You may have heard of the Asch effect or the Stroop effect or the Mozart effect. Psychology has ‘discovered’ many such effects — in fact Wikipedia lists over 100 of them. Here’s one you may not have heard of: the over-justification effect. Like many ‘effects’, this one is counterintuitive. If you are offered a reward for completing a task you regularly do (such as doing the washing up or doing your homework) this reduces your motivation to do the task. The external reward destroys your internal (intrinsic) motivation.
One early study that demonstrated this was conducted by Edward Deci et al. (1971). Participants reported to a lab on three separate days and were asked to solve puzzles. A control group received no rewards on any of the three days whereas the experimental group was rewarded on day 2 but not the first and last days. On each day participants had a break and the researchers noted how they spent the spare time during the break. The experimental group spent significantly more time than the control group playing the puzzle during their break on day 2 but less on day 3.
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