead to more output, don’t encourage you to strive for greatness. Overall, the study suggested rewards don’t have motivational power unless they make you feel competent. Money alone doesn’t do that. With money, when you explain to yourself why you worked so hard, all you can come up with is, “to get paid.” You come to believe you are being coerced, paid off, and bought out. In the absence of what the scientists called “competency feedback” there is no story to tell yourself that paints you as a badass. Quotas and overtime and hourly pay don’t offer such indications of competency. Bonuses based on a reaching a specific number of completions or reaching a quantified goal make you feel like a machine.
If you pay people to complete puzzles instead of paying them for being smart, they lose interest in the game. If you pay children to draw, fun becomes work. Payment on top of compliments and other praise and feeling good about personal achievement are powerful motivators, but only if they are unexpected. Only then can you continue to tell the story that keeps you going; only then can you still explain your motivation as coming from within.
Consider the story you tell yourself about why you do what you do for a living. How vulnerable is that tale to these effects?
Maybe your story goes like this: Work is just a means to an end. You go to work; you get paid. You exchange effort for survival tokens and the occasional indulgence from your favorite store. Work is not fun. Work pays bills. Fun happens at places that are not work. Your story is in no danger if that’s how you see things. In an environment like that Skinner’s assumptions hold true, you will only work as hard as is necessary to keep getting paychecks. If offered greater rewards, you’ll work harder for them.
Maybe your story goes like this though: I love what I do. It changes lives. It makes the world a better place. I am slowly becoming a master in my field, and I get to choose how I solve problems. My bosses value my efforts, depend on me, and offer praise. In that scenario, rewards just get in the way of your job. As Kahneman and Deaton’s study about happiness showed, once you earn enough to be happy day-to-day, motivation must come from something else. As Kahneman and Deaton’s research into happiness and money showed, the only material reward worth seeking once you have a bed, running water and access to microwave popcorn, are tributes, symbols to all of your merit, stuff that demonstrates your effectiveness to yourself and others. Ranks, degrees, gold stars, trophies, Nobel Prizes and Academy Awards – these are shorthand indicators of your competence. Those rewards amplify your internal motivations; they build your self-esteem and strengthen your feelings of self-efficacy. They show you’ve leveled up in the real world. Achievement unlocked. They help you construct a personal narrative you enjoy telling.
The over justification effect threatens your fragile narratives, especially if you haven’t figured out what to do with your life. You run the risk of seeing your behavior as motivated by profit instead of interest if you agree to get paid for something you would probably do for free. Conditioning will not only fail, it will pollute you. You run the risk of believing the reward, not your passion, were responsible for your effort, and in the future it will be a challenge to generate enthusiasm. It becomes more and more difficult to look back on your actions and describe them in terms of internal motivations. The thing you love can become drudgery if that which can’t be measured is transmuted into something you can plug into TurboTax.
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