A Motivating Thought

Last month in the JTFest Consulting Online Library I posted an article titled Carrots Pro’s and Con’s: A reflection on the use of incentives in youth programs. That’s why a story from the BBC out of the United Kingdom caught my attention. In doing a study on what motivates young people, they took students from two schools (Merchant Taylors’ boys’ school and St Helen’s girls’ school), divided them into two groups, and asked them to make posters about what makes them happy. One group was told that they would be paid for their posters. The other group was told that their posters would be donated to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. In other words, on group was presented with an extrinsic motivation (money), while the second group was presented with an intrinsic motivation (cheering up sick peers).

The result? While both groups produced very creative posters, the intrinsically motivated group’s posters were judged to be qualitatively better. This opinion wasn’t simply a matter of personal preference – there was a noticeable difference in the representations of happiness. For the intrinsically motivated group, happy faces, fun activities, representations of friendship, and joyful emotions were the ‘paint’ on the canvas of their posters. For the extrinsically motivated group, representations of money, wealth, and material possessions seemed to dominate.

The conclusion was that while both the intrinsic and extrinsic groups were motivated, the quality of their motivation was very different. Those who were motivated by the promise of payment did what they were asked to do. Those who were motivated by a perception that the task was worthwhile put their hearts into the project.