Intrinsic Motivation, Extrinsic Rewards, and Divergent Views of Reality

The long-standing debate over whether extrinsic rewards undermine intrinsic motivation and the more recent debate regarding the costs and benefits of performance goals are central issues addressed in Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: The Search for Optimal Motivation and Performance, edited by Carol Sansone and Judith Harackiewicz. The book contains chapters from a number of the most prominent scholars in the field and is an excellent volume despite the absence of a chapter representing the behaviorist tradition. This book review contains a summary of the debates and a description of three tensions that recur throughout the book: The empirical tension, the macrovs. micro-analysis tension, and the idealism vs. realism tension. As I was reading Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: The Search for Optimal Motivation and Performance, I received a copy of Parenting magazine. On the cover were a variety of teaser headlines designed to motivate prospective readers to buy the magazine, including one that immediately caught my attention: “Never bribe your kids and 5 other rules you can break” (Parenting, September 2002). It seems that the 30-year debate developed in the academic community regarding the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation has moved beyond the walls of academia. I offer this anecdote as a segue into what I perceive as the heart of Sansone and Harackiewicz book: its underlying tensions. Its chapters, many written by the finest scholars in the field, contain a wealth of information regarding the research conducted on intrinsic motivation (and goals) over the last three decades. The book includes the precise conditions under which