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A meta-analysis of leadership and intrinsic motivation: Examining relative importance and moderators

Hanbing xue, yuxiang luan.

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Edited by: Massimiliano Barattucci, University of Bergamo, Italy

Reviewed by: Matthias Weiss, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany; Andrés Salas-Vallina, University of Valencia, Spain

*Correspondence: Nan Wang [email protected]

This article was submitted to Organizational Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received 2022 May 11; Accepted 2022 Jul 18; Collection date 2022.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

This paper provides the first meta-analytic examination of the relationship between leadership and followers' intrinsic motivation. In particular, we examined 6 leadership variables (transformational, ethical, leader-member exchange, servant, empowering, and abusive supervision) using data from 50 independent samples and 21,873 participants. We found that transformational leadership, ethical leadership, leader-member exchange (LMX), servant leadership, and empowering leadership were positively related to intrinsic motivation, whereas abusive supervision was negatively linked to intrinsic motivation. Although these leadership styles were associated with intrinsic motivation, they varied considerably in their relative importance. Empowering, ethical, and servant leadership emerged as the more important contributors to intrinsic motivation than transformational leadership. LMX showed a similar contribution with transformational leadership to intrinsic motivation. Effectiveness of leadership styles in relation to intrinsic motivation varied by power distance, publication year, and journal quality. Drawing on our findings, we discuss the theoretical and practice implications.

Keywords: leadership, intrinsic motivation, self-determination theory, meta-analysis, transformational leadership

Introduction

About a half-century ago, Deci ( 1971 ) found external reward would undermine intrinsic motivation and published his well-known paper about intrinsic motivation. He aroused people's great interest (intrinsic motivation) in studying intrinsic motivation. Since then, intrinsic motivation, which refers to doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable (Ryan and Deci, 2000a ; Sheldon and Prentice, 2019 ), has drawn so much academic attention. In the workplace, when employees are intrinsically motivated, they are likely to achieve high-quality performance (Deci et al., 2017 ). For example, meta-analyses provided solid evidence that intrinsic motivation is strongly and positively related to creativity (de Jesus et al., 2013 ) and work performance (Cerasoli et al., 2014 ). Besides, experiments showed that intrinsic motivation influences individuals' psychological wellbeing (Burton et al., 2006 ).

Given the importance of intrinsic motivation in work, not surprisingly, scholars, and managers are seeking the answers to the following question: what factors could influence intrinsic motivation? Drawing on self-determination theory (SDT) (Deci and Ryan, 2000 ; Gagné and Deci, 2005 ), motivation would be influenced by contextual factors. As such, scholars try to detect the contextual antecedents of intrinsic motivation. Leadership is an important factor that would influence employees' wellbeing (Salas-Vallina and Alegre, 2018 ) and intrinsic motivation (Deci et al., 2017 ). Although fruitful evidence between leadership and intrinsic motivation has been accumulated, some unsolved issues still exist.

First, true population correlations between leadership styles and intrinsic motivation have not been evaluated yet. Primary studies would suffer from statistical artifacts and thereby conclude different correlations of interest (Hunter and Schmidt, 2004 ). For example, for the association between transformational leadership and intrinsic motivation, Nguyen et al. ( 2022 ) found a small magnitude of the effect size ( r = 0.03), while Al Harbi et al. ( 2019 ) found a medium one ( r = 0.30). Fortunately, meta-analysis methodology could help us to correct the statistical artifacts and estimate the true population correlations of interest. As such, in the current study, we will evaluate the links between intrinsic motivation and various leadership styles (i.e., transformational, ethical, servant, empowering, LMX, and abusive supervision). By doing so, we seek to contribute to leadership and motivation literature.

Second, the relative importance of leadership to intrinsic motivation is not clear. Following early meta-analyses (Hoch et al., 2018 ; Lee et al., 2020a , b ), we will compare the relative importance of transformational leadership and other types of leadership in the current study. This effort would not only enrich our understanding of the relationship between leadership and intrinsic motivation but also provide meaningful management suggestions for managers. For instance, to increase followers' intrinsic motivation, managers can use suitable leadership according to our meta-analytic results.

Finally, the potential moderators of the relationship between leadership and intrinsic motivation have not been detected yet. For instance, a previous meta-analysis (Lee et al., 2020b ) found that correlations of interest are higher when using a common source research design. In this study, we will detect five potential moderators. That is publication year, source (common source vs. non-common source), power distance, individualism, and quality of the journal.

Theoretical background and hypotheses development

Leadership and intrinsic motivation.

In the current study, we research the links between six types of leadership and intrinsic motivation. We focus on these six types of leadership (rather than other leadership) for three reasons. First, a recent review of SDT (Deci et al., 2017 ) suggested that transformational leadership would influence their followers' intrinsic motivation. As such, transformational leadership should be taken into consideration. Deci et al. ( 2017 ) also suggested researching other types of leadership and their relations with motivation. Second, based on leadership literature, meta-analyses about leadership and creativity (Lee et al., 2020a ) and engagement (Li et al., 2021 ) consider these types of leadership. That is to say, these leadership styles capture scholars' research interest to some extent. Finally, to accurately estimate the links between leadership and intrinsic motivation, the leadership style should include more than 3 primary studies. As such, we include leadership styles that have more than 3 primary studies. We present their definitions in Table 1 .

Leadership definition.

To start, we would like to briefly introduce intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation have been widely studied. Extrinsically motivated behaviors are “governed by the prospect of instrumental gain and loss (e.g., incentives), whereas intrinsically motivated behaviors are engaged for their very own sake (e.g., task enjoyment), not being instrumental toward some other outcome” (Cerasoli et al., 2014 , p. 1). This definition of intrinsic motivation has been widely accepted in meta-analyses (e.g., Deci et al., 1999 ; Patall et al., 2008 ; Cerasoli et al., 2014 ). Beyond enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, individuals also are likely to be intrinsically motivated by obligation. That is, obligation-based intrinsic motivation (to meet the morals, values. and ethics dictated by an individual) may exist (Li et al., 2012 ). This study focus on enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation.

We apply SDT to develop the links between leadership and intrinsic motivation. Drawing on SDT, all human beings have three basic psychological needs, namely, needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness (Ryan and Deci, 2000b ; Gagné and Deci, 2005 ; Deci and Ryan, 2014 ). The need for autonomy reflects the need to be the origin of their own behaviors and choices; the need for competence reflects the need to be competent, effective, and masterful; and the need for relatedness reflects the need to feel a sense of meaningful connection with at least some other people (Sheldon and Prentice, 2019 ). SDT argues that social contexts that satisfy these needs would increase intrinsic motivation (Deci and Ryan, 2000 ; Ryan and Deci, 2000b ).

Based on SDT, leadership would influence basic psychological needs, thus activating intrinsic motivation. First, transformational leaders use intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration to influence their followers. Intellectual stimulation would make their followers innovative, while individual consideration would meet their developmental needs (Bass, 1999 ). Positive leadership behaviors (i.e., intellectual stimulation and individual consideration) would allow transformational leaders to build a positive relationship with their followers and satisfy their followers' need for relatedness. Second, empowering leaders use multiple behaviors to support their followers' autonomy. For instance, empowering leaders share power with their followers, support subordinates' motivation to work autonomously, and promote subordinates' learning and development in their work roles (Amundsen and Martinsen, 2014 ). By doing so, empowering leaders are likely to build a positive association with their followers and thereby satisfy the need for relatedness. Third, servant leaders empower their followers. They encourage and facilitate their followers, in identifying and solving problems, and determining when and how to complete work tasks (Liden et al., 2008 ). As such, servant leaders are likely to build positive relationships with their followers, fulfilling the need for relatedness. Fourth, with a high quality of LMX, employees are likely to have a social exchange relationship including trust, loyalty, and commitment with their leaders (Dulebohn et al., 2012 ), satisfying the need for relatedness. Finally, ethical leaders show their honesty and trustworthiness to their followers and care for them (Brown and Treviño, 2006 ), which would help them to build positive relationships with their employees, satisfying their followers' need for the relatedness.

Together, transformational leadership, servant leadership, empowering leadership, LMX, and ethical leadership would satisfy their followers' need for relatedness. According to SDT, when psychological need is satisfied, individuals would be motivated intrinsically (Ryan and Deci, 2000b ). Besides, early studies found that transformational leadership (Al Harbi et al., 2019 ; Mahmood et al., 2019 ), servant leadership (Kong et al., 2017 ; Su et al., 2020 ), empowering leadership (Byun et al., 2016 ; Ju et al., 2019 ), LMX (Piccolo and Colquitt, 2006 ; Xie et al., 2020 ), and ethical leadership (Yidong and Xinxin, 2012 ; Potipiroon and Ford, 2017 ) are positively related to intrinsic motivation.

Hypothesis 1 : Transformational leadership (a), servant leadership (b), empowering leadership (c), ethical leadership (d), and LMX (e) will positively relate to intrinsic motivation.

Abusive supervision may harm their relationships with their followers through their abusive behavior. For example, they ridicule their followers and invade their followers' privacy (Tepper, 2000 ). Drawing on SDT (Deci and Ryan, 2000 ), abusive supervision would undermine the need for relatedness and thereby decrease their followers' intrinsic motivation. Previous studies found that abusive supervision is negatively linked to intrinsic motivation (Hussain et al., 2020 ; Onaran and Göncü-Köse, 2022 ).

Hypothesis 2 : Abusive supervision will negatively relate to intrinsic motivation.

Relative importance of leadership

Although five positive leadership styles may positively relate to intrinsic motivation, it is unclear what kinds of leadership contribute more variance to intrinsic motivation. Based on the need for relatedness, we could not explain which leadership styles might promote more intrinsic motivation. Fortunately, SDT is a very grand theory that includes many mini-theories, based on the organismic integration mini-theory, we try to explain the different impacts of leadership styles on intrinsic motivation. Besides, it seems very hard to compare all leadership together. As such, following early studies (Hoch et al., 2018 ; Lee et al., 2020a ), we use transformational leadership as a benchmark and then compare other leadership with it.

The organismic integration mini-theory argues all motivated behaviors can be located on an underlying autonomy continuum, somewhere between feeling a complete lack of self-determined to feeling completely self-determined (Ryan and Deci, 1989 , 2000a ). Drawing on SDT, leadership that provides a higher level of autonomy may link to a higher level of intrinsic motivation. First, compared to transformational leadership, empowering leadership may influence motivation that is more autonomous. In particular, transformational leaders may not empower their followers in some situations. For instance, Sharma and Kirkman ( 2015 ) argued that leaders may exhibit transformational behavior without actually transferring much control or power to their followers. However, empowering leaders encourages independence and autonomy (Amundsen and Martinsen, 2014 ). In other words, transformational leadership may undermine autonomy in some situations while empowering leaders may not. Drawing on SDT, the motivation influenced by empowering leadership rather than transformation leadership is more closed to intrinsic motivation. As such, empowering leadership may contribute a larger variance to intrinsic motivation than transformational leadership.

Second, servant leadership may influence a higher degree of autonomous motivation than transformational leadership. Servant leaders' primary focus is on their followers, while transformational leaders primarily focus on organizational objectives (Hoch et al., 2018 ). As such, servant leaders would consider more interests of their followers and provide more autonomy to their followers than transformational leaders. Besides, the measure of servant leadership includes empowerment (e.g., Liden et al., 2015 ), while empowerment was removed in the recent measure of transformational leadership (Bass, 1999 ). Together, compared to transformation leadership, servant leadership may provide more autonomy to their followers, contributing more variance to intrinsic motivation.

Third, ethical leadership may influence a lower degree of autonomous motivation relative to transformational leadership. The ethical leader would punish their followers who violate ethical standards (Brown et al., 2005 ). Although punishment is necessary in the organization, punishment is a kind of control that might undermine autonomy. Punishment is a kind of behavior in transactional leaders rather than transformational leaders (Bass, 1999 ). Thus, transformational leadership might undermine less autonomy than ethical leadership, contributing more variance to intrinsic motivation.

Fourth, LMX is a form of relational leadership (Liden and Maslyn, 1998 ). It does not emphasize empowerment or control. Drawing on SDT, it is quite hard to predict its relative importance to intrinsic motivation relative to transformational leadership. Although SDT could help us to illustrate the relative importance of leadership styles to some extent, similarities of concepts between leadership styles may limit us accurately predicting which leadership styles will contribute a larger part of the variance. For instance, early meta-analyses found large correlations between ethical leadership ( ρ = 0.70), servant leadership ( ρ = 0.52), and transformational leadership. As such, we do not propose a hypothesis. Instead, we try to answer the following research question:

Research Question 1 : Will empowering leadership (a), servant leadership (b), ethical leadership (c), and LMX (d) contribute more variance to intrinsic motivation relative to transformational leadership?

Moderators of leadership–intrinsic motivation

We choose two cultural dimensions as moderators for two reasons. The first one is that SDT literature (e.g., Chirkov et al., 2003 ; Church et al., 2013 ; Deci et al., 2017 ) focus on individualism and power distance. By researching these two moderators, we could contribute to SDT literature. The second one is that prior meta-analyses about leadership (e.g., Lee et al., 2020a , b ) focus on individualism and power distance, suggesting these two moderators are very important in leadership literature.

Power distance

Early meta-analyses (Lee et al., 2020a ; Li et al., 2021 ) have found power distance has a moderating effect on leadership effectiveness. Power distance reflects “the extent to which a society accepts the fact that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally” (Hofstede, 1980 , p. 45). Employees who are in a society with a high-power distance orientation expect direction from their leaders (Javidan et al., 2006 ). As such, leadership may have a stronger influence on employees in a high power distance country. That is, the association between leadership and intrinsic motivation will be stronger in a country with a higher power distance.

Hypothesis 3 : Power distance moderates the association between leadership and intrinsic motivation. In particular, the effect size will be higher when the sample comes from a country with a higher power distance.

Individualism

Individualism implies “a loosely knit social framework in which people are supposed to take care of themselves and of their immediate families only” (Hofstede, 1980 , p. 45). According to SDT, although all human beings have three basic psychological needs (Deci and Ryan, 2000 ), individuals vary in internalizing the influence of the environment. In the workplace, the degree of internalization of leaders' influence varies in different cultures. Internalization is relatively low in cultures with high individualism (Chirkov et al., 2003 ). In other words, when samples from a country with a higher individualism level, the impact of leadership would be weaker.

Hypothesis 4 : Individualism moderates the association between leadership and intrinsic motivation. In particular, the effect size will be lower when the sample comes from a country with a higher individualism.

When a study uses common source data, namely, independent and dependent variables are collected from a single time point, correlations are likely to inflate due to common method bias (Podsakoff et al., 2003 ). In contrast, using non-common source data may decrease the influence of common method bias to some extent. Previous meta-analyses (Lee et al., 2020a , b ) found that correlations are higher when using common source data.

Hypothesis 5 : Source the association between leadership and intrinsic motivation. In particular, the effect size will be higher when the study uses common source data.

Journal quality

The peer-review process for a paper published in a higher-quality journal is generally more rigorous. A rigorous peer-review process may influence the quality of data. That is, in a high-level quality journal, data are likely to have higher quality than in a relatively lower-level quality journal. For instance, papers published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (SSCI Q1) are more likely to have a higher quality of data than in a journal that was included in SSCI Q4. We want to know whether the journal quality would influence the correlations of interest.

Research Question 2 : Does journal quality moderate the links between leadership and intrinsic motivation?

Publication year

Since papers published in different years might be influenced by many factors (e.g., economic conditions and research paradigm), we want to know if the publication year moderates the effect sizes.

Research Question 3 : Does publication year moderate the links between leadership and intrinsic motivation?

This research used multiple strategies to identify studies that include relationships between leadership and intrinsic motivation. In particular, searches were conducted in the following databases in March 2022: PsycINFO and Web of Science. We used the following keywords: leadership and intrinsic motivation.

Inclusion criteria and coding

We employed several criteria to determine whether to include studies in our analyses. First, the study should be an empirical study that includes correlation(s). For instance, the qualitative review was removed because it does not provide a correlation. Second, studies should be written in English. Third, the sample should come from the workplace. For example, student and athlete samples were removed. Finally, leadership types should be one of the six we mentioned. In the coding process, we noticed some leadership styles have few studies ( k < 3). As such, these studies were excluded. To illustrate our research process, the PRISMA flowchart is presented in Figure 1 .

PRISMA flowchart.

Two of our authors coded the following information: bibliographic references (authors and publication year), sample description (sample size and country), research design/sampling strategy, effect sizes (correlations), and the reliabilities of all scales. For studies with multiple indicators of a focal construct, we averaged them (Hunter and Schmidt, 2004 ; Hoch et al., 2018 ). For example, when one study did not report an overall correlation between leadership and motivation, but only the correlations between dimensions of leadership and motivation, we averaged these correlations to evaluate an overall correlation.

We applied the Hunter-Schmidt method's meta-analysis methodology to correct sampling error and measurement error (Hunter and Schmidt, 2004 ). In particular, the measurement error was corrected by reliability individually. Cronbach's α was employed as the reliability. The details of reliability were shown in Table 2 . The sampling error was corrected by the random-effect model. Meta-analysis was performed using the psychmeta package (Dahlke and Wiernik, 2019 ) in R. The results of meta-analysis were shown in Table 3 .

Cronbach's α reliabilities of the current study.

Bivariate relationships between leadership and intrinsic motivation.

k, number of studies; n, total sample size in the meta-analysis; r, uncorrected effect size; ρ, corrected effect size; SDρ, standard deviation of the corrected effect size; CI, confidence interval; CV, credibility interval.

Following the guidance by Tonidandel and LeBreton ( 2011 ), we conducted a relative importance analysis. We built a meta-analytic correlation matrix for the relative importance analysis (see Table 4 ). Then, we applied RWA Web (Tonidandel and LeBreton, 2015 ) to accomplish this analysis. The results was provided in Table 5 .

Meta-analytic correlation matrix.

Unless stated, meta-analytic correlations were calculated by authors.

Hoch et al., 2018 ;

Lee et al., 2018 .

Relative weights analysis.

We employed meta-regression to detect the potential moderating effects of power distance, individualism, source, journal quality, and publication year. The index of power distance and individualism was extracted from Hofstede's website ( www.geerthofstede.com ). Source was coded as a dummy variable. In particular, “common source” was coded as “0,” while “non-common source” was coded as “1.” Journal quality was coded according to the journal rank. For instance, if one paper is published in SSCI Q4, it would be coded as 4; if one paper is published in SSCI Q1, it would be coded as 1. The regression was accomplished using metafor (Viechtbauer, 2010 ) package in R. In particular, we employed a random-effect model and regarded Restricted Maximum Likelihood (REML) method as an estimator to conduct our meta-regression. The results were presented in Table 6 .

Moderation analyses.

Finally, publication bias occurs because statistically significant results are published more frequently than studies without significant results (Rothstein et al., 2005 ). To ensure the robustness of the current study, we applied the trim-and-fill method (Duval and Tweedie, 2000 ) and Eggs' regression to detect publication bias (see Table 7 ).

Publication bias analysis.

Observed k, number of aggregated effect sizes included in analyses; Unadj. r+, unadjusted effect size estimate; imputed k, number of additional effect sizes added by trim-and-fill analyses; Adj. r+, adjusted effect size estimate (i.e., including imputed studies).

As shown in Table 3 , we find that abusive supervision ( ρ = −0.42, 95%CI = [−0.51, −0.32]) is negatively related to intrinsic motivation. Transformational leadership ( ρ = 0.37, 95%CI = [0.29, 0.45]), ethical leadership ( ρ = 0.49, 95%CI = [0.23, 0.74]), servant leadership ( ρ = 0.49, 95%CI = [0.17, 0.81]), empowering leadership ( ρ = 0.45, 95%CI = [0.29, 0.60]), and LMX ( ρ = 0.37, 95%CI = [0.25, 0.50]) are positively related to intrinsic motivation. Thus, H1 (a), H1 (b), H1 (c), H1 (d), H1 (e), and H2 are accepted.

As presented in Table 5 , empowering leadership (65.54%) played a more important role in explaining intrinsic motivation than transformational leadership (34.46%). Similarly, ethical leadership (71.36%) explained a larger portion of the variance than transformational leadership (28.64%). LMX (49.76%) and transformational leadership (50.24%) played a similar role in explaining intrinsic motivation. Servant leadership (69.98%) played a more important role than transformational leadership (30.02%). Together, RQ1 was answered.

As illustrated in Table 4 , we did not find evidence that supports the moderating effects of individualism and source. Regarding publication year, we found that the links between ethical (servant) leadership and intrinsic motivation were larger when the publication year was larger. Interestingly, for abusive supervision and empowering leadership, the correlation became larger as the journal quality became lower. These results answer RQ 2. In terms of power distance, we noticed that the correlation between servant leadership and intrinsic motivation became smaller when power distance became larger. These results answer RQ 3. Therefore, H4 and H5 were rejected, while H3 was accepted partly.

Finally, as depicted in Table 7 , the overall publication is not serious. First, drawing on Egg's regression method, among six leadership styles, all the p -value is bigger than 0.050, suggesting publication bias is not series. Second, the Trim-and-Fill method helps to fill asymmetric effect sizes and provides an adjusted overall effect size. In terms of empowering leadership, LMX, servant leadership, and transformational leadership, no asymmetric effect sizes were found. Regarding abusive supervision, effect size only changes by 0.01 after adjusting asymmetric effect sizes. For ethical leadership, effect size only changes by 0.03 after adjusting asymmetric effect sizes. Together, we did not find large changes after using the Trim-and-Fill method, confirming the robustness of the current meta-analysis.

Given the importance of intrinsic motivation in work, it is critical to understand the leadership–intrinsic motivation association. This study aimed to contribute to the leadership and intrinsic motivation literature by estimating the true population correlations between leadership styles and intrinsic motivation, comparing the relative importance of leadership to intrinsic motivation, and detecting the potential moderators of the relationship between leadership and intrinsic motivation. We discuss our findings in relation to our three key aims.

True population correlations

Cohen ( 2013 ) provided a standard to understand the magnitude of correlations. That is, small effect sizes are correlations of 0.10, moderate are 0.30, and large are 0.50. We applied this standard to discuss the magnitude of effect sizes. We found that abusive supervision ( ρ = −0.42) is moderately and negatively related to intrinsic motivation. Early meta-analyses (Mackey et al., 2015 ; Zhang and Liao, 2015 ) has found abusive supervision is positively related to a series of bad consequence such as counterproductive work behavior, emotional exhaustion, and so on. Our study enriches the understanding of the negative outcomes of abusive supervision, that is, abusive supervision is negatively associated with intrinsic motivation. Besides, it is worth mentioning that this correlation is large, indicating managers could not ignore the bad impact of abusive supervision on intrinsic motivation.

Transformational leadership ( ρ = 0.37) and LMX ( ρ = 0.37) are moderately and positively related to intrinsic motivation. These findings highlight the importance of these two leadership styles in organizations. Transformational leadership and LMX have been researched for more than 40 years. Our meta-analysis first quantitatively and accurately estimated their links with intrinsic motivation, contributing to transformational leadership and LMX literature. In the relationship between transformational leadership and intrinsic motivation, we noticed that one study (Li et al., 2012 ) measured intrinsic motivation using the obligation-based measure. We conducted a sensitivity analysis (leave-one-out analysis) to detect whether the measure of intrinsic motivation would influence the robustness of the results. We found that k changed from 29 to 28 and n changed from 9,852 to 9,734 after removing this study. However, r and ρ did not change, suggesting the robustness of the result. That is to say, the measure of intrinsic motivation did not influence the robustness of the current study. This result should be explained carefully because (a) these two kinds of definitions of intrinsic motivation are different to some extent and (b) only one study may not make us capture such influence when applying sensitivity analysis.

Ethical leadership ( ρ = 0.49), servant leadership ( ρ = 0.49), and empowering leadership ( ρ = 0.45) is positively and largely related to intrinsic motivation. Compared to transformational leadership and LMX, ethical leadership, servant leadership, and empowering leadership are three emerging forms of positive leadership and have been studied recently. The twenty-first century is the era of the knowledge economy, more and more jobs need intrinsic motivation. Thus, organizations need to provide employees with more autonomy. Using three positive leadership could be a good choice to provide autonomy to employees.

Relative importance

We found that empowering and servant leadership explain a larger variance in intrinsic motivation than transformational leadership. According to SDT (Deci and Ryan, 2010 ; Deci et al., 2017 ), when individuals are motivated intrinsically, they are likely to be creative and innovative. Lee et al. ( 2020a ) also found similar findings that empowering and servant leadership explain a larger variance in creativity than transformational leadership. Together, our findings provide solid evidence that servant and empowering leadership is important for individuals' intrinsic motivation.

LMX and transformational leadership had a similar role in explaining intrinsic motivation. Interestingly, Lee et al. ( 2020a ) finds LMX ( ρ = 0.34) and transformational leadership ( ρ = 0.31) have similar correlations with creativity. The theories and measures of these two leadership styles are quite different. Perhaps they both affect the needs for relatedness, causing them to have similar effects on intrinsic motivation and creativity.

Transformational leadership explained less variance in intrinsic motivation than ethical leadership, which is out of our expectation. In our hypothesis, we believed that ethical leadership may influence less autonomy than transformational leadership, causing ethical leadership to contribute less variance than transformational leadership. Lee et al. ( 2020a ) found ethical leadership explains a larger variance than transformational leadership in creativity. Ethical leadership is a kind of moral leadership. Why a moral leadership would contribute to more variance in intrinsic motivation? SDT may provide an explanation. SDT argues that three psychological needs independently influence intrinsic motivation (Deci et al., 2017 ). This argument has been confirmed by meta-analytic evidence (Slemp et al., 2018 ). Transformational leaders may not be ethical and abusive to their followers in some situations (Hoch et al., 2018 ), which may harm the need for relatedness and thereby decrease intrinsic motivation. As such, ethical leadership may influence a larger need for relatedness than transformational leadership. Together, more theoretical explanations and evidence are called to explain the links between ethical (transformational) leadership and intrinsic motivation.

In line with early studies (Lee et al., 2020a , b ; Lyubykh et al., 2022 ), power distance has been found to moderate leadership effectiveness. As such, leadership should be contingent according to culture. That is, there is no single type of leadership that works in all cultural situations. This point is especially important in multinational companies as the same leadership may have different effects in different cultures.

We did not find evidence that individualism has a moderating effect. This finding may suggest intrinsic motivation is a more universal concept. Intrinsic motivation is based on the enjoyment of the process rather than the consequence (Deci and Ryan, 2010 ). However, individualism is more likely to focus on the consequence immediately (Hofstede, 1980 ). As such, whether in a low or high individualism country, individuals may be motivated intrinsically equally due to the enjoyment of the process rather than the consequence, and thereby not be influenced by individualism.

Results did not support that source has a moderating effect. Although studies using common source data would suffer from common method bias (Podsakoff et al., 2003 ), these effects in the current study are not series. Nonetheless, we still recommend using time-lagged research designs to reduce the effect of common method bias.

We noticed that publication year had a moderating effect on some leadership. However, these findings should be explained carefully. Publication year may be associated with a lot of factors. For example, publication year may be linked to economy and management level that may influence leadership and motivation. Besides, publication year may be related to research quality as research quality may increase as time goes by. Together, the moderating effect of the publication year should be understood cautiously.

We noticed that the correlation became larger as the journal quality became lower. This finding is in line with our research experience. That is, the data quality would be higher in a journal with higher quality. When data quality is low, they tended to exhibit higher correlations due to an unrigorous research design. Unfortunately, few meta-analyses researched the modering effect of journal quality. We look forward to more meta-analyses focusing on this moderator variable

Practice implications

The current study also contributes to practice. Drawing on our findings, some management suggestions should be mentioned. First, managers should avoid using abusive supervision in the workplace. In the era of the knowledge economy, intrinsic motivation is very important to the employees' performance quality. However, abusive supervision would undermine intrinsic motivation deeply as the current study finds a strong and negative association between abusive supervision. Second, the organization should provide leadership training programs to managers. In particular, drawing on our findings, ethical, servant, and empowering leadership positively relate to intrinsic motivation. However, many managers are still lacking systematic leadership training. They just manage their followers according to their experience. The human resource department should provide these leadership training programs to managers. Finally, leaders should provide an antonomy support climate to their followers, increasing their followers' intrinsic motivation.

Limitations and future research directions

Two limitations should be mentioned. First, since the effect sizes used in this study are correlation coefficients, we could not make a valid causal inference. Although it is unlikely that reverse causality exists, for example, employee motivation influencing leadership, there may be a common factor that affects both leadership and employee motivation at the same time. For instance, organizational culture may influence both leadership and employee motivation at the same time. Future studies should use more experiment research designs to make accurate causality between leadership and intrinsic motivation.

Second, multicollinearity may harm the robustness of the current study. One positive leadership is usually highly correlated with other positive leadership, which in turn, may cause multicollinearity. For example, Hoch et al. ( 2018 ) find ethical ( ρ = 0.70) and servant ( ρ = 0.52) leadership are largely related to transformation leadership. Carlson and Herdman ( 2010 ) suggested that convergent validity is well when r is bigger than 0.7. In other words, measures of multiple leadership styles have well-convergent validity and they may reflect the same construct to some extent. At the same time, with the influence of multicollinearity, the links between leadership and intrinsic motivation might be biased. For instance, B leadership rather than A leadership is related to intrinsic motivation theoretically. However, due to the high correlation between A and B leadership, A leadership is found to be related to intrinsic motivation. As such, the link between A leadership and intrinsic motivation could be biased. Future studies should use more effective measures to decrease multicollinearity and make a clearer distinction between leadership and its influence on intrinsic motivation.

Leadership is important for the followers' intrinsic motivation. Although fruitful evidence has been accumulated, some unsolved issues still exist. To address these, the current study provides the first analysis between leadership and intrinsic motivation. Overall, positive leadership (e.g., transformational leadership and servant leadership) positively relate to intrinsic motivation, while abusive supervision negatively relates to intrinsic motivation. Empowering, ethical, and servant leadership explain a larger variance in intrinsic motivation than transformational leadership. Power distance, publication year, and journal quality moderates the association between leadership and intrinsic motivation. Our research enriches our understanding of the relationship between leadership and intrinsic motivation. We also provide some practice suggestions for managers drawing on our findings.

Data availability statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/ Supplementary materials , further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

Author contributions

HX: idea. HX and YLuan: introduction. HX and YLuo: hypotheses. YLuo, YLuan, and NW: method. NW: result. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.941161/full#supplementary-material

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The Emerging Neuroscience of Intrinsic Motivation: A New Frontier in Self-Determination Research

Affiliations.

• 1 Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University Strathfield, NSW, Australia.
• 2 Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic UniversityStrathfield, NSW, Australia; Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University of RochesterRochester, NY, USA.
• PMID: 28392765
• PMCID: PMC5364176
• DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00145

Intrinsic motivation refers to people's spontaneous tendencies to be curious and interested, to seek out challenges and to exercise and develop their skills and knowledge, even in the absence of operationally separable rewards. Over the past four decades, experimental and field research guided by self-determination theory (SDT; Ryan and Deci, 2017) has found intrinsic motivation to predict enhanced learning, performance, creativity, optimal development and psychological wellness. Only recently, however, have studies begun to examine the neurobiological substrates of intrinsic motivation. In the present article, we trace the history of intrinsic motivation research, compare and contrast intrinsic motivation to closely related topics (flow, curiosity, trait plasticity), link intrinsic motivation to key findings in the comparative affective neurosciences, and review burgeoning neuroscience research on intrinsic motivation. We review converging evidence suggesting that intrinsically motivated exploratory and mastery behaviors are phylogenetically ancient tendencies that are subserved by dopaminergic systems. Studies also suggest that intrinsic motivation is associated with patterns of activity across large-scale neural networks, namely, those that support salience detection, attentional control and self-referential cognition. We suggest novel research directions and offer recommendations for the application of neuroscience methods in the study of intrinsic motivation.

Keywords: PLAY system; SEEKING system; curiosity; dopamine; flow; intrinsic motivation; salience network; self-determination theory.

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Understanding the Power of Intrinsic Motivation

• Stefan Falk

You can use it to unlock your potential.

At some point, we all are assigned to work that we find tedious and unchallenging. If we don’t figure out how to turn these tasks into interesting and challenging problems to solve, we’ll struggle to complete tasks in a timely and reliable manner, sabotaging our own success and growth at work. One skill that can help you do this is intrinsic motivation, or the incentive you feel to complete a task simply because you find it interesting or enjoyable. Learning how to harness this skill early in your career will help you build the resilience you need to reach your goals in any field. Here’s how to get started.

• Look to understand how your job fits into the bigger picture. If you don’t feel like you’re contributing value, you’re more likely to become demotivated. The next time you’re assigned a vague task ask: What problem are we trying to solve by doing this work? How am I helping contribute to the solution? When you know that your contributions have a purpose, your tasks will immediately feel more interesting.
• Perform easy tasks right away. When we check items off our to-do lists, feel-good hormones are released in our brains. This makes us feel accomplished, which makes the task more interesting and rewarding, which in turn, makes us more motivated to do it.
• Avoid too much “mindless” repetition. When a task starts to feel boring, it’s often because the outcome of completing the task is no longer interesting to you. What can you do to change that, and make the outcome feel exciting? For example, can you challenge yourself to execute the task in less time while still achieving the same result or better?
• Look for opportunities to help others. One of the easiest ways to tap into intrinsic motivation is to participate in activities you find inherently rewarding. Helping others is an easy way to do this.

At our jobs, we will inevitably face activities that don’t naturally interest us or that we perceive as boring, irrelevant, uncomfortable, or too difficult. This is rooted in how our brains are designed: Though the brain rewards us for spending mental energy on expanding ourselves , it rewards us even more for conserving our energy — which is why we struggle with activities that don’t immediately spark our curiosity, or why we tend to get bored with things over time.

• SF Stefan Falk is an internationally recognized human performance expert for top business executives, special ops in the armed forces, and elite athletes. He is the author of Intrinsic Motivation: Learn to Love Your Work and Succeed as Never Before (St Martin’s Press; February 2023).

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Intrinsic Motivation: A deep dive

I dig into the reseach on intrinsic motivation. super interesting subject. long but hopefully quite thorough..

Soon after I entered into year 12, something crazy happened: 

I started studying. 

Like – a lot. 

Between the ages of 12 and 16, I’d had no motivation for school whatsoever. I didn’t do my homework. I didn’t revise for my exams. I diligently ignored everything my teachers said to me. 

While I was doing my GCSEs, my parents would force me to sit in my room with no distractions and study for two hours each day. Rather than put this time to good use, I would simply sit at my desk, stare out the window, and run down the clock.

But then suddenly, almost overnight, something changed:

I started to care about doing well. I started to find my subjects interesting. I started to like – and listen to – my teachers. I developed absolute tunnel vision for my studies, and I eventually managed some of the best A Level grades in my entire school.

From the outside, it looked like I had suddenly decided to knuckle down and start taking my studies seriously – but from the inside, this isn’t what happened at all. 

There was no knuckling down going on; I wasn’t working hard in any real sense. I would often put in twelve hours of studying each day and at no point did I feel tired or strained or stressed. I felt curious, energised – excited. 

This kind of experience – this sudden turning on (and off) – of motivation has happened to me a number of times throughout my life.  

Sometimes – for reasons that I’ve been trying to understand – I’m able to work happily and without rest for many weeks or months at a time. But at others, it’s as if the supply of motivation has run dry and getting anything done feels next to impossible. 

I don’t think I’m alone in this. 

In fact, to some extent or another, I think the above description probably applies to everyone. 

I also don’t think many of us have a good idea as to what’s going on here. 

This post is my attempt to find out. 

This is a topic I’ve been researching in and around for quite a while, and as far as I can see, all roads lead to the idea of Intrinsic Motivation.

Playing sport. Writing. Painting. Travelling. Exploring. Hiking. Reading. 

For the most part, we engage in these activities for their own sake – because they are inherently enjoyable. 

When we do something for its own sake – without regard for rewards, punishments, or really outcomes of any kind – we can be said to be intrinsically motivated . In contrast, when we’re motivated by external pressures and outcomes, we can can be said to be extrinsically motivated.

There’s good evidence to suggest that the more intrinsically motivated we are to do a task, the more we enjoy it, the better we learn , the better we perform , and the more likely we are to persevere in the face of obstacles and setbacks.

The hypothesis that I’ll be pushing throughout this piece is that whenever I’ve found myself in one of these high-motivation life periods, I’ve unwittingly stumbled upon a rich vein of intrinsic motivation. It therefore stands to reason that if I want to understand these experiences – and how to create more of them – I need to understand intrinsic motivation. 

As it turns out, intrinsic motivation looks to be an extremely delicate thing. Under the right conditions, it can be encouraged and drawn out of us; in the wrong conditions, it can be suffocated, stifled – maybe even killed. 

Thankfully, there’s been an absolute mountain of research done in this area – mostly carried out under the rubric of Self-Determination Theory – and in this piece, I’m going to do a deep-dive on it all. 

Main topics to be covered: 

What is intrinsic motivation? A quick history + some context

How do psychologists measure intrinsic motivation? 

What causes – and blocks – intrinsic motivation? A tour through the research

Discussion - concerns, criticisms, and miscellaneous ideas:

Dopamine: an alternative explanation of intrinsic motivation

Distraction vs. Autonomy: another possible alternative explanation

The largest meta-analysis looking at the effects of rewards and reward contingencies on intrinsic motivation

Mimetic desire: a missing piece of the puzzle maybe?

Western centrism: the most common criticism of SDT

Is the free-choice measure actually valid?

Should competition be outlawed?

Final thoughts + parting advice

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1. What is intrinsic motivation? A quick history + some context

The general concept of intrinsic motivation is quite intuitive, so I’m hoping the sketch I’ve offered up so far will be enough to give you the general gist. 

Saying that, there are a number of possible points of confusion here, so it’s worth spending a little bit of time fleshing out this definition and distinguishing intrinsic motivation from other closely related concepts. 

To do this, a whistle-stop tour through the history and wider research context of the concept is going to be useful (and hopefully interesting, too!):

When the research on intrinsic motivation first started, behaviourism was still the dominant school of thought within psychology. Operant Psychology – B. F. Skinner’s development on the original behaviourist position – was primarily concerned with how reinforcement and reinforcement contingencies influence the frequency of different behaviours. 

The upshot (with many qualifications) was that the more you reward a behaviour, the more frequently that behaviour will occur, e.g. give a mouse some cocaine for pulling a lever and over time the mouse will learn to start pulling that lever like it’s life depends on it. 

Particularly relevant to our discussion here is the fact that there is no space in this theory for intrinsic motivation. Before receiving reinforcement, behaviour is more or less random (e.g. maybe the mouse moves around randomly and knocks the lever, resulting in cocaine being administered). Once reinforcement has been dished out, motivation is then present to the extent that the behaviour has been reinforced. 

That’s pretty much it.  

Credit where it’s due: behaviourism and operant psychology were able to shed light on many previously enshadowed phenomena –  but over time, a number of experimental findings began to emerge that put this paradigm under increasing pressure.  

Here are a couple of them: 

Nissen (1930) found that rats would cross an electrified grid in order to get to a novel maze area on the other side. Because neither the grid nor the novel space had been paired with a reinforcer, operant psychology would predict that the electrified grid would act as a negative reinforcer, deterring the exploratory behaviour. This obviously isn’t what happened. 

Butler (1957) found that rhesus monkeys would learn discrimination problems solely for the opportunity to visually explore the environment. Again, this exploratory behaviour had not been previously reinforced, so this left behaviourists their heads. 

Montgomery (1955) gave rats a chance to either return to their home base or explore a novel environment (that had never been reinforced in any way). The rats showed a strong preference for the latter. 

Harlow (1953b) found that rhesus monkeys would solve discrimination tasks with the sole reward of being able to manipulate novel objects. Interestingly, these manipulation drives were extremely difficult to eradicate via the usual processes of extinction (e.g. if you stop rewarding the rat with cocaine when it pulls the lever, it will eventually stop pressing the lever. Not so with the drive to manipulate).

The trend here, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, is that there are certain kinds of behaviours that we – or, at least, animals generally – are reliably motivated to perform but that have never been reinforced. A certain class of these behaviours seems to be tied to exploration, and this class of behaviour is often far more resistant to extinction than the kinds of behaviours that have been learned via reinforcement, e.g. the lever pressing of a coke addicted mouse. 

After a decade or so of discussion, nobody was able to find a way of convincingly integrating these findings into the dominant paradigms of the day. This culminated in a 1959 paper by Robert White , where he proposed that these behaviours were best viewed as being fuelled by innate psychological tendencies – tendencies associated with interest, curiosity, exploration, and play.  

There’s a whole lot more to this story than is worth covering here, but the crux of this all is that White’s understanding of these behaviours ran in the face of the behaviourist theories of the day and ultimately paved the way for much of the research into intrinsic motivation that has happened since. 

As it goes, almost all of the research into intrinsic motivation has been done under the rubric of Self-Determination Theory (SDT). Part of the reason for this is that SDT pretty much started out as THE study of intrinsic motivation (more on this shortly), before then expanding into a fully-fledged theory of human flourishing in its own right. 

For good measure, here’s a fleshed out definition of intrinsic motivation from the founders of SDT themselves:

“[Intrinsic Motivation is] the primary and spontaneous propensity of some organisms, especially mammals, to develop through activity—to play, explore, and manipulate things and, in doing so, to expand their competencies and capacities. This natural inclination is an especially significant feature of human nature that affects people’s cognitive and emotional development, quality of performance, and psychological well-being. It is among the most important of the inner resources that evolution has provided (Deci & Ryan, 2000; Ryan & Hawley, 2016), and because it represents a prototypical manifestation of integrative organismic tendencies, SDT research began with it as a primary focus."

So, in other words: intrinsic motivation isn’t really about engaging in purely pleasurable activities. For example, I don’t think that SDT would say that eating delicious cookies would be an example of an intrinsically motivated activity. Rather, SDT’s conception of intrinsic motivation is more about engaging in activities that allow us to explore, expand, and develop our capacities (and that also happen to be deeply enjoyable!). 

Up until fairly recently – when I started to make a habit of subsuming myself in different research literatures for many weeks at a time (as you do) – I had never come across SDT before. Given the amount and type of content I consume, I have no idea why this is the case. 

SDT is a massive area of study. 

There are thousands of researchers working in this space. Thousands (?) of studies have been conducted. Multiple millions of citations have been accrued.

As far as I can see, SDT has been developed slowly and patiently, with a sound scientific methodology. Its theories have been arrived at inductively, and they have been revised and refined to account for the best available empirical research. Many of its core findings do seem to replicate and show up consistently within large-scale meta-analyses.

What’s more, if you put any stake in h-indices – a measure of a researcher’s impact and productivity – the founders of SDT theory are some of the most influential scholars alive.

For reference, father of modern linguistics Noam Chomsky has a h-index of 196. Richard Dawkins has a h-index of 83. 

The founders of SDT, E. L. Deci and Richard Ryan, have h-indices of 180 and 229, respectively. 

So, like, point being: SDT does seem to be a legitimate scientific enterprise, and yet outside of certain academic circles, its ideas don’t receive any air time at all. 

I don’t know why – and I’ve not been able to find anything online to explain this to my satisfaction. 

But regardless: 

The SDT view of motivation, which we’ll tentatively be adopting from here on out, views motivation as a spectrum ranging from most to least autonomous. 

Here’s a diagram:

On the high autonomy end, you have intrinsic motivation, i.e. behaviours that are more or less entirely engaged in for their own sake. 

Slightly lower down, you have behaviours that are extrinsically motivated but highly autonomous. For example, let’s say that I grew up in a Christian household and that I eventually came to endorse and enact a Christian ethic. By SDT’s lights, behaviours that flow from this ethic would be classed as extrinsically motivated, because they came from an external source – namely, my formative environment – but they would also be classed as highly autonomous, because I engage in them freely and willingly. They are self-endorsed. 

A little further along the spectrum, you then get lower autonomy forms of extrinsic motivation. For example, let’s imagine that I grew up in a Christian household but that I did not come to assimilate the Christian ethic that I grew up around. Now, when I visit my family, I might find myself adhering to certain Christian norms, but I would only be doing so to avoid criticism or argument, rather than because I actively endorse these regulations.

And then all the way off to the left of the spectrum, you have amotivation, which is where you simply have zero motivation – neither intrinsic or extrinsic – to do something. 

One point worth making before we move on is this:

SDT assumes that most behaviours are motivated by a mix of these motivation types. As a general rule, the more autonomous forms of motivation are better: they are experienced as being far less effortful, and they are associated with greater persistence and superior performance than controlled forms of motivation. 

When I interpret my sudden turn to scholarliness through an SDT lens, here’s my best high-level guess as to what happened: I shifted from the far left side of the spectrum to somewhere much further to the right. 

I’m a naturally curious person who enjoys learning. It makes sense that studying interesting subjects would tap into my intrinsic motivation. 

But at the same time, I wasn’t simply studying for curiosity’s sake. I was also studying because I wanted to get good grades, I wanted to outperform my classmates, I wanted to get into a good university, etc.

So intrinsic and extrinsic forms of motivation were probably both in action here. 

The question I’m trying to answer with this piece is: why did this happen when it did? 

This question breaks down into two subquestions

Why did I suddenly become intrinsically motivated to study?

Why did I suddenly shift from low to high-autonomy forms of extrinsic motivation?

As you will have gathered by now, this piece is primarily about intrinsic motivation, so you may think that I’m only addressing the first part of this question. 

But as it goes, the conditions that SDT posits as being necessary for intrinsic motivation are also the same conditions that it posits as being necessary for high autonomy forms of extrinsic motivation.  

So by covering the intrinsic motivation research – which is, I should add, the seed from which all subsequent SDT research eventually sprung – we’ll be able to understand the conditions that are conducive to all forms of autonomous motivation. 

I’ll circle back to this point later, but thought it was worth flagging now. 

2. How do psychologists measure intrinsic motivation? 

I promise: I will get into the meat of this piece shortly (next section), but before I do, I need to share a quick overview of the way intrinsic motivation is operationalised in lab experiments, because it’s interesting and also maybe not beyond criticism.

In the 70s, E. L. Deci – one of the pioneers of intrinsic motivation research – developed the free-choice paradigm to investigate the impact of various rewards and reward contingencies on intrinsic motivation. 

I’ve read through a fairly wide range of papers in this space, and while the free-choice paradigm is often applied slightly differently in different contexts, there are a number of features that show up in pretty much all of them.  

First, participants are broken up into at least two groups – the control group and the experimental group(s). 

In the initial period, both groups are encouraged to engage in some kind of intrinsically interesting task – for example, a puzzle. 

(Note: experimenters use a range of methods to make sure that these intrinsically interesting tasks are actually intrinsically interesting for the participants). 

During this initial period, the control group are generally left to engage with the task uninterrupted, while the experimental groups are interfered with in some way.  This is where the independent variable gets deployed. So, for example, maybe the experimental group are told that they’re going to be rewarded for engaging with the task (independent variable = expectation of reward) – or maybe they’re told that they’re going to be evaluated based on task performance (independent variable = expectation of evaluation). 

Once the initial period is complete, all participants then enter what is known as the free-choice period. This is where the experimenter leaves the room and participants are left on their own, apparently unobserved, with the task materials. 

Of note: there will also usually be a number of other activities or distractions intentionally left in the room – so, for example, in a study with preschoolers, a selection of toys were left in the room; in a study with adults, a selection of magazines. 

Within this paradigm, then, intrinsic motivation is measured in two main ways:

Free choice measure – the amount of time participant’s spend with the ‘intrinsically motivating’ task in the free-choice period. The idea here is that the more intrinsically motivated the participant is to engaged with the task, the longer they will choose to spend on that task when nobody is watching or evaluating them in any way. This is generally taken to be the primary metric of interest.

Intrinsic Motivation Inventory – basically just a self-report questionnaire to try and get a read on how much the participant finds the task enjoyable and interesting in the free-choice period. This is usually taken to be a sort of supplementary measure. 

As it turns out, these two measures are only modestly correlated with one another, which seems to have been a topic of some contention within this field. In the largest meta-analysis ever conducted on rewards and intrinsic motivation (see discussion section), these measures mostly moved in the same direction, but their effect sizes varied quite a lot. As far as I’ve been able to work out, the free-choice measure is generally viewed as the most important of the two because it avoids the well-documented shortcomings of self-report measures.

I have one or two concerns with the way SDT is measured, but i don’t want to get bogged down in the minutiae without first giving you the interesting stuff, so i’ve saved this for the discussion section. Read: is the free-choice measure actually valid?

This is probably all you need to know for now. 

So – onto the research!

3. What causes – or blocks – intrinsic motivation? A tour through the research

The earliest experiments on intrinsic motivation were run in 1971 by E. L. Deci . He wanted to understand what would happen to a person’s intrinsic motivation for a task if you offered them a monetary reward for doing it. 

As mentioned already, the behaviourist assumption at the time was that when you reinforce a behaviour, its frequency increases – and also, importantly, that when you remove said reinforcement, the frequency of the behaviour returns to baseline. 

Deci’s experiment was intended to see if these assumptions – particularly the second one – hold up. 

In his first free-choice experiment, he asked both groups – the control and the treatment – to work on a Soma Cube puzzle. The treatment group were given a $1 reward for every puzzle they completed, whereas the control group were given nothing – they worked on the puzzle without any expectation of a reward. 

When all participants were then put in the free-choice condition and researchers measured the amount of time they spent with the puzzles, they found that the treatment group – i.e those that had been given the $1 rewards – actually engaged with the puzzles less. 

So, in other words: when rewards were involved, intrinsic motivation for the task, as measured by the free-choice measure, went below the pre-reward baseline.

As I understand things, this was a pretty groundbreaking finding at the time – and behaviourists have been bitching about it ever since. Unfortunately for them – behaviourists, I mean – this was soon replicated with a whole host of different tasks, rewards, reward contingencies, participants, etc., so it does look to be a legitimate thing (although there are still some who hold out against it). 

(FYI: the observation that extrinsic rewards tend to harm intrinsic motivation is known as the overjustification effect (also sometimes referred to as the undermining effect))

Before diving in any deeper, an interesting nuance should probably be drawn out here: SDT does not claim that rewards always harm motivation. In fact, the SDT view accepts that at the time rewards are being administered , they will often enhance motivation (with certain qualifications). This is why SDT generally holds that rewards can be an effective means of motivating menial, uninteresting tasks. 

The key finding here was that rewards harmed subsequent intrinsic motivation for an intrinsically interesting task. This may seem like a pedantic point, but – if true – it has some pretty far reaching implications. 

Take education: should we be rewarding kids for reading? 

The prima facie conclusion of this research is that, no, we probably shouldn’t. Rewards may be an effective means of motivating reading at the time they are present , but when rewards are removed and kids are left to their own devices, they – the rewards – may actually have a deleterious impact on subsequent intrinsic motivation for reading.  

Saying that: there are many qualifications and quirks to this picture, so let’s keep following the research.  

(FYI: there have been a huge number of experiments run in this space, so I’m mostly just going to stick to research that’s in line with the general tenor. You’re getting the highlight reel, but rest assured: many replications and meta-analyses have been done here (some of which we’ll cover).)

In a bid to begin exploring the impact of different reward contingencies on intrinsic motivation, Deci (1972a) ran a followup study – once again with the same ‘interesting puzzles’ – but this time he paid the treatment group for simply showing up, rather than for each puzzle completed. The control condition was the same as in the original experiment. 

Here, it turned out that participants who received a reward for showing up exhibited just as much intrinsic motivation as those that received no reward at all. So, in other words: within this contingency, rewards did not harm intrinsic motivation at all. 

Lepper, Green, and Nisbett (1973) ran an experiment looking at the impact of different reward contingencies on preschoolers’ intrinsic motivation for a drawing task using ‘attractive materials.’ The study included three groups: 

Treatment group 1 were told that they would receive a ‘good player’ reward (a star and ribbon) if they completed the drawing task. All children in this group received a good player reward. 

Treatment group 2 were not told about any rewards beforehand but were then all given a ‘good player’ reward after the drawing task. 

The Control group were not told anything and did not receive a ‘good player’ reward.

In line with the previous Deci experiment, treatment group 1 showed less intrinsic motivation in the free choice period than the control group – so, once again, rewards undermined intrinsic motivation. But here’s the interesting thing: treatment group 2 showed just as much (if not more) intrinsic motivation in the free choice period as the control group. 

So, in other words: if the reward was dangled beforehand, it harmed intrinsic motivation; if it was unexpected, it didn’t. 

The plot thickens. 

This finding was built upon by Ross (1975) , who compared the impact of salient vs. non-salient rewards on children’s intrinsic motivation to play with a drum kit. 

One group of children was simply told that they would receive an unknown prize if they engaged with the drum (non-salient reward). The other group were given the same instructions, but they were told that the unknown prize was hidden inside a box that had been placed conspicuously in front of them (salient reward). 

Turns out that the group with the salient reward showed significantly less intrinsic motivation in the free choice period than the group with the non-salient reward. Ross concluded that the salience of the reward seems to modulate its impact: the more salient, the stronger the deleterious effect on intrinsic motivation. 

I’ll share one more experiment – because it adds texture to this picture, plus it touches on the topic of reading motivation – and then I’ll give a rundown of how SDT has accounted for all of these findings. 

Marinek and Cambrell (2008) were interested in third-grade children’s reading motivation. They compared a no-reward condition with a token-reward condition – kids received something like a star or a sticker for reading – and found that the token rewards significantly reduced intrinsic motivation for reading. 

Based on the other research above, this isn’t a major surprise – but here’s where it gets interesting:

They also ran a third condition where they rewarded children with a book rather than a token. This time round, the reward had no negative effect on intrinsic motivation at all. The explanation put forward in the paper was that rewards that are more proximal to the desired behaviour – e.g. books for reading or, say, paint brushes for painting – do not have the same negative impact on intrinsic motivation as token rewards like money or stickers. 

OK , so, so far we’ve got:

Rewards reduce intrinsic motivation

Rewards only reduce intrinsic motivation when they’re contingent on task completion but not when they’re contingent on simply showing up.

Salient rewards harm intrinsic motivation, but non-salient ones don’t (or, at least, not as much)

Token rewards harm intrinsic motivation, but rewards that relate closely to the task at hand don’t

How do we reconcile these findings? 

SDT’s answer, in a word: autonomy . 

Rewards and reward contingencies that preserve or enhance an individual’s sense of autonomy have a positive impact on intrinsic motivation; those that diminish an individual’s sense of autonomy and that are experienced as an attempt to control their behaviour have a negative impact on intrinsic motivation. 

Interpreting these findings through this lens, then:

In the first Deci experiment, where individuals were rewarded with $1 for each puzzle completed, it’s argued that the monetary reward was experienced by participants (whether consciously or not) as a means of controlling their behaviour. This resulted in a reduction in autonomy, which subsequently led to a decline in intrinsic motivation. 

In the second Deci study, where individuals were given a monetary reward for showing up but not for completing the puzzles, it’s argued that the monetary reward was not experienced by participants as a means of controlling their behaviour – since they’d get the reward regardless of whether or not they completed any puzzles – which is why it didn’t impact intrinsic motivation. 

In the Lepper, Green, and Nisbett study, where individuals in treatment 1 were told they would receive a ‘good player’ reward if they performed well, it’s argued that the expectation of evaluation and the dangling of a reward was interpreted as a means of controlling their behaviour. This likewise resulted in a reduction in autonomy and intrinsic motivation. 

But in the same study, for treatment 2, where individuals were not forewarned about the ‘good player’ reward – but where they received the reward nonetheless – it’s argued that the activity was engaged in autonomously – without any external control – and that intrinsic motivation was therefore unaffected. 

So, with the autonomy element of the theory in place – there are a few more key components that still need to be introduced – we can then begin taking a look at experiments that actively seek to manipulate this variable. 

Here are two interesting examples, plus a meta-analysis for good measure:

Zuckerman, Porac, Lathin, Smith, and Deci (1978) used the standard free-choice paradigm, but they allowed one group of participants to choose which puzzles they engaged with – plus how they allotted their time between them – while the other group were yoked to the choices of a randomly selected counterpart from the first group. Turns out that participants from the first group, i.e. those who got to choose, showed significantly more intrinsic motivation in the free choice period. I’ve come across a handful of other studies that show the same thing: introducing choice often seems to improve performance . 

This one isn’t strictly about the relationship between choice and intrinsic motivation, but I thought I’d throw it in anyway because it’s closely related and also interesting: Murayama et al (2015) had participants play a game where they were challenged to pause a stopwatch within 50 milliseconds of the 5-second mark. One group was allowed to choose which stopwatch they used (there were a number of different options); the other group were assigned a stopwatch at random. While this was going on, all participants were put in an fMRI to see what was going on in their brains. Turns out that performance was better in the choice condition. That participants in the choice condition were more resilient to negative feedback. That participants in the choice condition showed no drop in ventromedial PFC activity  following failure, but there was a drop in vmPFC activity for participants in the no-choice condition.

Patall, Cooper, and Robinson (2008) ran a meta-analysis with 41 studies to examine the effects of choice on intrinsic motivation and related outcomes. They found robust effects showing that choice enhances intrinsic motivation in both adults and children. 

So, there you have it:

As predicted, when we give people more choice – when you increase their sense of autonomy – it boosts their intrinsic motivation (and performance too). 

I have a few qualms with the whole autonomy angle – to be discussed in the discussion section (where else!) –  but when I try to match this up against my own experiences with intrinsic motivation, it fits pretty well.

Take, once again, the monomaniacal study spree discussed in the intro to this piece. 

During my GCSEs, i.e. before I started working like a madman, my parents and teachers exerted constant pressure on me to study. As a result, my studies never felt self-motivated – autonomy was in the gutter – and I had zero intrinsic motivation. 

But when I moved into year 12 – which is when the monomania began – there was a big and definite uptick in the amount of autonomy I was being offered. To give a few examples:

Uniform – we were no longer assigned a uniform. There was a sixth form dress code, but within this dress code there was a fair amount of scope to choose what we wore.

Exams – at the start of sixth form, there was an extended respite from the pressure that came with our GCSEs. This armistice might have given me enough space to begin generating my own motivation for school. 

Ambient climate – teachers started to treat us like adults that could be listened to and respected, rather than drones that needed to be coerced into compliance. We were allowed to leave the school grounds at lunch. We had free periods, in which we could do more or less whatever we wanted. Some of us even started getting cars.

So, yeah, in sum: my explosion in motivation does seem to coincide with a sharp uptick in autonomy.

This still doesn’t explain everything though: for example, why did I specifically become monomaniacal about school? Why not something else – like, say, video games or football or puzzles? 

By introducing further elements in the SDT theory, I think we can start to explain some of this. 

Assuming SDT is true, so far we’ve established that when rewards are experienced as controlling , i.e. when they infringe upon an individual’s sense of autonomy, they have a negative impact on intrinsic motivation. 

But what about verbal rewards? Do they count? 

This is important, since a massive percentage of the rewards we receive and dispense in life are of this kind. 

The previous operant paradigm would have us believe that verbal rewards are likely to reinforce a behaviour and thereby increase its frequency. So, for example, if a kid does something good – like e.g. sharing their toys with their siblings – we ought to praise them. But maybe, as per the research above, this isn’t the case? 

In much of the early research on verbal rewards and intrinsic motivation, participants were placed in the standard free-choice paradigm and given positive verbal feedback for working on an activity. For example, if they completed the activity, they were told ‘you did very well in completing the task; many people did not.’ If they failed to complete the activity, they were told ‘this was a very difficult task but you were progressing well with it.’

Turns out that participants who were given positive feedback generally displayed MORE free-choice persistence , i.e. intrinsic motivation, than those weren’t given any feedback at all. 

We’ve just learned that token rewards have a negative impact on intrinsic motivation; now we’re finding out that verbal rewards apparently do the opposite. Again, given the research discussed so far, this isn’t what we’d expect at all. 

Does SDT have a means of reconciling these findings? 

You betcha – but it needed to introduce another component to its theory in order to do so: competence .

All things being equal, if a reward signals that its recipient is competent with respect to a given activity or task, it will have a positive impact on intrinsic motivation for that task/activity. 

So, for example, let’s say I’m learning to paint. I spend an hour brushing away at my canvas, and at the end of the session, my instructor says something to the effect of ‘you have a wonderful eye for colour’ (or whatever a painting instructor might say to a pupil!). 

This feedback serves as a signal that I am competent and therefore bolsters my intrinsic motivation for painting (which, I guess, is kind of what our folk psychology would predict?).

But here’s the thing: the vast majority of rewards and reward contingencies affect competence and autonomy at the same time. Take this experiment: 

Smith (1975) assigned three groups to a learning task about Art History. One group was told beforehand that they were going to receive a written evaluation; the other two weren’t. Of those who weren’t, one group received an unanticipated evaluation after the learning task – one didn’t. Unbeknownst to all participants, everybody that received an evaluation received a positive one. As per usual, they were all then observed in a free-choice period to see how much they engaged with the original task when left to their own devices. 

The main finding here was that those in the first group – i.e. those who were told beforehand that they would be evaluated and who then received a positive evaluation – displayed significantly less intrinsic motivation than either of the other groups. 

SDT would explain this result by saying that the anticipated evaluation negatively affected autonomy while positively affecting competence. This then netted out at a slight reduction in intrinsic motivation. In contrast, the unanticipated evaluation had no negative effect on autonomy, but a positive effect on competence – which netted out as an increase in intrinsic motivation. 

This is generally how SDT understands most rewards and rewards contingencies: rewards that signal competence are conducive to intrinsic motivation, but unfortunately, many rewards also inadvertently impair autonomy – which is why they so often seem to harm intrinsic motivation. 

Returning once again to the example of my monomaniacal study spree: this all tracks really nicely. 

Why did I become obsessive about studying rather than other things? 

Because I was good at it.

Once my teachers and parents stepped back, my sense of autonomy increased. This freed up some autonomous motivation for studying, and as soon as I started to put in the work, my results improved radically. Improved results were a strong competence signal, which freed up even more motivation. More motivation = even better results = even more motivation = even better results, etc. 

But there was also another dynamic at play: the better my grades became, the more relaxed my teachers and parents became. This meant they gave me a lot more breathing space to do my own thing – read: more autonomy. Even more autonomy = even more intrinsic motivation = even more autonomy, etc.

As far as I can see, I was essentially locked inside multiple feedback loops. 

If you’ve ever done any reading in and around SDT, you’ll know that the theory identifies three psychological needs – not two. 

Autonomy and competence are the first and the second.

Relatedness is the third.  

Relatedness is all about how connected we feel to those around us. 

Turns out that relatedness is another extremely important component in SDT’s model of intrinsic motivation. This particular element of the theory was stumbled upon accidentally, and the story’s pretty interesting, so I thought I’d tell it:

Anderson, Manoogian, and Reznick (1976) were examining the effects of rewards and feedback on young children’s intrinsic motivation. The usual fare. 

In a bid to create a condition with neither positive nor negative feedback, they instructed researchers within this condition to remain silent and unresponsive to any overtures from the children. As a no-reward, no-feedback condition, we’d expect this to have a fairly neutral impact on intrinsic motivation – but this isn’t what happened at all: 

Children in this group showed less intrinsic motivation than any group in the study – including those who received negative feedback!

It was theorised that these children felt rejected by the researchers, which thwarted their need for relatedness and thereby destroyed any intrinsic motivation they may have had for the task.

Plenty of later research supports this idea, e.g. 

Ryan, Stiller, and Lynch (1994) surveyed a large group of junior high students. They found that students who felt security with teachers (and other figures in their lives) were more engaged with school work and exhibited higher levels of intrinsic motivation. 

Bao and Lam (2008) looked at the importance of autonomy and relatedness for intrinsic motivation to study in Chinese students. They found that kids who make their own choices, rather than having them made for them show higher levels of intrinsic motivation, but that this was mediated by how close these children felt to their parents. If they were close, then choice was less important and they showed just as much intrinsic motivation as their higher autonomy peers.

This theory also lines up very neatly with Bowlby’s attachment theory : babies that are more securely attached to their primary caregivers demonstrate greater curiosity and tendency to explore. 

So, there you go:

Relatedness = super important. 

But one question you might still have is: how important?

After all, many activities that seem to be fuelled by intrinsic motivation – things like reading, hiking, etc. – are solitary. Solitary activities, by definition, do not involve relating to others, so how can relatedness be involved here?

SDT’s stance, so far as I can work it out, is that relatedness is often a background requirement for intrinsic motivation. Relatedness doesn’t necessarily have to be tied to each and every intrinsically motivated activity – although it sometimes helps. If your life generally meets your requirement for relatedness, then you will have readier access to intrinsic motivation across all activities. 

So, bringing this back one last time to my own experience at school: I personally feel like autonomy and competence are more operative than relatedness in my case – but I would also say this: 

During sixth form, almost everyone in my former friendship group left the school. This former friendship group, for reference, wasn’t great. If it was being scored on its ability to satisfy my need for relatedness, it would probably get a 3 out of 10. 

As a result of this disbanding, I was then forced to join a new friendship group, and I would say that those new relationships did a much better job of meeting my need for relatedness. Maybe 7 or 8 out of 10. 

There’s also just the general point to make, which is that when I was studying hard, I was in harmony with my parents and my teachers. My aspirations for my life lined up closely with theirs’, and this improved the quality and closeness of those relationships. 

It seems, then, that competence may also have played an important role in my studies too – and that the feedback loop may have more layers to it than previously assumed. 

For the record: all of the research and theory discussed in this section is actually taken solely from one of the six mini-theories that make up SDT. This particular mini-theory is called Cognitive Evaluation Theory (CET), and the other five are mostly just an extension of these core ideas. 

So: according to CET, intrinsic motivation is determined by the interplay of three key factors: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. 

There are some finer points and concerns that we’ll dig into in the next section, but this is the big picture theory – and actually, all things considered, I think it does quite an impressive job of mapping onto some of my own experiences with intrinsic motivation. 

4. Discussion: concerns, criticisms, and miscellaneous ideas

As will hopefully be clear at this point, I’m fairly convinced that SDT is getting at something real – but there are a few parts of the theory that I’m not quite bought into – or that I think might need refining. 

I’m no expert, so take these speculations with a hearty pinch of salt. It may well be the case that people have tackled and refuted these ideas and objections already. 

There are also a couple of other things that I didn’t touch on during previous sections but that I think are either important or interesting, so I’ve thrown them into this section too. 

1. An alternative theory: dopamine’s impact on intrinsic motivation

As some of you will know, a while ago I did a bit of a deep dive on dopamine , the neurochemical linked to motivation, learning, and reward. I’m not a world authority on this subject by any means, so treat my speculation here with the level of skepticism it deserves. Nonetheless, I think the dopamine angle offers a slightly different – and, I think, quite compelling – way of interpreting some of the experimental findings from this literature.

First, a quick tl;dr on the dopamine piece:

When we receive a reward for completing a task, we experience a dopamine spike in certain ‘reward centres’ of the brain. Contrary to the lay view, this spike does not seem to be causing pleasure: it seems to be causing learning. In other words, dopamine seems to stamp in the relationship between stimulus, behaviour, and reward. 

But dopamine is about more than just learning; it’s also about motivation. The next time we encounter the stimuli associated with a reward, dopamine spikes again, this time invigorating the behaviour that previously led to the reward.

So, to make this a bit more concrete: let’s say I walk past a sweet shop and I decide to go in and buy a bag of sherbet lemons. When I eat the sherbet lemons, there’s a dopamine spike in my brain, and this stamps in a relationship between the stimuli – the sight of the sweet shop – the behaviour – the act of going in there, buying the sweets, and eating them – and the reward – the enjoyment that came from eating the sherbet lemons. 

Now imagine that a week later I’m walking past this sweetshop. My brain has come to associate these specific stimuli – the sight of the sweetshop – with reward, so it produces a dopamine spike. This dopamine spike then invigorates the behaviour that generated the reward last time – i.e. going into the shop and buying the sweets – and this ultimately results in the reward being obtained again. 

But here’s the thing: let’s say that I encounter the stimuli, I perform the behaviour, but the reward is not forthcoming. Like, say: I see the sweetshop, I walk into it, but when I go to the sherbet lemon section, it turns out that there are none left.

What happens? 

Instead of spiking or staying constant, dopamine goes below baseline. 

As I understand things, when this occurs, it is in some sense reducing the strength of the relationship between the stimuli, the behaviour, and the reward. This means that the next time I see the sweet shop, there will be a smaller dopamine spike than before, which will reduce the strength of the motivation I feel to go inside and buy the sweets. 

I think we can use this understanding of dopamine to explain many of the findings from the intrinsic motivation literature without recourse to the core SDT concepts. 

Consider once again the original study run by E. L. Deci (1971). 

I didn’t go into all of the details originally, because it wasn’t really needed, but it is now, so:

Deci actually had three periods in his experiment. In the first period, all participants did the same thing. From the original paper:

‘After they entered the experimental room, they were seated at a table with the puzzle pieces in front of them, three drawings of configurations to the right of them, the latest issues of New Yorker, Time, and Playboy to their left, and the experimenter on the opposite side of the table. They were told that they would spend all three sessions using the pieces of plastic to form various configurations, such as the same they were shown.’

All participants were then asked to reproduce, using the puzzle pieces, the configurations shown in the drawings. 

In the second session, those in the experimental group were told that they would receive a $1 reward for every configuration completed within 13 minutes. Meanwhile, the control group did the exact same thing as in the first session. 

And then in the third session, both groups returned to the same conditions as in the first period. 

So for the control it was: no reward, no reward, no reward. For the experimental group is was: no reward, reward, no reward. 

Now, in order to measure intrinsic motivation, Deci placed an eight minute free-choice period in the middle of each of these sessions. During this time, the experimenter left the room, telling participants ‘I shall be gone only a few minutes, you may do whatever you want while I am gone.’ They could work on the puzzles, read the magazines, stare around the room, etc. 

Meanwhile, all participants were monitored to see how long they engaged with the puzzles during each of these free choice periods. 

So, with all of that additional context, here are the results:

The interesting thing here – and the reason I think the dopamine explanation is plausible – is this: in the experimental group, free-choice engagement with the task goes way up in the second session, after rewards have first been introduced. 

This is what the dopamine account would predict: an association between the puzzles and a monetary reward has been established. As a result, when the participants encounter the puzzle next time, dopamine levels rise to invigorate the behaviour that secured the reward last time, i.e. playing with the puzzles.

But in the following session, when the monetary rewards are removed, dopamine levels go below baseline, weakening the association between the behaviour (doing the puzzles) and the reward (receiving the money). 

As a result, the individual feels even less motivated to engage in the task than before, which results in free-choice engagement going way down. 

At least for this particular experiment, I find this explanation quite compelling. If anyone knows a reason as to why it’s wrong, I’m all ears!

2. Distraction vs. Autonomy: an alternative explanation

I  think there’s good evidence that higher autonomy forms of motivation are superior – in terms of subjective experience, performance, persistence, etc. – than lower forms of autonomy. 

I’m completely on board with this

But when I look at some of the early experiments surrounding intrinsic motivation, I feel like autonomy as an explanation is a bit of a stretch. 

Take the Ross (1975) one, where salient rewards were compared to non-salient rewards.  

This result is completely plausible to me: it makes sense that if you promise a kid an unknown reward for playing a drum, and then you hide the unknown reward in a box placed conspicuously in front of them, they will experience less enjoyment when they play the drum. And if they experience less enjoyment, it stands to reason that they will probably be less motivated to play with the drum the next time the opportunity presents itself, i.e. a reduction in intrinsic motivation. 

But here’s the thing: SDT posits that the reason for this reduction in intrinsic motivation is that the highly salient reward is experienced as controlling – as impairing the individual’s sense of autonomy – and that this is ultimately what causes the downturn in intrinsic motivation. 

But would these salient rewards really be experienced as a form of control? 

I’m not convinced. 

For me, a better explanation is simply that the reward functioned as a distraction, and that the distraction reduced the quality of the attention the kids brought to bear on the task. 

Think of it like this: tasks that are intrinsically interesting are in some sense a reward unto themselves. But if you offer up highly salient extrinsic rewards for doing these tasks, then each participant’s attention is going to be divided between the task and the reward. This divided attention will impair the quality of the participant’s engagement with the task, which will in turn reduce the amount of enjoyment they’re able to extract from it. 

Less enjoyment from the task = reduced time playing with the reward in the free-choice period. 

This seems to me like a much more plausible explanation than the autonomy one. 

For another example, consider the Marinek and Cambrell (2008) experiment where they compared the effect of token-rewards, e.g. a gold star, with task-related rewards, e.g. a book, on reading motivation. 

Would the reward of a book really be experienced as less controlling than the reward of a gold star? 

Again, I struggle to believe this. 

Instead, I think the token reward was probably more distracting than the task-related reward – which makes sense, since the task-related reward was really just a means of spending more time doing the task at hand anyway.

3. The largest meta-analysis on the effects of rewards and reward contingencies on intrinsic motivation

I was going to throw this into the previous section, but it all just got too cumbersome, so decided to save it for now. 

Over the years, there have been mountains of experiments looking at the  effects of different rewards and reward contingencies on intrinsic motivation. In 1999, Deci et al ran a huge meta-analysis on all of this research. Here are the headline results:

(Note: k = number of individual effect sizes included in the composite effect size ; d = composite effect size. Also, the numbers in brackets at the bottom of each box are the 95% confidence interval for each composite.)

Some of these categories are self-explanatory – e.g. tangible vs. verbal rewards, expected vs. unexpected rewards – but others are not. To help you interpret all of this, here’s a quick run-through of the categories I didn’t think were obvious:

Task-noncontingent rewards - rewards are given for simply being present; does not require engagement with the target activity. 

Engagement-continent rewards - rewards given for spending time engaged with the target activity. 

Completion-contingent rewards - rewards given for completing a target activity. 

Performance-contingent - given for reaching a specific performance standard, e.g. doing better than 80% of people. 

Upshot: verbal rewards seem to increase intrinsic motivation; almost all tangible rewards seem to undermine it, other than unexpected tangible rewards, which don’t have much of an effect either way. 

SDT - 1; Behaviourism - Nil. 

Here are a couple of bits in relation to all of this that I thought were interesting and worth drawing attention to:

Children vs. Students – notice that for verbal praise, the effect size is way bigger for college students than for children. One quite convincing explanation for this is that that much of the praise children receive from adults in their daily lives actually is intended to control their behaviour. They are therefore much more sensitive to the controlling aspect of feedback than college students, who interpret feedback as more straightforwardly competence affirming. 

Praise – in addition to the findings from this meta-analysis, I thought it was worth adding that Henderlong and Lepper (2002) did a review of the praise research and found that when praise was viewed as informational, i.e. conveying genuine information about competence, it increased intrinsic motivation, whereas when praise was viewed as controlling, it harmed it. 

Performance contingent rewards appear to have a negative impact on intrinsic motivation, but here’s the thing: a decent percentage of the experiments included in this category involved all participants receiving the reward. This means we can expect the competence affirming aspect of the reward to at least partially offset the controlling aspect. But in many real-world contexts, we would often only expect the upper X% of  participants to meet the criteria for the reward. That means that the majority of people within this contingency would  experience both the controlling AND the competence disconfirming aspects of the reward, which we would expect to absolutely hammer their intrinsic motivation for the activity. This whole point is interesting, because it suggests that performance contingent rewards might act as something like a gate-keeping function: anyone that performs well will receive enough competence affirming information to keep their intrinsic motivation for the activity alive. Meanwhile, everybody else’s intrinsic motivation will be completely crushed. More on this in the ‘Competition’ section below. 

Delay time – in some of the experiments that were included in this meta-analysis, the free-choice measure was taken immediately after the reward period; in others, it was taken several days later. By comparing the two, we can get a read on whether the effects of rewards on intrinsic motivation are short-lived or whether they persist long after the rewards were administered. Turns out that the effect size for immediate and non-immediate rewards was more or less identical.

4. Mimetic desire: a missing piece of the puzzle maybe?

When I first started writing this piece, I was planning to criticise SDT on the grounds that it doesn’t really explain why I suddenly became obsessed with school and studying rather than other things. 

But on reflection, I actually do think it offers up a fairly plausible explanation. 

One factor, which I’ve mentioned already, is competence: I have a knack for school and learning, and this meant that when I started working hard, I received a strong competence signal. But why did I suddenly care obsessively about going to a good university when this hadn’t been on my radar at any point prior to then? 

My assumption has always been that this was a simple case of mimetic desire : all of my classmates suddenly conceived a desire to go to a good university; my desire was in some sense learned from – or an imitation of – the desire I was seeing in them.

I think this is partially right – but one piece of the picture is missing:

Up until this point, I’d been relatively resistant to this kind of mimesis. Prior to sixth form, many of my school friends wanted nothing more than to hang out in town, chase girls, and do the usual mindless teenager stuff – but I wasn’t really interested in any of it.

But then I enter year 12 and suddenly I become subject to the kinds of mimetic desire that I had been holding out against all this time. 

What’s up with that?

As it turns out, one of SDT’s other mini-theories – Organismic Integrations Theory (OIT) – has something quite interesting to say here. 

In essence, OIT says that I am much more likely to internalise the values and norms of those around me when two conditions are met:

When my adoption of those values and norms is volitional (read: autonomous).

When I feel connected with those around me (read: relatedness).

As mentioned already, when I was in sixth form, both of these conditions were met: I had a close group of friends, and my environment and relationships were much more supportive of autonomy than they had been at earlier stages of my schooling. 

SDT’s explanation is that this uptick in relatedness and autonomy meant that I was much more likely to internalise the values of my surroundings – those presented by my parents, teachers, and peers – and this led to far more autonomous forms of motivation becoming active. 

5. Western centrism: the most common criticism of SDT

When I was trying to understand why SDT was so rarely mentioned in mainstream circles, I did a bit of digging around the most common criticisms of the theory. 

Of those that I encountered, most weren’t particularly compelling, but one did make think: the theory – which claims to offer a universal account of human psychological needs – is excessively western-centric.  

The autonomy component of the theory seems to be the main target of this criticism: in western culture, we place a strong emphasis on autonomy as a value, but in collectivist cultures, where the needs of the individual are generally subordinated to the needs of the group, this emphasis is not there.  

Does this mean that SDT is only applicable in the west?

Proponents of SDT generally have a couple of responses to this criticism:

Autonomy vs. independence – the western centricism criticism conflates the ideas of autonomy and independence. Autonomy is about acting volitionally and endorsing one’s own behaviours; independence is about being reliant upon oneself and separate from others. These are two different things. SDT is about the former – the criticism relates to the latter. It is possible to act in a highly autonomous way – that is, to endorse one’s own behaviours willingly – and to also conform to the needs of the collective. This idea is brought out in clear relief when SDT talks about morals: if I reluctantly adhere to my community’s moral rules, dragging my feet all the way, I can be said to have a low autonomy form of motivation. If I see the value in these moral laws and willingly adhere to them, I can be said to possess a high autonomy form of motivation. 

Universality of relatedness – SDT’s proponents also respond to this criticism by pointing out that relatedness – a value that would usually be more closely associated with collectivist cultures – plays a central role in their theory too. To zero in on autonomy and ignore relatedness feels a bit like cherry picking. What’s more, there’s no reason why individualist cultures should be more supportive of autonomy and collectivist culture more supportive of relatedness. There may well be cultures where the reverse is the case. 

Don’t know about you, but I actually find both of these responses quite satisfactory. 

6. Is the free-choice measure actually valid?

There are two niggling concerns that I’ve had while writing this piece. I wouldn’t feel right putting it out into the wild without at least flagging them, so here they are:

First, does the free-choice measure actually measure intrinsic motivation?

Does it, in other words, achieve construct validity?

The measure basically relies on inferences to differentiate intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. In the free-choice period, we are inferring that the individual’s behaviour is fuelled by intrinsic motivation, but it seems perfectly conceivable that in some instances it may be fuelled by extrinsic factors like, e.g. expectation of future rewards.

This is a legitimate concern, and i’m far from the only one to raise it.

SDT’s proponents generally respond in two main ways:

They emphasise the correlation between the free-choice measure and the self-report measure. As mentioned already, this correlation isn’t perfect, but it’s close enough to indicate that the free-choice measure probably is capturing some element of enjoyment and interest. From my perspective, i don’t think this really deals with the criticism, since the main objection here isn’t that the measure fails to capture intrinsic motivation – it’s that it captures both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

They also sometimes emphasise the importance of using multiple measures of intrinsic motivation to triangulate on this construct. The idea, as i understand it, is that taken alone none of these measures are perfect, but by raising the threshold of evidence – by saying that multiple measures need to point in the same direction for the result to be considered significant – we can more reliably zero in on intrinsic motivation. I find this response more convincing, though i’m not sure if anyone is actually putting it into effect.

My second concern relates to the free-choice paradigm’s external validity: are its findings generalisable to the real-world?

These experiments are very controlled and sanitised, but the rewards and reward contingencies of real life are messy and complex and multi-layered. So – like – do the findings from these simplistic experiments carry over?

I’ve been able to satisfy myself with two main replies to this one:

This is just the nature of experimentation (or, at least, experimentation within the field of psychology). We need to simplify and sanitise in order to isolate our variables of interest. If we did not do so, it would be super difficult to detect a signal within all the noise. Also, as it goes: when SDT uses field experiments to test their findings from the lab, the results generally run in the same direction.

The findings and theory from this literature do a surprisingly good job of explaining my own real-life experiences with intrinsic motivaiton, e.g. my crazy study habits during A Levels. This obviously isn’t a particularly scientific way of evaluating the external validity of a paradigm, but for me at least, it does tilt me slightly in the direction of wanting to give the measure the benefit of the doubt.

7. Competition: should it be outlawed?

There’s been some tentative talk within this literature about the potential undermining effects of competition on intrinsic motivation. 

Consider again, for example, the meta-analysis discussed above, where it was found that performance-contingent rewards are likely to undermine intrinsic motivation, even in those who actually fulfil the performance criteria. For those who don’t fulfil the criteria – the losers of the competition – this is expected to have an even greater undermining effect. 

This line of reasoning has led some commentators to suggest that we ought to consider removing competition from certain domains, e.g. maybe schooling, exercise, work, etc. 

On one level, this makes sense – but I think we need to be careful here.

In some areas, it’s important that we ensure everybody succeeds to some extent or another. Take, for example, reading: we don’t want a handful of reading rockstars, while everybody else comes out of school illiterate. We want every student to leave school with a high level of literacy. 

But if we introduce competition here, we may run the risk of harming the intrinsic motivation of the worse performing kids. This will mean that they fall even further behind – and that they leave school with a significantly lower literacy level than they would have done otherwise, i.e. without competition.   

Meanwhile, as per the meta-analysis, we might find that the competition only has a neutral – if not slight undermining – effect on the intrinsic motivation of the high-performing kids. 

This is a clear lose-lose.

But i think a further point needs to be made: in certain instances, competition inheres within the activity itself. That means the individual is never going to end up in a 'free choice' situation in real life, because the reward contingency is baked into the activity itself.

Take tennis, for example. 

Tennis is competition. The competition inheres within the activity.

Sure, you can rally for a while, but if you’re not playing points – if you’re not competing – you’re not really playing tennis at all: you’re just practicing. 

In some sense, this is just semantics – what does the word ‘play’ actually mean? Or the word ‘tennis’? – but in another sense, it’s not: you’re never going to enter a free-choice period where rewards are off the table entirely; performance-contingent rewards, however low stakes, are embedded within the very fabric of the game. 

This is a good thing, and it’s probably part of what makes sport – and games in general – so compelling. 

When I play competitive tennis, I become completely absorbed in the game in front of me. As far as I’m concerned, this kind of absorption is one of life’s great joys – being wholly immersed in the present moment, in the challenge at hand, and temporarily forgetting about every other worry in my life.

Without competition, this kind of narrowing of attention just would not happen. The enjoyment of the activity – it’s ability to elicit motivation and narrow attention – is inextricably tied up with the competition itself. 

As a result, I think that any blanket policy seeking to remove all forms of competition in order to militate against the potential alienating effects on poor performers would be a mistake. 

Anyhow, there are lots of subtleties to this debate, and I’m not the guy to cut through all of the confusion. Hopefully this discussion at least gives a sense as to what’s at stake on both sides. 

5. Final thoughts + parting advice

Throughout this piece, I’ve done my best to give a clear-eyed overview of the research on intrinsic motivation. 

I think this is a really important subject, not just because greater intrinsic motivation means greater output, but also because I think that greater intrinsic motivation, all things being equal, means a better life.  

I don’t need any research to tell me this – it’s kind of self-evident – but as you’d expect, there actually are a load of papers showing a strong relationship between wellbeing and intrinsic motivation, e.g. 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , etc.

This makes sense. 

We don’t want to be white knuckling everything we do. When we’re excited, inspired, energised, motivated – when the wind is in our sails – life is fun and wellbeing is abundant. 

Unfortunately, if the research literature is to be believed, there are many things that we’re currently doing – both to ourselves and to others – that undermine intrinsic motivation badly. 

What I’ve presented here is really only the tip of the iceberg – the research literature is vast – but I’m hoping this sketch will be enough to give you a broad-strokes understanding of the main findings, plus the theories that have emerged to account for them. 

Maybe I’ll do a followup piece or two to try and flesh out this picture some more. 

In the meantime, I’ll leave leave you with a parting piece of advice:

If you want your kids to study – if you want them to actually enjoy learning – then you’re going to have to do something and you’re probably not going to like it:

You need to get off their backs!

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The Moralization of Intrinsic Motivation: Opportunities and Perils

• &title=The Moralization of Intrinsic Motivation: Opportunities and Perils&source=https%3A%2F%2Fkenaninstitute.unc.edu%2Fpublication%2Fthe-moralization-of-intrinsic-motivation-opportunities-and-perils%2F">

Scholars have traditionally treated motivation as a value-neutral state divorced from normative considerations. Yet, research across the social sciences suggests a growing moral imperative to love work, which carries with it the social expectation of intrinsic motivation. This normative pressure stems from the moralization of intrinsic motivation, wherein enjoyment of work is converted into a virtue. While research and practice emphasize positive work outcomes associated with intrinsic motivation, we argue that the moralization of intrinsic motivation is not wholly beneficial. Normative pressure to do what you love can encourage people to pursue and cultivate highly satisfying work for themselves and others. At the same time, however, it can lead to the neglect of security-related concerns (e.g., stable employment) and uninteresting tasks. Moreover, it can elicit discriminatory behavior against those who are presumed to lack intrinsic motivation or who exhibit other viable forms of motivation, impacting overall cohesion and conflict within organizations. Our framework explains how intrinsic motivation becomes morally laden, and the opportunities and perils it presents at intrapersonal, interpersonal, and organizational levels.

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• organizational behavior 181

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The influence of intrinsic motivation and synergistic extrinsic motivators on creativity and innovation.

• International School of Management, Dortmund, Germany

Despite the vast amount of research focusing on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, the effects of extrinsic motivators on creativity and innovation have been scarcely investigated. Extrinsic factors can be seen as synergistic extrinsic motivators when they have a positive effect on the outcome. The present study investigates synergistic extrinsic motivators that organizations can use to foster creativity and innovation of their intrinsically motivated knowledge workers. The analysis is based on Amabile and Pratt’s dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations combined with elements from Ryan and Deci’s self-determination theory. The quantitative data stemmed from 90 knowledge workers of an international consulting company who participated in an online self-assessment. In exploratory factor analyses, extrinsic motivation items consolidated two factors “relational rewards” and “transactional rewards”, while creativity and innovation items resulted in a one-factor solution, called “creativity/innovation performance”.

The results of hierarchical regression analyses confirmed the widely found positive effects of intrinsic motivation on creative and innovative performance. Moreover, the results supported the hypothesis that the extrinsic motivator, relational rewards, moderated the relationship between intrinsic motivation and creativity/innovation performance significantly and positively. The findings showed the higher the perceived probability of receiving relational rewards and the higher the intrinsic motivation, the greater the positive effect on creative/innovative outcomes. At the same time, the results did not confirm the hypothesis, that the moderator transactional rewards had a statistically significant effect on the relationship between intrinsic motivation and creative/innovative performance. Finally, the empirical evidence provided practical implications on how to stimulate the creativity/innovation performance of knowledge workers within organizations.

Introduction

As work is becoming more and more dynamic and knowledge-based, organizations increasingly depend on creative ideas and innovative impulses from their employees. Knowledge workers’ creativity and innovation are critical for the organizational competitive advantage as they help to enhance a firm’s performance, product quality, and innovative power ( Anderson et al., 2014 ; Liu et al., 2016 ). Creativity is generally seen as the generation of useful and novel ideas while innovation implies the implementation of these ideas ( Anderson et al., 2014 ).

Research has shown that three factors increase creativity in particular: Motivation, skills, and creativity-relevant processes ( Hirst et al., 2009 ; Richter et al., 2012 ; Amabile and Pratt, 2016 ). Generally speaking, motivation is seen as “the heart of organizational behavior” ( Gagné, 2014 , p. 414) because employees’ motivation has a substantial impact on their performance and productivity ( Cerasoli et al., 2014 ; Amabile and Pratt, 2016 ). Motivation guides the direction, intensity, and persistence of performance behaviors and can be categorized into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation ( Cerasoli et al., 2014 ; Deci et al., 2017 ). Extrinsic motivation leads to engagement when material or social considerations are expected ( Amabile et al., 1994 ). Contrarily, when intrinsically motivated, employees perform tasks out of interest and enjoyment for its own sake ( Deci et al., 1999 ; Amabile and Pratt, 2016 ).

Throughout the last three decades, the positive impact of intrinsic motivation on creativity and innovation was highlighted while extrinsic motivation was often seen as controversial and has been less investigated in this context ( Amabile et al., 1995 ; Anderson et al., 2014 ). Nevertheless, employers cannot assume that their employees are always intrinsically motivated as relatively few people find their jobs interesting enough to work without getting paid or receiving other rewards in return ( Deci et al., 2017 ). Consequently, in order to enhance creativity and innovation deliberately, extrinsic motivators must also be considered. Contextual factors, like HRM practices, are meant to influence employees’ motivation and thus, to impact outcomes like creative and innovative performance ( Byron and Khazanchi, 2012 ; Cerasoli et al., 2014 ; Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). Research evidence on what kind of external motivators foster and impede motivation and furthermore, creative and innovative performance still yields mixed results.

The best-known theory of creativity is Amabile’s model of creativity and innovation in organizations from 1988 ( Amabile, 1988 ; Liu et al., 2016 ). Based upon recent theoretical developments within the creativity and innovation field the model has been updated by Amabile and Pratt (2016) . Complemented with new research findings like synergistic extrinsic motivation and an emphasis on both constructs creativity and innovation, this model represents a promising conceptual framework for the current research scope. According to the concept of synergistic extrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivators can add positively to intrinsic motivation and other outcomes like creativity and innovation ( Amabile and Pratt, 2016 ).

Although Amabile and Pratt (2016) provide a general creativity and innovation framework, they do not elaborate on the different types of motivation and motivators in detail. In order to close this gap, the SDT by Ryan and Deci (2000) can be employed. The SDT distinguishes different motivation types while addressing the link between motivation and performance. Additionally, the theory reflects how multiple factors like pay contingent and managerial styles impact this relation ( Deci et al., 2017 ). So far, no empirical study was found that has already combined Ryan and Deci (2000) and Amabile and Pratt (2016) models in one research scope.

To summarize, the objective of this article is to clarify the open research question about the role of extrinsic motivators on creative and innovative performance as well as their interplay with intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivators in the form of specific HRM practices, transactional and relational rewards, are analyzed ( Grant and Berry, 2011 ; Amabile and Pratt, 2016 ; Deci et al., 2017 ).

Dynamic Componential Model of Creativity and Innovation in Organizations

The importance of creativity and innovation is reflected in a multitude of empirical studies, and the number of research efforts has grown significantly over the last 30 years ( Amabile and Pratt, 2016 ; Liu et al., 2016 ). However, the boundaries between the two concepts of creativity and innovation are still not clearly drawn today ( Anderson et al., 2014 ). Rationales are that focused research and clear, practical guidelines are hampered by the lack of convincing theoretical advances and valid models ( Anderson et al., 2014 ). Amabile and Pratt (2016) recognized this gap and responded by updating Amabile’s well-known model of creativity and innovation in organizations with the latest theoretical developments on motivational factors and their impact on personal and contextual multi-level approaches. New research findings, which are addressed in the 2016 version of the model, include meaningfulness of work, work progress, affect, work orientations, external influences, and synergistic extrinsic motivation ( Amabile and Pratt, 2016 ). It is commonly argued that these factors influence creativity and innovation within organizations ( Davis, 2009 ; Grant and Berry, 2011 ; Baer, 2012 ). Their dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations is a complex, multivariate theory ( Amabile and Pratt, 2016 ). The model (cf. Figure 1 for an adapted version) is broadly clustered into organizational innovation and individual creativity which are displayed as strongly interdependent ( Amabile and Pratt, 2016 ). Both clusters are described with the same three basic multiplicative components that are required to produce something new: Motivation, resources, and processes. The three components of the individual creativity include taking actions due to the sake of enjoyment (intrinsic motivation), individual know-how and abilities (skills), and cognitive/perceptual styles and thinking skills (creativity relevant processes). The three organizational innovativeness components include the openness to take new risks (motivation to innovate), the provision of money, time, and workforce (resources), as well as relational and transactional rewards (HRM practices/processes). Whereas Montag et al. (2012) and Amabile and Pratt (2016) recognize organizational innovativeness and individual creativity as two distinct constructs, others view creativity and innovation as a single construct ( Yuan and Woodman, 2010 ; Soriano de Alencar, 2012 ).

Figure 1. Modified componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations adapted from Amabile and Pratt (2016) .

Self-Determination Theory

Similar to the theories of creativity and innovation, there is also a variety of motivational theories that partially overlap or contradict each other ( Maslow, 1943 ; Herzberg, 1966 ; McClelland, 1985 ; Ryan and Deci, 2000 , 2017 ; Amabile and Pratt, 2016 ). The theories share the notion that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are considered as distinct motivational systems. However, depending on the theory, the effects of these motivational subsystems on creativity and innovation as well as on each other are perceived differently. Whereas some researchers like Herzberg (1966) argued that intrinsic motivation (motivators) and extrinsic motivation (hygiene factors) are orthogonal constructs, indicating their independence of each other, authors like Amabile (1993) assume that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can influence each other and even add up positively. This kind of positive effect is called a synergistic extrinsic motivation effect and is reflected in their latest published model ( Amabile and Pratt, 2016 ). Thus, they argue that extrinsic motivation can also lead to synergistic outcomes. One theory that explains various internal and external motivation types and their dependencies in more detail is the SDT ( Ryan and Deci, 2000 ). The theory suggests that human actions, such as creative and innovative performance, are strongly affected by the type of underlying motivation and are triggered by individual motives and needs. According to the SDT, motivation varies along a continuum between controlled and autonomous motivation( Ryan and Deci, 2000 ). Autonomous motivation comprises the intrinsic motivation of an employee and the internalized extrinsic motivation. Internalization is defined “as the process of taking in values, beliefs, or behavioral regulations from external sources and transforming them into one’s own” ( Ryan and Deci, 2017 , p. 182). It is anticipated that internalization of extrinsic motives can also cause similar positive outcomes as intrinsic motivation because it enables self-determination. Ryan and Deci (2000) named these autonomous supporting motivation styles “identification, integration, and intrinsic regulation”. Controlled motivation – on the other side of the continuum – is characterized by non-self-determination which is caused by non-regulation, external regulations, or introjection ( Deci et al., 2017 ). See Figure 2 for visualization of the SDT. Consequently, it is argued that extrinsic motivation is not a one-dimensional construct, as it has often been considered in the past. Thus, previously controversial results of extrinsic motivation effects may have arisen from different views and research settings on extrinsic motivation ( Eisenberger and Cameron, 1996 ; Deci et al., 1999 ).

Figure 2. Self-determination theory adapted from Ryan and Deci (2000) .

The SDT does not only focus on the conceptualization of extrinsic motivation but also on need satisfaction. It consists of six sub-theories that have been tested for decades in numerous work-related studies ( Gong and Zhang, 2017 ; Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). The BPNT is one of these sub-theories. The BPNT indicates that the autonomous motivation of employees is expected to increase when their basic needs are satisfied in the workplace ( Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). In the case of dissatisfaction of the basic needs, the autonomous motivation decreases and a controlled motivation is anticipated ( Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). It is argued that such controlled motivation has a negative impact on the performance ( Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). Although everybody has needs that trigger motives when salient stimuli are present ( Gerrig and Zimbardo, 2016 ), the level of need satisfaction may vary among individuals. Motives, thereupon, trigger the motivation to act ( Gerrig and Zimbardo, 2016 ). Most need-based theories of motivation postulate very similar basic needs ( McClelland, 1985 ; Ryan and Deci, 2000 ). The SDT of Ryan and Deci (2000) has built on earlier need theories of Maslow (1943) and McClelland (1985) . According to the BPNT, as part of the SDT, there are three basic psychological needs – competence, relatedness, and autonomy – which can be satisfied through self-determination ( Ryan and Deci, 2000 ). The need for competence focuses on the satisfaction of proficiency as well as the feeling of effectiveness in one’s own work ( Ryan and Deci, 2002 ). McClelland (1985) labeled this need the need for achievement. Relatedness provides a feeling of belonging which is supported by cooperation and teamwork ( Ryan and Deci, 2002 ). This need was also mentioned by McClelland (1985) , labeled as the need for affiliation. Autonomy represents the choice to engage in an activity that is aligned with one’s values out of personal interest ( Ryan and Deci, 2000 ). Thus, the need for autonomy refers to a need for power over one’s own actions as well as the choice to engage in activities to enable self-fulfillment ( Ryan and Deci, 2000 ). However, the need for power can also be defined differently. McClelland (1985) for instance referred to the need for power as the need to have power over others.

Intrinsic Motivation and Creative and Innovative Performance

Intrinsic motivation is characterized by a strong valuation of personal investment and engagement ( Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). Several meta-analyses have shown that the effect between intrinsic motivation and creative performance is significantly positive ( De Jesus et al., 2013 ; Cerasoli et al., 2014 ; Liu et al., 2016 ). The dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations of Amabile and Pratt (2016) also underlines this strong relationship theoretically. Additionally, Grant and Berry (2011) found that this positive effect increases when work involves service to others. This study aims to replicate the widely found positive effects of intrinsic motivation on creative and innovative performance, especially with regard to the group of knowledge workers (see Figure 3 ).

Figure 3. Hypothesized interaction of intrinsic motivation and rewards on creativity and innovation performance.

Hypothesis 1: Intrinsic motivation has a significant positive effect on the creative and innovative performance of knowledge workers.

Extrinsic Motivators and Creative and Innovative Performance

In earlier times, research on extrinsic motivation often supported a negative impact on intrinsic motivation and performance, commonly referred to as the crowding-out effect ( Deci et al., 1999 ; Kohn, 1999 ). Such crowding-out effects are becoming less dominant as extrinsic motivators receive more nuanced analyses ( Condly et al., 2003 ; Hammond et al., 2011 ; Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). Nevertheless, decades of research have not provided reliable guidelines and a common understanding of the impacts of rewards on motivation as well as creative and innovative performance. Therefore, scholars have called for further investigations ( Byron and Khazanchi, 2012 ; Cerasoli et al., 2014 ).

HRM practices are a commonly used way to improve motivation in work set-ups. Rewards, a specific HRM practice, are the most common form of extrinsic motivators in the work environment ( Cerasoli et al., 2014 ). In general, they are provided as a consequence of desired behaviors ( Rose, 2014 ). The most common distinction of rewards occurs in transactional and relational rewards ( Baer et al., 2003 ; Gagné and Forest, 2008 ; Armstrong, 2012 ; Joshi, 2016 ). In the following, empirical research findings of the main effects of each reward type on creative and innovative performance are laid out individually before the focus is set on the interaction effects between these rewards and intrinsic motivation on creativity and innovation.

Effects of the Extrinsic Motivator Transactional Rewards on Creative and Innovative Performance

Transactional rewards are tangible rewards and refer to any form of financial compensation (e.g., increase in base pay, bonus, monetary awards, and external training with certifications). Regarding transactional rewards, Condly et al. (2003) meta-analysis supported a significant positive main effect between monetary rewards and general performance. Eisenberger and Shanock (2003) found that expected monetary rewards can enhance creativity – a specific form of performance – when participants understand the necessity of performing creative actions, either through instructions or prior experience. These results are consistent with the findings by Deci and Ryan (2014) . They found that bonuses for acknowledging the work of individuals are very effective when these knowledge workers expect a bonus. Other researchers, like Malik et al. (2015) , found controversial results: Although rewards in general correlated significantly and positively with creativity, financial rewards showed no significant effect on creativity. Malik et al. (2015) explained this finding with the lack of salient transactional stimuli.

Effects of the Extrinsic Motivator Relational Rewards on Creative and Innovative Performance

Unlike transactional rewards, relational rewards are intangible. Thus, relational rewards go beyond financial considerations. They include praise, recognition, and performance feedback ( Armstrong, 2012 ), for example in the form of thank-you cards, hall of fame postings, announcements in newsletters ( Armstrong, 2012 ), or funding a successful team for a particular project that the team appreciates, to mention some ( Amabile and Pratt, 2016 ). Such rewards require interpersonal skills and depend on managerial and collegial behavior in order to build valued relationships ( Stajkovic and Luthans, 2001 ; Armstrong, 2012 ). Therefore, due to the personal component, it is argued that relational rewards are harder to be imitated by competitors than transactional rewards ( Armstrong, 2012 ). Moreover, transactional rewards “only” require the definition and one-time implementation of the specific financial rewards, whereas relational rewards are continuously time-consuming for managers. Thus, from an organizational perspective, it is argued that both types of rewards differ strongly regarding efforts and competitive advantage. The meta-analyses by Hammond et al. (2011) and Byron and Khazanchi (2012) supported that relational rewards in a controlled motivational environment could have no impact or even negative ones on creative and innovative performance. However, in terms of autonomous motivational work set-ups, supportive feedback and the recognition of managers contribute significantly positive to creative outcomes ( Madjar et al., 2002 ; Amabile et al., 2004 ; Byron and Khazanchi, 2012 ; Zhang et al., 2017 ). Evidence for such a positive main effect explicitly for innovation is provided by Taggar (2002) .

Interaction Effects of Extrinsic Motivators and Intrinsic Motivation on Creative and Innovative Performance

Amabile (1993) stated that the above-mentioned positive boosting effects with extrinsic motivators are more likely when intrinsic motivation is high. In addition to the empirical investigations about the main effects in these contexts, the focus of the present study is therefore on the interaction effects with intrinsic motivation. Cerasoli et al. (2014) showed in their meta-analysis that the significant relationship between intrinsic motivation and general performance was stronger when rewards were granted. However, neither performance nor the type of reward was specified in more detail in their meta-analysis. Amabile and Pratt (2016) assumed a similar interaction effect between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivators especially in terms of creative and innovative performance. Therefore, the following is hypothesized (see also Figure 3 ):

Hypothesis 2a: Transactional rewards moderate the relationship between intrinsically motivated knowledge workers and their creative as well as innovative performance positively.

Hypothesis 2b: Relational rewards moderate the relationship between intrinsically motivated knowledge workers and their creative as well as innovative performance positively.

Materials and Methods

The data was collected through an online self-assessment. The English questionnaire (see Figure 4 ) was sent by e-mail to knowledge workers of a global business consulting firm working in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Participants were informed about the purpose of the survey, while anonymity and confidentiality of their data were assured. No incentives for participating in this survey were given. Additionally, the survey instructions emphasized that there were no right or wrong answers to the questions. One hundred and seventy-five consultants received the questionnaire whereby 120 returned it. Thirty of these were excluded because they had either chosen “I just want to look at all the questions” ( N = 2) or had not answered all questions completely ( N = 28). Participants who stated “I do not know” for the reward items were excluded listwise. Thus, for the hierarchical regression analyses, only 82 and 87 questionnaires were considered for transactional and relational rewards, respectively. The average age of the participants was 28.27 years ( SD = 5.62) with an average job tenure in their current organization of 2.20 years ( SD = 2.05). In the sample 42.2% were women. 95.6% of the participants were graduates. This result represents the intended sample of highly educated knowledge workers. Table 1 provides the sociodemographic characteristics of this sample.

Figure 4. Online self-evaluation questionnaire (Inquery).

Table 1. Sociodemographic characteristics of the polled consultants.

In order to control for common method bias due to the self-assessment of a single source, the questionnaire was divided into three sections: Independent, dependent, and moderator variables ( Podsakoff et al., 2003 ). To measure the independent variable “intrinsic motivation”, the WPI by Amabile et al. (1995) was applied. The WPI is a widely used measure to assess (intrinsic and extrinsic) motivation at work ( Choi, 2004 ; Spada and Moneta, 2013 ). It has acceptable re-test reliabilities of more than 0.60 ( Abuhamdeh and Csikszentmihalyi, 2009 ; Robinson et al., 2014 ). Its items have been applied in many experiments to better understand motivational behavior for creativity and innovation at work ( Prabhu et al., 2008 ; Chen et al., 2010 ; Stuhlfaut, 2010 ). Originally, the WPI consists of 30 items. However, due to the focus on intrinsic motivation within this research (originally 15 WPI items) and to avoid survey fatigue, the number of items was reduced to six intrinsic motivation items. Such WPI item reductions have been previously conducted by other authors such as Robinson et al. (2014) (IM Robinson α = 0.71) and O’Shea (2018) (IM O′Shea α = 0.58). These six items were chosen for their relevance to consultants in their work environment. Opportunities to increase their knowledge and skills (IM item 1: Challenge) as well as to solve complex problems (IM item 6: Challenge) are typical parts of knowledge workers’ business surroundings. Additionally, consultants often prefer to take responsibility early on ( Schlossbauer, 2017 ) which enables them to set goals themselves and work autonomously (IM item 5: Enjoyment). Excluded were items like “[w]hat matters most to me is enjoying what I do”. This item was removed, as consultants generally have to work on all issues the client provides them with, irrespective of whether they enjoy it, or not. This item is argued to be more relevant to self-employed people. Moreover, these six items were selected with the aim to cover a broader field of intrinsic motivation. Therefore, no similar worded items like “I enjoy trying to solve complex problems”/“The more difficult the problem, the more I enjoy trying to solve it” were selected as Robinson et al. (2014) for instance did. The scale reliability of the intrinsic motivation items resulted in a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.54 (Guttman’s α = 0.58). This value represents the alpha after the scale was reduced from six to four items. Although this indicates a reliability index below standard according to Field (2017) , this value is not unacceptable. Guttman (1945) stated that alpha values are generally below the actual reliability ( Sijtsma, 2009 ). This indicates that the current intrinsic motivation alpha could be higher than 0.54. In addition to this mathematical inaccuracy of alpha, Kline (1999) supported psychological constructs with reliabilities even below 0.70. He considered them as still realistic and acceptable due to the diversity and complexity of constructs being measured. All items were written in the first person and participants were asked to state the extent to which each item describes them best on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from “never or almost never true of me” (1) to “always or almost always true of me” (4).

The research aimed to evaluate the creative and innovative performance at work. Consequently, for the dependent variable creativity and innovation, the focus was set on on-the-job creativity and innovation that arises during daily work. Due to the lack of consensus about the measurement of creativity and innovation among researchers, there is no commonly used measure for these constructs ( Nelson et al., 2014 ; Fisher, 2015 ). The questionnaire of Dorenbosch et al. (2005) was applied because they were among the first who measured idea generation and idea implementation without having strong correlations. The items with the highest factor loadings (between 0.674 and 0.842) were selected for the current research. All items were written in the first person and measured on the same 4-point Likert scale as the intrinsic motivation items (see Figure 4 ). In the current sample, Cronbach’s alpha was 0.63 for the three creativity items, 0.58 for the three innovation items, and 0.79 for the combined creativity and innovation items. Consequently, scale reliability for the combined construct was given ( Field, 2017 ).

For measuring transactional and relational reward, no standard measurement exists ( Anderson et al., 2014 ). Transactional and relational reward items from Gagné and Forest (2008) as well as Armstrong (2012) were selected. A distinction between idea generation and implementation for each reward item was made to enable the differentiation between creativity and innovation. Perceptual measures were used in line with previous research to investigate the effects of rewards on creativity ( George and Zhou, 2007 ; Anderson et al., 2014 ). The relational rewards were divided into symbolic public recognition, individual praise/recognition from the manager, and performance management as suggested by Armstrong (2012) . The transactional rewards were divided into monetary rewards as well as training/personal development investments ( Armstrong, 2012 ). See Figure 4 for details. Participants rated the likelihood of receiving the specific rewards on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from “never or almost never likely” (1) to “always or almost always likely” (4). An additional category gave the participants the option to say “I do not know” (5) to increase validity.

In addition, age, gender, job tenure, and education of the participants were controlled. Other control variables were not defined due to the homogeneous sample of knowledge workers working in the same business consulting company and similar working conditions.

Preliminary Analyses

None of the sociodemographic variables (age, gender, job tenure, education) correlated significantly with intrinsic motivation or creativity or innovation (see Table 2 ). Creativity and innovation correlated moderately and significantly with intrinsic motivation ( r = 0.37, p = 0.000), relational rewards ( r = 0.34, p = 0.001) and transactional rewards ( r = 0.30 , p = 0.006). The two measures – creative and innovative performance – showed a significant correlation ( r = 0.75, p = 0.000). Generally, all independent and dependent variables were significantly correlated with each other except for intrinsic motivation with transactional rewards ( r = 0.14, p = 0.202). Univariate variance analyses with sociodemographic control variables demonstrated no significant differences between creative and innovative performance of males ( M = 2.89, SD = 0.53) and females ( M = 2.87, SD = 0.52) in this company. Moreover, no significant difference was found between creative and innovative outcomes and the level of education amongst graduates ( M = 2.89, SD = 0.52) and non-graduates ( M = 2.83, SD = 0.47). Similar findings applied to the different age groups as no significant effect was found. In addition, no significant difference was found between participants who worked 2–3 years in the company ( M = 3.00, SD = 0.41) and those who worked more than 5 years ( M = 2.50, SD = 0.17).

Table 2. Means, standard deviations, and intercorrelation among study variables.

The high correlation of 0.75 between creativity and innovation indicated a one-factor solution. This was supported by an EFA. The results showed a Barlett’s Test of Sphericity [chi-square (15) = 148.61, p = 0.000] and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure (KMO) with sampling adequacy of 0.757. This represents a mediocre KMO value, indicating that the variables are suitable for doing an EFA ( Backhaus et al., 2016 ). A principal components analysis with Varimax rotation resulted into a one-factor solution. Overall, this factor explained 49.2% of the variance (eigenvalue = 2.953, Cronbach’s α = 0.79). Therefore, both terminologies were treated as one variable called creativity/innovation performance. This result is in line with Baer (2012) whose findings also showed no significant difference between creativity and innovation. See Table 3 for details.

Table 3. Pattern and structure matrix of PCA with varimax rotation for a one-factor solution of creativity and innovation items.

To evaluate the transactional and relational reward items another EFA was conducted. The results indicated a Barlett’s Test of Sphericity [chi-square (45) = 566.94, p = 0.000] and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure (KMO) with sampling adequacy of 0.684. This represents a mediocre KMO value indicating that the variables are suitable for performing an EFA ( Backhaus et al., 2016 ). A principal components analysis with Varimax rotation was done. The EFA was conducted to find a parsimonious solution with a high data fit, meaning to select as little factors with the highest explanation of variance as possible ( Tabachnick and Fidell, 2014 ). Thus, two factors were extracted. Although when following the Kaiser-Kriterium strictly, three factors should have been extracted. This decision was based on three rationales. Firstly, the Kaiser-Kriterium overestimates the number of factors ( Field, 2009 ). Secondly, the third factor had an eigenvalue only slightly above one (eigenvalue = 1.098). Fabrigar et al. (1999) have advised to treat an eigenvalue of one only as a reference point not as a fixed criteria because “it is not really meaningful to claim that a common factor with an eigenvalue of 1.01 is a “major” factor whereas a common factor with an eigenvalue of 0.99 is not” (p. 278). Thirdly, the two-factor solution is in line with the common theoretical distinction between the two constructs transactional and relational rewards ( Gagné and Forest, 2008 ; Armstrong, 2012 ). The first factor, relational rewards, contained six items, accounting for 34.6% of the variance (eigenvalue = 4.916, Cronbach’s α = 0.86). The factor reflects symbolic public recognition, individual praise from managers, and performance management. The second factor, transactional rewards, accounted for additional 32.8% of the variance (eigenvalue = 1.822, Cronbach’s α = 0.84). It consisted of four items that reflect financial and training investment. Overall, these two factors accounted for 67.4% of the variance. Table 4 provides details about the rotated component matrix of rewards and shows that each creativity (idea generation) and innovation (idea implementation) “item pair” of the reward EFA belongs to the same factor. The high alpha values and factor loadings justified the internal reliability and construct validity ( Backhaus et al., 2016 ).

Table 4. Pattern and structure matrix of PCA with varimax rotation for a two-factor solution of reward-items.

Effects on Creativity/Innovation Performance

Since the sociodemographic control variables were neither significant nor did they influence the outcome of the regression models, they were not considered in further investigations.

The hypotheses were tested within two 3-step hierarchical linear regression analyses on creativity/innovation. In the first regression analysis on creativity and innovation performance, the independent variable intrinsic motivation was entered in the first step, followed by transactional rewards in the second step. Afterward, the interaction between transactional rewards and intrinsic motivation was added (intrinsic motivation × transactional rewards). This model [ F (3.78) = 8.44, p = 0.000] explained a total variance of 24.5% (see Table 5 ). Intrinsic motivation had a significant effect on creativity/innovation performance (β = 0.38, p = 0.000). Intrinsic motivation demonstrated the highest significant beta values of all measures and a strong effect size of d = 0.42 ( Cohen, 1992 ). Thus, Hypothesis 1 can be confirmed. Transactional rewards had a significant main effect on creativity/innovation (β = 0.23, p = 0.025). However, the interaction effect between intrinsic motivation and transactional reward was not significant (β = 0.17 , p = 0.089). Thus, Hypothesis 2a cannot be confirmed.

Table 5. Hierarchical regression analysis predicting creativity/innovation from intrinsic motivation and transactional rewards.

In the second regression analysis on creativity/innovation performance, the independent variable intrinsic motivation was entered in the first step followed by relational rewards in the second step. Then, the interaction of intrinsic motivation with relational rewards was added (intrinsic motivation × relational rewards). This model [ F (3.83) = 9.70, p = 0.000] explained overall 26.0% of the variance. Relational rewards had a significantly positive main effect on creativity/innovation (β = 0.27, p = 0.008) with a Cohen’s d of 0.52. Relational rewards and intrinsic motivation also had a significantly positive interaction effect on creativity/innovation (β = 0.23 , p = 0.024). The interaction had an effect size of d = 0.59. This represented a medium effect on creativity/innovation performance ( Backhaus et al., 2016 ). Thus, Hypothesis 2b can be confirmed. Figure 5 visualizes this ordinal interaction effect while the exact figures are presented in Table 6 .

Figure 5. Interaction effects of intrinsic motivation and relational rewards on creativity/innovation performance.

Table 6. Hierarchical regression analysis predicting creativity/innovation from intrinsic motivation and relational rewards.

This study was the first to analyze most common transactional and relational reward items as a moderator of the relationship between intrinsic motivation and the creativity/innovation performance of knowledge workers. The most important finding of this research demonstrates the significant, positive interaction effect of the extrinsic motivator, relational rewards, and intrinsic motivation on creativity/innovation performance. In addition to this significant interaction effect, the main effects between the dependent variable creativity/innovation performance and each of the three independent variables intrinsic motivation, relational, and transactional rewards showed significant positive results.

The results show a strong and highly significant correlation between on-the-job creativity and innovation. This study supports the view that knowledge workers of the international consulting business do not distinguish between idea generation (creativity) and idea implementation (innovation), unlike the two-construct approach of Amabile and Pratt (2016) . Apart from the statistical indication, practical circumstances of the consulting business also necessitate that creativity and innovation are handled as a single construct. This business is characterized by consulting services that generally require only a small amount of product design or technical testing. Once generated ideas are put directly into practice, and thus, idea generation and implementation often coincide in time. This finding is not entirely new and complements the existing literature from Yuan and Woodman (2010) , who do not strictly distinguish between creativity and innovation. However, the research question remains open as to whether creativity and innovation are considered as one or two constructs in other work environments. The perception of the two terminologies may vary depending on the mental (consulting business) and physical work environments. More research is needed to link the creative and innovative performance of employees with different organizational settings to foster a comprehensive understanding of their interplay ( Dorenbosch et al., 2005 ; Anderson et al., 2014 ).

Intrinsic Motivation and Creativity/Innovation Performance

An explicitly strong and significantly positive main effect is found between intrinsic motivation and creative/innovative performance. This implies that the higher the intrinsic motivation, the higher the creative and innovative outcome. This finding confirms the results of earlier research ( Hammond et al., 2011 ; De Jesus et al., 2013 ; Liu et al., 2016 ) and supports Amabile and Pratt (2016) model that the individual component “intrinsic motivation” is a critical predictor for creativity. One reason for this significant effect could be that employees who work on perceived inherently interesting tasks enjoy their work, value their personal investment, and dedicate more time to their activities ( Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). Generally, more information is being processed while efforts to develop and implement new and useful ideas are being pursued more persistently ( Zhou and Shalley, 2008 ; Zhang and Bartol, 2010 ). An additional reason for the significant effect of intrinsic motivation and creativity and innovation performance could be that the work itself involves service to others. Grant and Berry (2011) found that service to others increases the positive effect of intrinsic motivation on creative and innovative outputs. The item “I mobilize support from my supervisor and colleagues for implementing ideas and solutions” could serve as an indicator for supporting the effect stated by Grant and Berry (2011) . This item is the only creativity/innovation item that does not explicitly mention service to others. Compared to all other items, this item showed the lowest mean value ( M item6 = 2.76, SD item6 = 0.75). The highest values are found when improvements for and with the team are targeted ( M item4 = 3.01, SD item4 = 0.65 and M item1 = 2.98, SD item1 = 0.73). Consultants do not only provide service to clients but also help each other on project tasks. Because each project assignment typically has limited resources, success depends on the commitment of each team member. The provision of service to others is promoted by the need for relatedness ( Shiraki and Igarashi, 2018 ). Consequently, it is argued that such a prosocial behavior of consultants satisfies their feeling for relatedness. This, in turn, might increase their intrinsic motivation and so, their creative and innovative outcomes. In addition, Baer et al. (2003) , as well as Oldham and Cummings (1996) provided evidence that employees with complex and challenging tasks, such as consultants generally have ( Schlossbauer, 2017 ), show higher intrinsic motivation and thus, greater creative and innovative job performance. By being able to engage in complex and challenging tasks, it is argued that they can prove their competences and abilities which supports their basic need fulfillment. Further research should clarify the assumed role of the different needs in this context.

Relational Rewards, Intrinsic Motivation, and Creativity/Innovation Performance

The results showed a positive, significant main effect between relational rewards and creative/innovative performance. This result is in line with previous research findings on the relationship between supportive manager feedback/recognition and creative outcomes ( Madjar et al., 2002 ; Gong and Zhang, 2017 ; Zhang et al., 2017 ). The following argument can explain the main effect of this extrinsic motivator: Relational rewards initiate salient stimuli strong enough to be recognized by consultants. Without salient stimuli, no creative or innovative action would follow ( Gerrig and Zimbardo, 2016 ). In addition to awareness of the rewards, it is argued that these employees value the relational rewards they receive. Without any appreciation of these HRM practices, less creative and innovative performance would occur ( Rose, 2014 ; Malik et al., 2015 ). Referring to the dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations of Amabile and Pratt (2016) , the results showed that HRM practices, in the form of relational rewards, have an essential impact on creativity and innovation. Symbolic public recognition, individual praise, and performance feedback are argued to increase a feeling of competence through the evaluation and confirmation of one’s abilities ( Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). It is therefore expected that the satisfaction of the basic psychological need for competence will be met. It is assumed that this increases autonomous motivation and, in turn, leads to better performance ( Ryan and Deci, 2017 ).

In addition to the significant main effect, the results support a significant, medium interaction effect between relational rewards and intrinsic motivation on creativity/innovative performance. The impact of relational rewards on creative and innovative outputs is notably greater when the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers is high. This finding supports the assumed boosting effect on performance from Amabile (1993) . Additionally, no crowding-out effect occurred by using extrinsic motivators as defined by Kohn (1999) . Therefore, relational rewards, as a synergistic extrinsic motivator, can add positively to intrinsic motivation as suggested by Amabile and Pratt (2016) . Also, Herzberg (1966) orthogonal factor assumption differs from the current research findings which support dependencies between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivators. One reason for this significant positive interaction effect might be the perceived appreciation of creativity and innovation in the organization. Perception of an environment is subjective and influenced by what an individual sees, feels, and hears ( Atkinson, 1964 ). Perception might change based on past experiences ( Zhou and George, 2001 ; Dorenbosch et al., 2005 ). In order to respond to the perceived circumstances, a stimulus – strong enough to trigger motivation – must be present ( Gerrig and Zimbardo, 2016 ). In this context, it is argued that the highly intrinsically motivated knowledge workers perceive that their organization values creativity and innovation. Applying recognition and performance feedback to communicate the appreciation of creative and innovative work is argued to increase employees’ perception and beliefs that creative and innovative efforts are valued within the company ( Armstrong, 2012 ). Therefore, the belief in the importance of creativity and innovation might have influenced employees’ behavior to be more creative and innovative. It is assumed that the likelihood to start new creative and innovative ventures and implement more ideas rises. More attention is given toward making improvements on the job and seeing aspects from different perspectives. This result supports the importance of Amabile and Pratt (2016) organizational component HRM practices.

The theoretical assumption of Amabile and Pratt (2016) on synergistic extrinsic motivators can also be supported with the SDT of Ryan and Deci (2017) . When self-determination is given, extrinsic motivators can add positively to the outcome. Self-determination can be reached through the satisfaction of the psychological needs. Several indicators support the need satisfaction of knowledge workers. The highly intrinsically motivated consultants feel most likely satisfied in their need for autonomy due to task ownership and their willingness to take responsibility early on ( Schlossbauer, 2017 ). Additionally, their feeling of competence is triggered by the usage of their know-how and is argued to rise further with verbal praise and feedback because it complements a confirmation of competence. Moreover, it is anticipated that project-oriented employees fulfill their need for relatedness in their project environment, by providing support to their colleagues and clients ( Shiraki and Igarashi, 2018 ). Since the three basic psychological needs have not been empirically tested, it is recommended that future research should specifically analyze their interplay with creative and innovative behavior. Additionally, an emphasis should be set on the different extrinsic motivation types of the SDT from Ryan and Deci (2000) . The exact and diversified understanding of work motivation with its subsystems should continue to evolve ( Kanfer et al., 2008 ).

Transactional Rewards, Intrinsic Motivation, and Creativity/Innovation Performance

The data indicated a significant positive main effect between transactional rewards and creative/innovative performance of knowledge workers. This means the higher the transactional rewards, which implied financial and training investments, the higher the creative and innovative outcome. This result is controversial to Malik et al. (2015) who found no significant main effect when analyzing financial rewards. This finding is aligned with previous research findings by Condly et al. (2003) on the positive, significant relation between monetary rewards and work performance. However, neither Condly et al. (2003) nor Malik et al. (2015) performed a cost-benefit analysis to validate the transactional reward program. A reason for the significant main effect might be that consultants generally expect a bonus as part of their annual salary for a job well done. According to Deci and Ryan (2014) , such usage of bonuses to acknowledge individual good work is very effective. However, it is argued that the valuation of bonuses is a pre-requisite for their effectiveness because, without any appreciation of these HRM practices, creative and innovative performance would not be likely to occur ( Rose, 2014 ; Malik et al., 2015 ). Thus, besides the relational rewards, transactional rewards as a HRM practice can also foster creativity and innovation.

No statistically significant interaction between transactional rewards and intrinsic motivation on creativity/innovation was supported. This indicates that transactional rewards do not have to imply a synergistic nor a crowding-out effect. The first rationale for this non-significant interaction effect might be that there is no formal creativity-/innovation-contingent rewards and recognition within the sampled consulting organization. The findings of Eisenberger and Shanock (2003) provide evidence that monetary rewards only increase creativity when employees are aware of the necessity as to why creative performance should happen. This finding is aligned with Malik et al. (2015) , who found that rewards need to be present and perceived as relevant to influence creative and innovative performance significantly. Based on current results, it can be argued that the link between these tangible rewards and the commitment to pursue more creative and innovative work may not be specific and clear enough. A second reason for the non-significant effect could be that the standard deviation of 0.85 is very high within a scale from 1 to 4. This number indicates that employees perceive the likelihood of receiving a reward very different among each other. On average, only about one-third of all employees in a company receive rewards ( CEB, 2014 ). Statistically, the remaining two-thirds of employees consider the likelihood of receiving transactional rewards to be low. Therefore, it is argued that the awareness, salience, and accessibility of the creativity-contingent transactional rewards, combined with strong intrinsic motivation, seem to be too little to cause a significant result.

In summary, the two extrinsic motivator effects support the assumption of Amabile et al. (1995) that “the motivational structure is probably more complex than the simple intrinsic-extrinsic distinction suggested by the literature” (p. 957). The results for relational and transactional rewards are also aligned with the SDT of Ryan and Deci (2000) which distinguishes between different types of extrinsic motivation with various effects. The results show that extrinsic motivators can have a positive effect on intrinsic motivation and creative/innovative performance (relational rewards), however, can also have no effect (transactional rewards).

Limitations

When interpreting these results, four main limitations have to be considered. First, the research used self-measurements for all variables as the sole and primary data source. Therefore, the reliability of the data may have been compromised. Although self-evaluation is the most commonly used method of analysis at the individual level ( Anderson et al., 2014 ), it might be problematic if employees do not answer honestly. Instead of providing truthful information, they could indicate how they would like their motivation and creative and innovative performance to be perceived ( Bryman and Bell, 2015 ). Manager reports could resolve this limitation. However, managers have only limited insight into their subordinates’ behavior, thoughts, and informal performance contribution ( Organ et al., 2006 ). Since only the individuals themselves know best how to perceive their environment, the self-assessment approach seemed justified, as suggested by Organ et al. (2006) . In order to minimize distortion and falsification, the anonymity and confidentiality of employees’ data were ensured. For future studies, it is recommended to test the results of the research with longitudinal study designs and to select multi-level approaches that examine on an individual, team, and organizational level – and thus, enrich the database.

Second, this study might be considered limited in its scale reliability for the motivational sub-systems. Many academics only consider a Cronbach’s alpha value of 0.70 or higher to show a satisfactory internal consistency ( Field, 2017 ). Not all alpha values measured in this study met this criterion. While the constructs creativity/innovation performance, as well as transactional and relational rewards, showed acceptable scale reliability of minimum 0.79, the corresponding value for intrinsic motivation did not fulfill this criterion (Guttman’s α = 0.58). Nevertheless, besides the fact that intrinsic motivation had such high importance for the investigated model that it could not be excluded from the analyses, 0.58 is still argued to be an acceptable reliability because the calculated alpha values are generally below the actual reliability ( Guttman, 1945 ). Moreover, intrinsic motivation presents a psychological construct. According to Kline (1999) , such constructs with reliabilities even below 0.70 are still considered as realistic and acceptable due to the diversity and complexity of constructs being measured.

Third, this research has explicitly analyzed intrinsic motivation and extrinsic reward motivators. Extrinsic motivators are directly related to concrete HRM practices, and thus, represent ways in which companies can influence creative and innovative performance. Hence, the focus has been on these constructs. Gerrig and Zimbardo (2016) assume that extrinsic motivators are a prerequisite of extrinsic motivation. Nevertheless, extrinsic motivation was not directly measured. Future research should empirically measure and compare a more sophisticated breakdown of different motivational systems in relation to creative and innovative performance. For example, Ryan and Deci (2000) four different types of extrinsic motivation that fall along a continuum between autonomous and controlled motivation can guide future research.

Fourth, these research results may be limited to the creativity and innovation performance of knowledge workers in a given consulting firm. Generalization issues might occur due to the purposely, non-random sampling of the survey participants as they were generated through the personal business network of one of the researchers. This method was used for reasons of accessibility and resource constraints, as it was the case in several other studies ( Choi et al., 2009 ). For future studies, however, it is recommended to apply different companies and industries. These would enable the analysis of causal inference related to the findings across various industries. Furthermore, future research should shed light on whether different ages of knowledge workers have an impact on their creative and innovative performance.

Practical Implications

The results supported the positive impact intrinsic motivation has on creativity and innovation. However, because not every employee has an inherently interesting job, employers cannot rely solely on the intrinsic motivation of their employees. In order to promote creativity and innovation in a targeted manner and to make use of this often untapped human potential, extrinsic motivators should also be considered. In particular, leaders are strongly advised to understand the needs of their employees, as well as to be familiar with the organizational targets in order to implement effective HRM practices ( Joshi, 2016 ). Thus, leaders should support the internalization of their employees’ goals with the organizational goals by fulfilling the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness ( Ryan and Deci, 2017 ). The research findings suggested that HRM practices in the form of individual praise, symbolic public recognition, and performance feedback along with intrinsic motivation foster the creative and innovative outcomes of knowledge workers. Specifically, leaders could enhance their employees’ creative and innovative performance by providing, for instance, constructive feedback or thank-you cards as well as by funding of a successful team in order to demonstrate leaders’ appreciation of their employees’ work. However, it should be noted that each company is characterized by specific values and circumstances with different perceptions and behaviors of its employees ( Malik et al., 2015 ). Country-specific and cultural differences may require local adjustments to some extent in order to achieve the intended outcomes. Most important, the reward tools have to be salient for the individuals in order to let creative and innovation actions occur. Additionally, knowledge workers need to appreciate the incentives offered and need to be aware of how rewards can be achieved. It is recommended that creative people are recognized for their creative and innovative efforts. Such an appreciation should be done even if the activity itself does not lead to an innovation of economic value ( Amabile and Pratt, 2016 ). In addition, it should be noted that providing a relational reward to one employee may be perceived as negative by another employee who does not receive a reward ( Joshi, 2016 ). Establishing an effective reward system requires time and perseverance. Overall, the aim should be to create a “win–win” situation by improving the innovative capacity of the organization in relation to the goals of the employees.

Academics are still at an early stage of understanding the relevance of environmental factors, their relationship to motivational subsystems, and their impact on creativity and innovation ( Soriano de Alencar, 2012 ; Anderson et al., 2014 ). This survey attempted to make a contribution to these research areas. Overall, these quantitative, cross-sectional research findings help to reduce the ambiguities regarding the synergistic effects of extrinsic rewards and intrinsic motivation on the creative and innovative performance of knowledge workers. The specific external motivators, relational and transactional rewards, and their effects on the relationship between intrinsic motivation and creative/innovative performance of knowledge workers were tested. By applying the SDT and the dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations, this research provides three contributions to the contradictory literature on motivation, creativity, and innovation:

First, the results confirm the widely found positive effect of intrinsic motivation on the creative/innovative performance of knowledge workers. This relationship remained significant regardless of whether other variables were added to the model. Second, the findings show that extrinsic motivators in the form of relational as well as transactional rewards can have a significant positive main effect on creative/innovative outcomes. Third, with respect to creative/innovative outputs, extrinsic motivators and intrinsic motivation are not necessarily antagonistic and are best considered simultaneously. Particularly relational rewards were found to add a positive, significant effect to intrinsic motivation on creative/innovative output. Thus, relational rewards in the form of symbolic public recognition, individual praise, and performance management can be synergistic to intrinsic motivation in terms of creativity and innovation. Transactional rewards, however, had no significant effect with intrinsic motivation on creative/innovative performance. This indicates that extrinsic motivators are not per se synergistic, nor do they have per se crowding-out effects with intrinsic motivation as well as with creative and innovative performance.

It is recommended that organizations create a “win–win” situation by enhancing organizational innovativeness and considering their employees’ needs. As every company is characterized by specific values with different employees’ perception, it is of critical importance that employers carefully analyze the needs of their employees as well as the needs of their business to create an effective reward system. This research has shown that relational rewards in particular help organizations to enhance the creative and innovative performance of their knowledge workers, which in turn strengthens companies’ competitive advantages.

Data Availability Statement

The dataset is available on request. The raw data supporting the conclusions of this manuscript will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation, to any qualified researcher.

Ethics Statement

The study was conducted according to the ethical rules of the German Psychological Society (DGP – Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychology) which is the equivalent to the APA. The main ethical principles of the DGP are: No intervention in the personal rights of the polled consultants, who did not belong to a special vulnerable group, happened. Pain, psychological stress, exhaustion, fear, or other negative effects can be excluded to be caused by this research set-up as the survey instructions emphasized that there is no right or wrong answer. Moreover, no drugs, placebos, or other substances were given to the participants. No covered participant observation and active deceptions took place while complete clarification about the research aim, procedure, and results were granted to the polled consultants. Every participant provided his/her informed consent with the first question of the survey. This question stated whether the participants wanted to fill in the full questionnaire or whether they just liked to look at the questions. Moreover, all data was anonymized. No names or initials, just four generic sociodemographic characteristics (job tenure, age, highest education level, and gender) were interrogated. Confidentiality of the polled consultants’ data was assured all the time. No incentives for participating in this voluntary survey were given. As these ethical DGP principals have been considered, no further ethical committee was consulted.

Author Contributions

Research design and survey execution were done by CF. The theoretical foundation, data evaluation, and discussion were a common work by CF and CM. CF wrote the first draft of the manuscript. The critical review was provided by CM and ES. CF and CM contributed to manuscript revision. All authors read and approved the submitted version. CM and ES have provided their written consent to the submission of the manuscript in this form. CF has assumed responsibility for keeping CM and ES informed of the progress through the editorial review process, the content of reviews, and any revision made.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We would like to show our gratitude to all participants of this survey. We are also very grateful to Dr. Goetz Walter and Dr. Stefan Diestel for their feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript which was handed in the form of a thesis. A publication within Frontiers of Psychology is in line with the policy of the International School of Management. The thesis is the only form in which the data has appeared, and it is not archived online.

Abbreviations

BPNT, basic psychological need theory; EFA, exploratory factor analysis; HRM, human resource management; IM, Intrinsic Motivation; SDT, self-determination theory; WPI, work preference inventory.

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Keywords: creativity, innovation, intrinsic motivation, synergistic extrinsic motivator, relational rewards, transactional rewards, recognition, performance feedback

Citation: Fischer C, Malycha CP and Schafmann E (2019) The Influence of Intrinsic Motivation and Synergistic Extrinsic Motivators on Creativity and Innovation. Front. Psychol. 10:137. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00137

Received: 31 July 2018; Accepted: 15 January 2019; Published: 04 February 2019.

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Copyright © 2019 Fischer, Malycha and Schafmann. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Carmen Fischer, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Intrinsic Motivation: How Internal Rewards Drive Behavior

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Amy Morin, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and international bestselling author. Her books, including "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do," have been translated into more than 40 languages. Her TEDx talk,  "The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong," is one of the most viewed talks of all time.

Illustration by Joshua Seong. © Verywell, 2018.

How Intrinsic Motivation Works

• Extrinsic Reinforcement
• Importance in Daily Life
• Influential Factors
• Potential Pitfalls

Intrinsic motivation is defined as the motivation to engage in a behavior because of the inherent satisfaction of the activity rather than the desire for a reward or specific outcome. According to "Introduction to Psychology: Gateways to Mind and Behavior With Concept Maps," intrinsic motivation occurs when we act without any obvious external rewards: "We simply enjoy an activity or see it as an opportunity to explore, learn, and actualize our potentials."

The three main elements of intrinsic motivation are autonomy, purpose, and mastery. People are intrinsically motivated when they can act independently, feel that their efforts matter, and gain satisfaction from becoming more skilled.

Intrinsic motivation can be contrasted with extrinsic motivation , which involves engaging in a behavior to earn external rewards or avoid punishment .

Is It Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation?

What are examples of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Consider for a moment your motivation for reading this article. If you are reading it because you have an interest in psychology and simply want to know more about the topic of motivation, then you are acting based upon intrinsic motivation.

If you are reading this article because you have to learn the information for a class and want to avoid getting a bad grade, then you are acting based on extrinsic motivation .

When was the last time you did something simply for the enjoyment of the activity itself? There are a number of activities that fall into this category. For instance, you may plant a garden, paint a picture, play a game, write a story, take a walk, or read a book. These may or may not produce something or provide a prize. Instead, we do them because we like to. They make us happy.

When you pursue an activity for the pure enjoyment of it, you are doing so because you are intrinsically motivated. Your motivations for engaging in the behavior arise entirely from within rather than out of a desire to gain some type of external reward, such as prizes, money, or acclaim.

Of course, that isn't to say that intrinsically motivated behaviors do not come with their own rewards. These rewards involve creating positive emotions within the individual.

Activities can generate such feelings when they give you a sense of meaning, like participating in volunteer or church events. They may also give you a sense of progress when you see that your work is accomplishing something positive, or competence when you learn something new or become more skilled at a task.

Impact of Extrinsic Reinforcement

Researchers have discovered that offering external rewards or reinforcements for an already internally rewarding activity can actually make the activity less intrinsically rewarding. This phenomenon is known as the overjustification effect .

"A person's intrinsic enjoyment of an activity provides sufficient justification for their behavior," explains author Richard A. Griggs in his book "Psychology: A Concise Introduction."

"With the addition of extrinsic reinforcement, " Griggs writes, "the person may perceive the task as overjustified and then attempt to understand their true motivation (extrinsic versus intrinsic) for engaging in the activity."

People tend to be more creative when they are intrinsically motivated.

In work settings, for instance, productivity can be increased by using extrinsic rewards such as a bonus. However, the actual quality of the work performed is influenced by intrinsic factors. If you are doing something that you find rewarding, interesting, and challenging, you are more likely to come up with novel ideas and creative solutions.

Intrinsic Motivation in Your Life

Intrinsic motivation can drive behavior in all aspects of life, particularly in education, sports, careers, and personal pursuits.

In Education

Intrinsic motivation is an important topic in education. Teachers and instructional designers strive to develop learning environments that are intrinsically rewarding. Unfortunately, many traditional paradigms suggest that most students find learning boring, so they must be extrinsically goaded into educational activities.

In a book chapter called "Making Learning Fun: A Taxonomy of Intrinsic Motivations for Learning," authors Thomas Malone and Mark Leeper suggest that this does not need to be the case. They identify several different ways to create learning environments that are intrinsically rewarding.

An activity is intrinsically motivating if "people engage in it for its own sake, rather than in order to receive some external reward or avoid some external punishment." The words fun, interesting, captivating, enjoyable, and intrinsically motivating are used interchangeably to describe such activities.

In Personal Pursuits

Examples of intrinsic motivation in daily life abound. If you participate in a sport because you enjoy it rather than to win awards or competitions, you're responding to intrinsic motivation.

Another example: You try to do your best at work because your tasks and mission provide fulfillment and satisfaction, regardless of extrinsic factors such as pay and benefits.

Perhaps you maintain a beautiful garden because you enjoy planting it and watching it grow, not because the neighbors would complain if your yard were messy. Or, maybe you dress stylishly as a way to express yourself and your interest in fashion, rather than to garner attention. Whenever you do something "just for you," you're responding to intrinsic motivation.

Factors That Influence Intrinsic Motivation

Malone and Leeper identify these factors as increasing intrinsic motivation:

• Challenge : People are more motivated when they pursue goals with personal meaning and when attaining the goal is possible but not necessarily certain. These goals may also relate to their self-esteem when performance feedback is available.
• Control : People want control over themselves and their environments and want to determine what they pursue.
• Cooperation and competition : Intrinsic motivation can be increased in situations where people gain satisfaction from helping others. It also applies to cases where they can compare their performance favorably to that of others.
• Curiosity : Internal motivation is increased when something in the physical environment grabs the individual's attention (sensory curiosity). It also occurs when something about the activity stimulates the person to want to learn more (cognitive curiosity).
• Recognition : People enjoy having their accomplishments recognized by others, which can increase internal motivation.

Potential Pitfalls Affecting Intrinsic Motivation

Experts have noted that offering unnecessary rewards can have unexpected costs. While we like to think that offering a reward will improve a person's motivation , interest, and performance, this isn't always the case.

When children are rewarded for playing with toys that they already enjoy playing with, their enjoyment of those toys, and their motivation to continue playing with them, actually decreases.

It is important to note, however, that a number of factors can influence whether intrinsic motivation is increased or decreased by external rewards. Salience or the significance of the event itself often plays a critical role.

An athlete competing in a sporting event might view the winner's prize as confirmation of competence and exceptionalism. On the other hand, some athletes might view the same prize as a sort of bribe or coercion.

The way in which the individual views the importance of different characteristics of the event impacts whether the reward will affect their intrinsic motivation for participating in that activity.

In your own life, there are probably many things you do which are prompted by intrinsic motivation. These are important elements for a well-balanced life. If we spend all of our time working to make money, we may miss out on the simple pleasures of life. Realizing your own intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and balancing them can be quite rewarding.

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

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Intrinsic motivation – interest, enjoyment, inherent satisfaction

Extrinsic motivation – instrumental motivation, noninherent motivation

Definitions

Intrinsic motivation (IM) refers to engagement in behavior that is inherently satisfying or enjoyable. IM is noninstrumental in nature, that is, intrinsically motivated action is not contingent upon any outcome separable from the behavior itself. Rather, the means and end are one and the same. For example, a child may play outdoors – running, skipping, jumping – for no other reason than because it is fun and innately satisfying.

Conversely, Extrinsic motivation (EM) refers to performance of behavior that is fundamentally contingent upon the attainment of an outcome that is separable from the action itself. In other words, EM is instrumental in nature. It is performed in order to attain some other outcome. For instance, a teenager might wash dishes at home in order to receive an allowance. Similarly, a student may study for a test i...

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Legault, L. (2016). Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1139-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1139-1

Received : 05 July 2016

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Published : 30 November 2016

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