We hope to do more entertaining things during work, even though there might not be rewards all the time. There’s a reason behind that.
According to psychologist Richard E. Nisbett’s experience, kindergarteners were split into three groups and asked to draw.
Group A were told they will have a prize after they drew;
Group B didn’t know they will get a prize until they finished;
Group C doesn’t get a prize.
Group A used a longer time compared to other groups to finish their drawings. A few weeks later, the same kindergarteners were asked to draw again, but this time they won’t receive any prizes. As a result, group B and group C did finish the drawings just like last time, but group A didn’t have the motivation to draw.
The results are significant regarding that rewarding systems can lead to lost of intrinsic motivation. Using the example from above, we might view drawing as a way to release stress, but when there’s reward, drawing became a form of motivation. This affected the original purposes which is the motivation.
A lot of times we do things because we want to. However, after receiving a form of reward, our original purpose became do it because of the award.
Rewarding system can be use affectively when we need to do something that we are not willing to. It doesn’t seem to be very effective if we already have the motivation to do the original thing.