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Extrinsic motivation vs Intrinsic motivation

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This was a theme that had fascinated him since the very beginning of his career. Just one year after completing his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University in 1970, he published an influential paper in which he asked people to solve a puzzle called the Soma cube (a little like a Rubik’s Cube). He found that those who were offered a financial reward for solving the puzzle were, weirdly, less likely to enjoy the task and were more likely to give up solving the puzzle after the reward was removed, compared to those who weren’t offered any money at all.

Until that point, most scientists had thought that motivation was
mainly driven by incentives like rewards and punishments. But Deci and Ryan showed otherwise. They encouraged readers to see motivation falling on a spectrum,
with ‘extrinsic’ at one end and ‘intrinsic’ at the other. Intrinsic motivation comes from the inside: driven by self-fulfilment, curiosity and a genuine desire to learn. Extrinsic motivation comes from the outside: driven by pay-rises, material rewards and social approval. But these forms of motivation were not equal. According to selfdetermination theory, intrinsic motivation is substantially more powerful than extrinsic motivation. Lasting motivation comes from within

External motivation is the form of extrinsic motivation that’s the least autonomous; instead of us being motivated by any kind of internal force, we’re being controlled by the opinions, rules and rewards offered by others. Further along the spectrum, identified motivation is the most autonomous form of extrinsic motivation. Even though we might be doing something for the external reward associated with it, we value that reward or end-goal – and crucially, that value was determined by us, not foisted upon us by others. Using this framework, Sheldon spotted something fascinating about the PCT hikers. The best predictor of their performance was the specific kind of extrinsic motivation they drew upon when their intrinsic motivation waned. Using the data he collected on the hikers’ motivation, wellbeing and hike performance, he showed that those who had higher levels of both introjected and identified motivation were far more likely to complete the trail. They managed to tap into these forms of extrinsic motivation to help sustain their progress even when the going got tough. At the same time, Sheldon asked each of the walkers about their mood on the hike, using a series of well-established tests for subjective well-being (SWB), psychology jargon for ‘happiness’. Therein lay his second intriguing insight: the only type of extrinsic motivation that corresponded with greater happiness was identified motivation. In other words, it was the hikers who motivated themselves by aligning their actions with what they truly valued who not only completed the trail – but also felt happiest at the end of it.