What is the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation?

Intrinsic motivation comes from the activity itself: it is interesting, satisfying or meaningful to do. Extrinsic motivation comes from a consequence outside the activity: money, praise, status or avoiding trouble. The same task can be done for either reason.

Does extrinsic reward reduce intrinsic motivation?

Often, yes. The overjustification effect, studied since the 1970s, shows that attaching an expected tangible reward to an activity people already enjoyed tends to reduce their interest once the reward is withdrawn. Unexpected rewards and verbal praise show much less of this effect.

Is recognition intrinsic or extrinsic motivation?

Extrinsic, strictly, since it comes from another person. In practice specific verbal recognition behaves differently from tangible rewards: it tends to support intrinsic motivation, because it confirms competence and meaning rather than replacing them with a payment.

Recognition glossary

Intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation

Intrinsic motivation is the drive to do something because the activity itself is satisfying; extrinsic motivation is the drive to do it for a separate outcome such as pay, praise or avoiding a penalty. Recognition can feed either, depending on how it is given.

The distinction is a century old and still the most useful lens for deciding what to attach to a thank you.

The distinction

Intrinsic motivation is doing something because the doing is its own reward: the problem is interesting, the craft is satisfying or the work matters to you. Extrinsic motivation is doing something for what follows: pay, a bonus, praise, a promotion, or not being told off. The behaviour can look identical from outside. The difference is in what happens when the external reason is removed.

The terms come from mid-twentieth-century psychology, and the research that made them matter for management came later. In the 1970s, Edward Deci and Mark Lepper, separately, ran experiments in which people who enjoyed an activity were paid or rewarded for doing it, and then the reward was withdrawn. Their interest fell below where it had started. The effect was named overjustification: the reward had supplied a reason, and the original reason had been crowded out.

What it means for recognition

Recognition is, strictly, extrinsic. It comes from another person. And yet the same research finds that verbal recognition behaves differently from tangible rewards. Praise for a specific piece of work tends to increase intrinsic motivation, apparently because it confirms two things the person needed confirmed: that they are competent, and that the work mattered. A payment confirms neither; it confirms that the work had a price.

This is the mechanism behind a pattern that appears throughout this glossary. Monetary recognition attached to frequent, ordinary good work tends to turn the work into a transaction, and the work stops when the transactions do. Specific non-monetary recognition attached to the same work tends to make people want to do more of it. The 65% of employees who say they prefer non-cash incentives are, in effect, reporting the effect from the inside.

The conditions that matter

The research is more specific than “money bad, praise good,” and the details are useful.

Expected rewards do the damage; unexpected ones do much less. A bounty announced in advance reframes the work as paid. A spot bonus after the fact, for work nobody knew would be rewarded, does not.

Controlling rewards undermine; informational ones support. A reward that says “do this and you get that” is experienced as control. Recognition that says “this is what you did and here is why it mattered” is experienced as information, and information about one’s own competence is precisely what sustains intrinsic interest.

Task-contingent rewards are worse than quality-contingent ones. Paying for doing the task at all is the most undermining pattern. Recognising the quality of how it was done is much less so, and is close to what good recognition is.

In practice

The practical rule is short. Keep frequent recognition specific and free of anything with a price on it, so that it works as information about competence. Reserve tangible rewards for the rare and the unexpected, where the overjustification risk is lowest. And never attach an announced reward to work people were already doing because they cared about it, because that is the one reliable way to make them stop.

What it looks like

Intrinsic: an engineer spends a weekend rewriting a slow test suite because the slowness annoyed her, and because making it fast was satisfying. Nobody asked and nothing was promised.
Extrinsic: the same engineer does the same rewrite because the team offers £200 for anyone who halves the build time. The work is identical; the reason is not.
Undermined: after a year of £200 build-time bounties, the bounties stop. So do the rewrites, including the ones that would have happened anyway before the bounties began.

Questions people ask

What is the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation?: Intrinsic motivation comes from the activity itself: it is interesting, satisfying or meaningful to do. Extrinsic motivation comes from a consequence outside the activity: money, praise, status or avoiding trouble. The same task can be done for either reason.
Does extrinsic reward reduce intrinsic motivation?: Often, yes. The overjustification effect, studied since the 1970s, shows that attaching an expected tangible reward to an activity people already enjoyed tends to reduce their interest once the reward is withdrawn. Unexpected rewards and verbal praise show much less of this effect.
Is recognition intrinsic or extrinsic motivation?: Extrinsic, strictly, since it comes from another person. In practice specific verbal recognition behaves differently from tangible rewards: it tends to support intrinsic motivation, because it confirms competence and meaning rather than replacing them with a payment.