Page 59 - Hard Goals

50 HARD Goals

For her, running is an intrinsically motivated activity. Not so in
my case—and yet, I run. I don’t inherently enjoy running: it’s
hard for me, it’s painful, my head pounds, and I’m slow. I do it
for health reasons, and frankly, because of the T-shirts I get at
races (of course, those T-shirts make possible another extrinsic
motivator, namely feeling cool when people ask me about the
race). The “why” behind my running is a perfect example of
extrinsic motivation. My wife and I have each run a marathon,
but for very different reasons.
There are those who will say that intrinsic motivation is way
better than extrinsic motivation. And some will take it even fur-
ther and say that extrinsic motivation can actually hurt intrinsic
motivation. One of the classic studies on this was called “Turn-
ing Play into Work.” 14
Researchers studied nursery school children who drew with
felt pens—what you might call an intrinsically motivating activ-
ity. The kids were divided into three groups. The fi rst was the
expected reward condition, in which the kids agreed to draw a
picture in order to receive a good player certifi cate. The second
was the unexpected reward condition, in which participants
were unexpectedly given a reward after they completed the pic-
ture. In the third, control condition, the children didn’t receive
any reward, they just got to draw.
One week later, all the kids were brought back in to play with
the felt pens, and no rewards were given to any of the groups.
The results? Kids in the expected reward group decreased in
intrinsic motivation, while the other two groups maintained
their intrinsic motivation.
OK, so perhaps if you give a lousy reward that’s inconsistent
with the activity itself, one that incents the wrong behaviors
and diminishes someone’s sense of autonomy, then yes, you can