When interaction effects are examined, findings show that verbal praise produces an increase in intrinsic motivation.

Source

Paper related to this workshop and moc-persuasion.

Reinforcement, Reward, and Intrinsic Motivation: A Meta-Analysis

Judy Cameron and W. David Pierce

The following content (reaction paper) was generated by an LLM.

What is the summary of the paper?

The paper presents a meta-analysis examining the impact of rewards on intrinsic motivation. It includes a systematic review of studies, coding of relevant information such as authors, publication details, sample populations, and experimental designs, and employs meta-analytic procedures to estimate average effect sizes and assess the homogeneity of the studies. The paper also discusses how the results relate to existing theories on the negative effects of rewards on intrinsic motivation.

What is the research question? (How) was it answered?

The research question is: Overall, what is the effect of reward on intrinsic motivation? It was answered by conducting a meta-analysis of group design experiments, comparing subjects who received tangible and/or extrinsic verbal rewards to a nonrewarded control group, to determine the overall effects of reward on intrinsic motivation. Separate analyses were also conducted for different measures of intrinsic motivation to avoid the “apples-and-oranges” problem of comparing studies with different dependent variable measures.

What research approach did the authors choose? Is it appropriate for achieving the chosen research objective?

The authors chose a meta-analytic research approach, as indicated by their collection and coding of relevant articles, extraction of general information from each report, and separate analyses for different measures of intrinsic motivation. This approach is appropriate for achieving the research objective of synthesizing findings across multiple studies to understand the overall effect of reward on intrinsic motivation. It allows for the comparison of results from different studies while controlling for the “apples-and-oranges problem” by analyzing the effects of rewards on intrinsic motivation across consistent measures.

What are the key findings of the article? What are the implications?

The key findings of the article suggest that the negative effects of rewards on intrinsic motivation are more limited and specific than often stated in general literature. The implications are that the terms used to describe rewards (such as tangible, expected, unexpected, contingent, and noncontingent) can be confusing, leading to misunderstandings about the overall effects of rewards and reinforcement on motivation. The article calls for more precise language and understanding when discussing the impact of rewards on intrinsic motivation.

What are the limitations of the article? How might future work build on this article?

I don’t know the answer.

@article{cameron_reinforcement_1994,
	title = {Reinforcement, Reward, and Intrinsic Motivation: A Meta-Analysis},
	volume = {64},
	issn = {0034-6543},
	url = {https://www.jstor.org/stable/1170677},
	doi = {10.2307/1170677},
	shorttitle = {Reinforcement, Reward, and Intrinsic Motivation},
	abstract = {This article reviews research on the effects of reinforcement/reward on intrinsic motivation. The main meta-analysis included 96 experimental studies that used between-groups designs to compare rewarded subjects to nonrewarded controls on four measures of intrinsic motivation. Results indicate that, overall, reward does not decrease intrinsic motivation. When interaction effects are examined, findings show that verbal praise produces an increase in intrinsic motivation. The only negative effect appears when expected tangible rewards are given to individuals simply for doing a task. Under this condition, there is a minimal negative effect on intrinsic motivation as measured by time spent on task following the removal of reward. A second analysis was conducted on five studies that used within-subject designs to evaluate the effects of reinforcement on intrinsic motivation; results suggest that reinforcement does not harm an individual's intrinsic motivation.},
	pages = {363--423},
	number = {3},
	journaltitle = {Review of Educational Research},
	author = {Cameron, Judy and Pierce, W. David},
	urldate = {2024-01-09},
	date = {1994},
	note = {Publisher: [Sage Publications, Inc., American Educational Research Association]},
}