zushi's place

A friend reminded me of Overjustification Effect (Wiki Article) recently. Despite having heard of this effect a long time ago, I'm only recently realizing that Overjustification is an elegant solution to why creatives often burn out and find it hard to find inspiration.

Namely, when the external motivation of money/fame/recognition starts playing a role in creative projects, the Overjustification Effect states that intrinsic motivation will decrease over time. If the positive feedback of money/fame/recognition is not manifested for a while, then the creative endeavor will lose both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation altogether, and the creator will find themselves running on fumes (or face the common “I've lost my passion” phenomenon).

If a creator wants to avoid this, is seems that by necessity they will need to have a sense for their currently ratio of intrinsic-to extrinsic motivation, and intentionally try to sustain the intrinsic part. Maybe some people can do it naturally, but to be host this sounds challenging, unless one has an overwhelming amount of intrinsic motivation, and that seems a bit rare in adults.

In children, however, intrinsic motivation doesn't seem like a scarce resource. I recall having almost effortless concentration, curiosity, and motivation to play with things when I was little – legos, board games, mazes, brain teasers. Those motivations had no connection to external rewards.

So even though extrinsic motivation is effective on kids, it seems that there are less sources or concerns for extrinsic motivation when one is young, so it's pretty easy to sustain a passion for something.

At some point around adolescence, extrinsic motivation seems to take over. Hobbies not only need to be interesting, but also have a “point”, and so toys and games, among with other unique hobbies, lose their luster.

This got me thinking. Perhaps our intrinsic tendency to play with things still exist as adults, but are just suppressed by an overwhelming amount of extrinsic motivation that inevitably need to come out of our hobbies. So we gradually lose the ability to indulge in things that have no “point” – unless like the artist, we also find some way to cultivate intrinsic motivation against the usual social pressures.

The challenges that the learning adult faces is not so different than that of the burned-out creative. When extrinsic motivation takes over, it becomes pretty much impossible to sustain something unless one is frequently very successful.

What causes the overjustifaction effect? I'm a bit surprised that there doesn't seem to be a good evolutionary explanation for it yet. It would be cool to hear what science has to say on the cause one day, since I think the influence of this effect on how we behave is really underrated.

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Categorized under: #psychology, #productivity