Cross-Task Generalization of Intrinsic Motivation Effects
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Cross-Task Generalization of Intrinsic Motivation Effects
MICHAEL E. ENZLE, University of Alberta
EDWARD F. WRIGHT, St. Francis Xavier University
ISABEL M. REDONDO, Dalhousie University
Experiment 1: Method | Results | Experiment 2: Method | Results | Discussion
| References
A central focus of Deci and Ryan's (1987) cognitive evaluation theory is
the impact of contextual variables on motivation. Their model has been successfully
used to predict and explain how events associated with the performance of
a particular activity affect motivation to pursue the same activity again.
We describe here an extension of Deci and Ryan's model, integrated with notions
adapted from deCharms' (1968) discussion of Origin and Pawn states. This extension
and integration provides a model for predicting the generalization of motivational
effects across different activities.
Deci and Ryan (1987) proposed that intrinsic motivation stems from drive-like
human needs to be self-determining and competent, i.e., to be autonomous rather
than externally-controlled. In concrete terms, an intrinsically motivated
behaviour is that which appears to be spontaneously initiated by the person
in pursuit of no other goal than the activity itself. According to Deci and
Ryan, events that foster self-determination or competence will enhance or
maintain intrinsic motivation, whereas events that weaken self-determination
or competence will decrease intrinsic motivation.(1) Supporting research evidence
shows that events that enhance self-perceived autonomous functioning produce
increased intrinsic motivation for the target activity. The ability to make
choices about how to pursue an activity, for example, has been shown to enhance
or maintain intrinsic motivation (Enzle, Roggeveen, & Look, 1991; Zuckerman,
Porac, Lathin, Smith, & Deci, 1978), as has positive performance feedback
(e.g., Enzle & Ross, 1978; Vallerand & Reid, 1988). Externally-controlling
events that are antagonistic to self-perceived autonomy, on the other hand,
result in decreased intrinsic motivation and perceptions of external causality.
Thus, task-contingent rewards (e.g., Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973),
negative performance feedback (e.g., Enzle & Ross, 1978), and controlling
forms of surveillance (e.g., Enzle & Anderson, 1993) have been shown
to undermine intrinsic motivation.
The same body of research that supports Deci and Ryan's model also highlights
what may be an artificial limit on the generality of intrinsic motivation
effects. Because of the way hypotheses have been framed, the dependent variable
in all research to date has been intrinsic motivation to pursue the same activity
with which the autonomy-supporting and externally-controlling variables were
associated. This makes good sense, of course, when the point of the investigation
is to learn how people develop or lose intrinsic motivation to pursue particular
activities. Deci and Ryan's theory, however, is not necessarily restricted
to this level of specificity. When a person exercises choice with respect
to some activity, is the person's sense of self-determination enhanced only
as it relates to that activity, or does the effect also contribute to the
individual's overall sense of personal autonomy? When a person learns that
he or she has performed a task competently, is the person's enhanced sense
of competence limited to the original activity, or does the effect also influence
the person's level of general self-perceived competence? Because the needs
for self-determination and competence discussed by Deci and Ryan are general
ones, we believe that the answers to these questions should be that both
types of change occur. Experience with a particular activity should provide
information about self-determination and competence specific to the activity.
As well, self-determination and competence information from the specific
experience should contribute to the person's general self-perceptions of
autonomy. Parallel considerations apply to the impact of externally-controlling
events on motivation to pursue specific activities and on the person's general
self-perceived autonomy. If specific experiences do contribute to changes
in general levels of self-determination and competency, then it follows that
general changes in intrinsic motivation should also occur, changes that should
be manifested behaviourally when the person encounters a new activity.
Experiment 1
The present formulation yields the general prediction that self-determination
experiences during the pursuit of one activity will produce enhanced intrinsic
motivation to engage in new activities, whereas externally-controlling experiences
during one activity will undermine intrinsic motivation to engage in new activities.
Experiment 1 provides a test of the cross-activity generalization prediction
by producing intrinsic and extrinsic motivational states with one activity
and testing intrinsic motivation to engage in a new activity.
The experiment was also designed to assess another potential quality of
intrinsically and extrinsically motivated states. According to deCharms (1968),
once an intrinsically ("Origin") or extrinsically ("Pawn") motivated state
is established, the person meets new activities, at least in the short-run,
from that same motivational orientation.(2) Moreover, deCharms claims that
Origin and Pawn states perseverate, and are capable of overwhelming contemporaneous
contextual influences. This perseveration occurs, according to deCharms,
because intrinsically and extrinsically motivated states are associated with
expectancies about the person's causal capabilities. A person in the Pawn
state because of prior experiences of external control will expect to be
externally controlled in subsequent situations, even if the objective characteristics
of those new situations would permit autonomous functioning with the new
activity. Likewise, deCharms suggested that once an Origin state is established,
the person will expect to be autonomous, will tend to disregard evidence
of external control, and will proceed as if he or she were in fact an autonomous
agent. Our experimental investigation includes a test of this integration
of Deci and Ryan's (1987) and deCharms' (1968) theoretical frameworks.
Participants in Experiment 1 were initially given (a) an intensive period
of autonomous functioning with one activity, (b) an intensive period of external
control during the same activity, or (c) no prior activity experience. Participants
were then either offered and given an extrinsic reward for engaging in a new
activity, or they unexpectedly received the same reward after the new activity.
All participants then had a free-play period with the new activity. We predicted,
overall, that participants who had a recent autonomous experience would show
greater behavioural involvement in the new activity during the free-play
period than would participants who had no prior activity experience and than
participants who had had the prior externally-controlling experience. Those
who had been subjected to the external control pretreatment were expected
to show less behavioural interest in the new activity during the free-play
period than were participants in the other two groups.
An interaction between prior and later control experiences was expected
to be manifest in terms of the conditions under which extrinsic rewards would
undermine intrinsic motivation. The extrinsic reward manipulation was expected
to produce decreased involvement in the new activity during the free-play
period only for people who had had no pretreatment. As a group, these nonpretreated
individuals theoretically should be most influenced by the immediate qualities
of autonomy or external constraint in their environment: Participants who
contracted to engage in the target activity for the reward were expected to
show less subsequent interest in the activity than were participants who unexpectedly
received the same reward. Very different results were anticipated for the
two pretreatment groups. Autonomy pretreated subjects were expected to maintain
a relatively high level of intrinsic motivation to pursue the target activity
during the free-play period even when they had previously engaged in the
activity in exchange for the extrinsic reward. External control pretreated
subjects, on the other hand, were expected to show little intrinsic interest
in the new target activity during the free-play period, even when their first
engagement with the activity had been unconstrained by extrinsic reward.
The autonomy-control pretreatment effects we have hypothesized refer to
generalization from one well-defined activity to another activity. There
is reason to speculate that generalization of self-determination effects
might also occur from a limited feature of a particular activity to the entire
activity, comprising a within-activity generalization effect. Our rationale
stems from Langer's (1975) proposition that people have such a strong need
to believe that they control their lives and their environments that they
use quite flimsy evidence to maintain that belief. Langer (1975) reported
a study in which subjects in one condition selected their own lottery tickets
from an array, whereas those in a second condition were given tickets. Although
the lottery was described as an entirely random draw, subjects who selected
their own tickets believed they had a greater chance of winning the lottery
than did the other participants. Langer concluded that when people exercise
personal control over peripheral, non-causal, aspects of events they often
develop a generalized sense of personal control over the outcomes of those
events.
In the lottery study, participants supposedly generalized from control over
the ticket selection process to control over the lottery outcome. We think
that peripheral control experiences such as these can also produce motivational
effects. Deci and Ryan (1987) point out that belief in personal control over
outcomes can converge with self-determination when the person arrives at the
belief as a consequence of acting freely to implement personal choices and
intentions. Our Experiment 1 included a test of whether apparently exercising
influence over a peripheral aspect of an activity, the local environmental
conditions under which it was performed initially, would affect intrinsic
motivation to pursue the same activity in the future when no peripheral control
was exercised. People were or were not given an illusory opportunity to calibrate
the background noise and illumination levels in the laboratory during their
initial experience with the second of the two play activities. If perceptions
of self-determination for the entire play activity were to result from this
type of illusory peripheral control experience, then people should show enhanced
intrinsic motivation toward the play activity just as if they had been self-determining
with all aspects of the activity.
METHOD
Subjects and Design
Subjects were 152 university students who received credit toward an introductory
psychology course requirement. They were randomly assigned to the conditions
of a 3 (autonomy pretreatment vs. external constraint pretreatment vs. no
pretreatment) × 2 (illusory vs. no illusory peripheral control) ×
2 (expected vs. unexpected reward) between-subjects factorial design. Data
from eight participants who suspected the purpose of the experiment were excluded
from the analyses. Incidence of suspiciousness was unrelated to conditions.
Materials and Laboratory
Materials included a switch-light device for manipulating the pretreatment
independent variable, a 60-min timer, a video camcorder, a floor lamp with
illumination rheostat, and a Lego kit. The pretreatment manipulation device
consisted of a 30 × 45 cm tabletop switchboard connected to an upright
30 × 30 cm light display panel. The switchboard housed an 8 ×
8 array of 64 switches that controlled 64 display panel LEDs that were arranged
in a corresponding array. Lego is a construction toy that consists of multicoloured
interlocking bricks, and was used because it has a relatively high free-play
base rate for adults (e.g., Enzle & Anderson, 1993).
The experimental setting consisted of two rooms that shared an adjoining
wall in which was mounted a one-way mirror. The rooms were accessed by separate
doors from a common hallway. The mirror in the subject's cubicle was disguised
as a bulletin board. Subjects' activities could be viewed clearly through
the burlap covering of the ersatz bulletin board.
Procedure
Subjects participated individually. They were told that during the main
part of the study they would be asked to engage in one or more visuo-spatial
activities, and that they would later be asked questions about their reactions.
A second supposed goal of the research was to prepare materials for a study
of children's observational learning. Participants were informed that a sample
of their activity would be videotaped for use in the developmental research.
This second ostensible purpose of the research established the groundwork
for the experimenter to leave the laboratory with the camcorder during a
later free-play period.
Autonomy-constraint manipulation. Two-thirds of the subjects were told that
they would perform a visual pattern creation task for 12 min. Of these subjects,
those assigned to the autonomy pretreatment condition were asked to make as
many designs, of their own invention, with the switch-light mechanism as
they wished during the 12 min period. Subjects in the constraint pretreatment
condition were given a sheet that listed 49 ordered commands for the switch-light
mechanism. Participants were told to watch the timer on their table and to
execute one command every 15 s during the 12 min period. The commands simply
required subjects to turn on the lights, one by one in left-to-right and top-to-bottom
progression, until the entire matrix of 49 lights was illuminated. The experimenter
exited the subject cubicle and entered the adjoining observation room to
verify that all subjects followed instructions. The experimenter returned
to the subject cubicle at the end of the 12 min period. Subjects in these
two pre-treatment conditions were then seated at a second table which contained
the Lego building kit, as were subjects in the no-pretreatment condition.
The latter subjects had no experience with the switch-light device.
Peripheral control. The experimenter explained that it was important to
sample different laboratory environment variables such as light levels and
background sound. All subjects were then given a folder, the contents of
which had been prepared in advance by an assistant so that the experimenter
could remain blind to conditions. The experimenter feigned being busy in
another part of the room while subjects examined the contents of the folder.
For subjects in the peripheral-control condition, the first sheet in the
folder indicated that participants were being asked to select for themselves
the levels of illumination and sound that they would like to be implemented
during the next task (Lego). The form was constructed so that subjects could
ostensibly choose between high, medium and low lighting conditions and among
high, medium and low sound levels. No sheet regarding noise and lighting
was included in the folders given to subjects in the no-peripheral control
condition.
Reward expectancy manipulation. All subjects had in their folders a sheet
that manipulated reward expectancy. In the unexpected-reward conditions, this
sheet was merely an agreement form that subjects signed to give their consent
to build an object with the Lego kit. No payment was mentioned in the agreement.
For subjects in the expected-reward condition, however, the form asked them
to sign if they agreed to build the Lego object in order to receive payment
of $3. The experimenter was unaware of which reward form subjects had signed.
The experimenter collected the folder once subjects had completed the forms,
turned his(her) back, and appeared to open and examine the contents of the
folder, although he(she) did not in fact do so. The experimenter then adjusted
the unmarked rheostat on the floor lamp to a standard setting, and then switched
on the lamp. He(she) also selected a numerically coded audio cassette from
three available cassettes, mounted it on a tape-player, and activated the
machine. The tape was blank and emitted, in all cases, constant tape hiss
at an audible but not aversive level. Although the same lighting and sound
levels were established for all subjects, the procedure was designed to produce
the appearance, for subjects in the peripheral-control condition, that the
experimenter had implemented their personal selections.
The experimenter then arranged a camcorder mounted on a tripod so that it
appeared to be focussed on the subjects' table top. He(she) then activated
the camcorder, instructed subjects to construct a small castle, and announced
that he(she) would wait in the hallway for 5 min.
The experimenter reentered the subject cubicle at the conclusion of the
5 min period, and explained that he(she) needed to return the camcorder to
another researcher. The experimenter then gave subjects an envelope, which
had been prepared in advance by an assistant, and asked them to remove the
contents and to follow the printed instructions inside. The experimenter removed
the camcorder from the tripod, and placed the components on a small cart.
He(she) also turned off both the floor lamp and the audiocassette player.
The envelope that subjects received contained $3 and a receipt. In expected-reward
conditions, the printed instructions indicated that subjects had fulfilled
their agreement and that they should sign the receipt and return it to the
envelope. Subjects in the unexpected-reward condition learned from the receipt
that they were being given excess grant monies that had accumulated in trust
accounts, and that the funds were being disbursed to participants in several
studies according to granting agency requirements. The experimenter maintained
blindness to conditions by not looking at the receipt forms. After subjects
had signed the receipt, the experimenter left the room with the cart.
Free-play period. The experimenter's exit marked the beginning of an 8 min
free-play period. An observer who was blind to conditions recorded subjects'
free-play activity with the Lego kit via the one-way mirror. Play was operationally
defined as any active manipulation of the Lego building materials. A current
newspaper and newsmagazine were present on a small side-table positioned near
the subjects' table, and served as alternative activities in which subjects
could engage. The experimenter entered the subject cubicle at the end of the
free-play period, and conducted an oral suspiciousness probe and a full debriefing.
TABLE DID NOT COPY
RESULTS(3)
Scores for total free-play time with the Lego kit, in seconds, were submitted
to a 2 × 2 × 3 analysis of variance. This analysis produced the
anticipated significant main effect for the Autonomy-Constraint variable,
F(2,132) = 5.00, p < .01, and the predicted Autonomy-Constraint ×
Reward Expectancy interaction effect, F(2,132) = 3.65, p < .05. The Autonomy-Constraint
main effect reflects the fact that, overall, subjects in the autonomy-pretreatment
condition spent significantly more time playing with the Lego kit (M = 242.98)
than did subjects in the external constraint-pretreatment condition (M = 165.05),
p < .05 by Duncan's multiple range test. The amount of time subjects in
the no-pretreatment condition spent playing (M = 213.02) was intermediate
between the autonomy- and external constraint-pretreatment conditions, and
did not differ significantly from either.
Table 1 shows the means for the Autonomy-Constraint × Reward Expectancy
interaction. A useful reference point is the row of means for the no-pretreatment
conditions. Intrinsic motivation was affected strongly by the reward manipulation
in these conditions. Subjects in the expected-reward condition (M = 170.46)
spent significantly less free time playing with the Lego materials than did
subjects in the unexpected-reward condition (M = 255.58) when there had previously
been neither autonomy- nor external constraint-pretreatment experience. This
is the typical undermining effect of task-contingent reward on intrinsic motivation.
Within the external constraint-pretreatment conditions, however, there is
a general decline in free-play activity. The reward contingency manipulation
had no impact, and the level of free-play in both expected and unexpected
reward conditions (joint m = 165.05) is comparable to that shown by subjects
in the no-pretreatment/expected reward condition (M = 170.46). Pretreatment
with external constraint led these subjects to act as though their unconstrained
activity with the Lego kit had in fact been externally controlled.
Within the autonomy-pretreatment conditions, there is once again no difference
between expected and unexpected rewards. But in this case, the level of free-play
is relatively high in both reward contingency conditions (joint M = 242.98),
comparable to the no-pretreatment/unexpected-reward condition (M = 255.58).
Subjects with an immediate history of personal control thus behaved as though
their activity with the Lego kit was unconstrained, even when they had in
fact received a contingent reward for playing with it.
The analysis of variance also yielded the anticipated significant peripheral
control main effect, F(1,132) = 13.32, p < .001. Subjects in the peripheral-control
condition spent more time playing with the Lego materials (M = 244.07) than
did subjects in the no-peripheral-control condition (M = 169.97). No other
effects in the analysis reached significance.
Experiment 2
The results of the first study are consistent with the cross-activity generalization
hypothesis that autonomy-supporting and externally-controlling experiences
with one activity promote like approaches to new activities. As well, the
results supported our within-activity generalization hypothesis that perceived
self-determining experiences with a peripheral aspect of an activity will
increase intrinsic motivation for that activity.
The second experiment was designed to again assess the generalization hypothesis,
but this time with respect to competence. Heightened perceptions of competence
at one activity should enhance intrinsic motivation for new activities. Our
second study also provided another test of deCharms' (1968) speculation that
Origin experiences, those which are autonomy-supporting in one domain, bias
people's reactions to freedom and environmental constraint in other domains.
When people believe that they have conducted themselves competently at one
activity, they should be relatively unaffected by extrinsic constraints that
would otherwise dampen enjoyment of new activities.
Subjects in the second study received either positive competence feedback
or average competence feedback following one activity,(4) and then engaged
in a second activity for which receipt of an extrinsic reward was either expected
or was unexpected. We predicted that subjects would show greater free-play
involvement in the second activity when they had previously received positive
competence feedback than when they had not. Subjects who previously received
average competence feedback were expected to lose interest in the second
activity as a result of the expected reward. Those who had experienced enhanced
perceptions of competence for the first activity, however, were expected
to maintain a relatively high degree of motivation to pursue the second activity,
regardless of whether they were extrinsically constrained or not.
METHOD
Subjects and Design
Subjects were 53 university students who received credit toward an introductory
psychology course requirement. They were randomly assigned to the conditions
of a 2 (high vs. average competence pretreatment) × 2 (expected vs.
unexpected reward) between-subjects factorial design. Data from 5 participants
who expressed suspiciousness were excluded from the analyses. Incidence of
suspiciousness was about equally distributed among conditions.
Materials
Rubic's Cube was the initial activity. The puzzle is composed of 27 multicoloured
blocks measuring 2.5 cm on each side that are internally connected by a linkage
mechanism to form a 7.5 cm cube. The object of the puzzle is to rotate cube
sections about the internal axes until each cube face consists of a single
color. The second activity was a Lego kit. The same laboratory arrangement
was used as in Experiment 1.
Procedure
Competence manipulation. Subjects participated individually, and were told
that the study was an investigation of adult reactions to recreational activities.
The experimenter demonstrated the Rubic's Cube, and instructed subjects to
arrange as much of one face in a single colour as possible during a 5 min
period. The experimenter left the room for the duration of this period. Before
re-entering the room, he(she) consulted a note prepared by an assistant that
indicated the competence condition to which subjects had been randomly assigned.
The experimenter examined the Rubic's Cube, and said, "Okay, I see you got
(X) sections all of the same colour," where X was the number that subjects
had aligned on one face of the cube. The experimenter went on to tell subjects
in the high-competence feedback condition that they had performed "... a lot
better than most participants", and said, "I'm really impressed. It's quite
difficult to get the (Xth) one." As well, the experimenter took a sheet bearing
the title "Evaluation Form" from a desk, placed it in plain view of subjects
and wrote "unusually good" in an appropriately labelled space. The experimenter
told subjects assigned to the average-competency condition that "... that's
about what everyone has been getting, somewhere between (X - 1) and (X +
1)", and wrote "usual, normal" on the evaluation form. The Rubic's Cube was
then placed in a storage box.
Reward expectancy manipulation. After delivering the competence feedback,
subjects were seated at another table on which the Lego materials were arranged.
The reward expectancy manipulation was implemented exactly as in Experiment
1. The experimenter was blind to these condition assignments throughout the
session.
A confederate who was blind to conditions observed subjects through the
disguised one-way mirror during the payment phase of the reward expectancy
manipulation. When the confederate saw that subjects had completed the receipt,
he(she) entered the hallway and knocked on the subject cubicle door. When
the experimenter opened the door, a staged conversation commenced, in which
it emerged that water from a broken drain pipe was flooding several laboratories
elsewhere in the building, including one of the experimenter's facilities.
The experimenter explained to subjects that he needed to check his(her) other
laboratory and left the subject cubicle. The confederate entered the observation
cubicle via the hallway door, stationed himself(herself) behind the one-way
mirror, and recorded subjects' Lego kit activity during an 8 min free-play
period. The alternative activities used in Experiment 1 were available to
subjects. At the conclusion of this period, the experimenter returned and
conducted a suspiciousness probe and full debriefing.
TABLE 2: Experiment 2: Mean Free Play Time Measure of Intrinsic Motivation
Reward expectancy for second activity
Competence feedback for first activity Unexpected Expected (Total)
Average performance
High performance 252.17a
255.33a 111.75b
292.83a (181.96)
(274.08)
Note: Time scores are in seconds from a possible total of 480 s. Means in
the main body of the table that do not share a common subscript differ significantly
at p < .05 by Duncan's multiple range test.
RESULTS
Time scores for the free-play period were submitted to a 2 × 2 analysis
of variance. As expected, there was a significant Competence Feedback main
effect, F(1,44) = 4.62, p < .05. Overall, subjects spent more time playing
with the Lego kit if they believed they had performed well earlier on the
Rubic's Cube (M = 274.08) than if they thought their Rubic's Cube performance
was unremarkable (M = 181.96).
The anticipated Competence Feedback × Reward Expectancy interaction
effect was also significant, F(1,44) = 4.31, p < .05. Table 2 shows the
means for this effect. Duncan's multiple range test reveals a pattern of differences
among these means that is very similar to that observed in Experiment 1.
Within the average-competency feedback conditions, the reward expectancy manipulation
had a significant undermining effect. Subjects spent less time playing with
the Lego kit in the expected-reward (M = 111.75) than in the unexpected-reward
(M = 252.17) condition, p < .05. Believing that they had earlier performed
in a skillful manner on another task, however, insulated subjects from the
detrimental influence of expected rewards. Mean free-play time in the high
competency feedback/expected-reward condition (M 292.83) does not differ
from that in the high competency/unexpected-reward condition (M = 255.33).
As well, the two high competency condition means do not differ from the average
competency/unexpected reward condition, but are both significantly different
from the average competency/expected reward condition mean (ps < .05).
DISCUSSION
Our experiments provide good evidence that both autonomy-supporting and
externally-controlling experiences with one activity (deCharms, 1968; Deci
& Ryan, 1987) can affect people's reactions to new activities. In Experiment
1, subjects who spent an initial period of time engaged in free choice activity
with the autonomy-constraint device subsequently showed greater intrinsic
interest in a new leisure activity than did subjects whose activity with
the device was guided by external commands. Experiment 2 showed that positive
feedback about competence at one activity promoted intrinsically motivated
engagement in the next, new, activity. Each of these effects is consistent
with intrinsic motivation studies in which the effect of choice and competence
are observed on the original activity. The current studies show that such
effects are not confined to just the activities that give rise in the first
instance to perceptions of autonomy versus extrinsic control, or to self-assessments
of competence. Subjects approached new activities with intrinsically or extrinsically
motivated orientations, depending on the nature of their experiences with
other activities in the immediate past.
Perhaps the most striking feature of the current investigation is the consistent
support across the two studies for deCharms' (1968) suggestion that previously
established expectancies about autonomy or constraint can override or supplant
subsequent objective situational states of personal freedom and situational
constraint. In Experiment 1, the negative influence of extrinsic reward contingencies
on intrinsic motivation, shown for the nonpretreated group of participants,
did not occur for the autonomy-pretreatment subjects. Similarly, subjects
pretreated with external constraint continued to act as though they were extrinsically
constrained even when they were not. External control-pretreatment subjects
were just as unmotivated in the unexpected-reward condition as they were
in the expected-reward condition when introduced to the new activity. A similar
pattern emerged in Experiment 2. Subjects who believed that they had performed
within average limits on the Rubic's Cube task were susceptible to the effects
of contingent extrinsic rewards. Expected-reward participants in these conditions
showed less intrinsic motivation to pursue the Lego activity than did those
who unexpectedly received the reward. Subjects who were pretreated with positive
competence feedback for the Rubic's Cube, however, showed equivalent and
relatively high levels of interest for the Lego kit in the expected- and
unexpected-reward conditions.
Another intriguing aspect of the current findings is the fact that apparent
personal choice about peripheral conditions under which an activity was engaged
led to enhanced intrinsic motivation for that activity. In Experiment 1, subjects
who merely believed that they had chosen their own illumination and background
noise levels showed greater intrinsic interest in a contemporary activity
than did people for whom these choices were ostensibly made by the experimenter.
Here is direct evidence that apparent influence over peripheral contextual
features of activity engagement affects people's intrinsic motivation for
the activity itself.
An important practical issue that guides much intrinsic motivation research
is the possibility that parents, teachers, and other behaviour managers may
unintentionally undermine intrinsic motivation. The use of extrinsic task
contingent incentives, when applied to behaviours that are already intrinsically
motivated, may lead to reduced motivation in the long run when the incentives
are no longer available. The current results should deepen concern over the
use of extrinsic incentives. Not only can these constraints undermine the
specific interests that they were meant to encourage, but they may also subvert
intrinsic motivation to pursue other activities that were never intended to
fall under the influence of the extrinsic constraint.
We are grateful to Igor Gavanski, Liz Luus, John Turtle, and Gary Wells
for their helpful comments on the manuscript. We also thank Brian Boon, Kathy
Kottie, Keith Losie, and Lorna Spenrath for their services as experimenters
and observers.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Michael E.
Enzle, Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada T6G 2E1.
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On the importance of self-determination for intrinsically-motivated behavior.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 4, 443-446.
Received May 24, 1994 - Revised August 21, 1995 - Accepted August 25, 1995
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FOOTNOTES
1. This general hypothesis is also consistent with the attributional approaches
of Bem (1972) and Lepper and Greene (1978). Behaviours that occur in the absence
of extrinsic constraint should be attributed to qualities of the self (e.g.,
attitudes, motivation), whereas behaviours that occur in the presence of
plausible external causes are unlikely to produce congruent self-perceptions.
Our choice of Deci and Ryan's model was influenced by the proposed underlying
drive-like need for autonomy. This feature of cognitive evaluation theory
provides a mechanism with which to understand behavioural generalization effects.
As Bem (1972) himself points out, the link between self-perceptions and behaviour
is ill-explained conceptually by attributional models.
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2. Rotter's (1966) social learning theory converges on some of the same
ideas as deCharms' (1968) theory, although there is an important difference.
Whereas deCharms emphasizes relatively transient motivational states within
persons, Rotter's theory of internality-externality is primarily concerned
with stable individual trait differences among people.
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3. Preliminary analyses were conducted including subject gender as a variable
in both Experiment 1 and 2. Neither gender main effects nor interactions of
gender with the manipulated variables were found.
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4. A negative competence feedback condition was contemplated, but was rejected
on ethical grounds. Our judgment was that the combined impact of Experiments
1 and 2 as tests of the cross-activity generalization hypothesis would not
be substantially strengthened or weakened by the presence or absence of this
condition.
