Know more about motivation: The Crowding Effect

When I started school I was highly motivated to achieve the best marks. Why? Because my parents told me so and I was motivated to make my parents proud. I wasn't very interested in the topics the teachers taught me, but I always had in mind to make my parents proud. It was an extrinsic motivation that gave me the power for performing well in school.

Let's imagine the following scenario:

What if I would have liked the topics that the teachers taught me and my parents still would have been proud when I got good marks? Here we talk about an intrinsic (interest) and extrinsic motivation (recognition: as my salary) for performing well. This would be the best case, wouldn't it?

In such a situation the motivation crowding effect can appear and result in a negative overall effect. Why?

Let's take a general example of an employee and a bonus reward system:

Ideally, an overlap of motivation sources looks like this: an employee considers his work to be meaningful and conducts it with joy (intrinsic motivation). At the same time, he feels the salary is appropriate for his work and adequate for his livelihood (extrinsic motivation). At this point, however, his company introduces a bonus system that is designed to reward the personal performance of the employees. The employee now has the opportunity to earn considerably more money by reaching certain business goals than before.

What is happening now: the employee does not want to miss this bonus, and will now increasingly work to achieve the given business goals. Tasks that do not serve a specific business purpose and thus are not part of the bonus system will be considered as unfavorable work, as not explicitly rewarded. The original intrinsic motivation of the employee - the fun of the thing - is replaced by the extrinsic motivation.

Summarized:

• In the case of monotonous work, which one does not feel as meaningful or reluctantly done, the motivation can be strengthened with an external reward.

• In the case of self-motivated work, which one feels as meaningful and gladly done, the motivation by rewards increases no longer from a certain limit and can even replace the intrinsic motivation.

Take care and don't let your intrinsic motivation be replaced by something else!

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