Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

By offering a reward, a principal signals to the agent that the task is undesirable.

When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity.

Lakhani and Wolf uncovered a range of motives, but they found that enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation, namely how creative a person feels when working on the project, is the strongest and most pervasive driver.

The essential requirement: Any extrinsic reward should be unexpected and offered only after the task is complete.

Human beings have an inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise their capacities, to explore, and to learn. But this third drive was more fragile than the other two; it needed the right environment to survive.

Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.

A sense of autonomy has a powerful effect on individual performance and attitude. According to a cluster of recent behavioral science studies, autonomous motivation promotes greater conceptual understanding, better grades, enhanced persistence at school and in sporting activities, higher productivity, less burnout, and greater levels of psychologic... See more

Autonomy, as they see it, is different from independence. It’s not the rugged, go-it-alone, rely-on-nobody individualism of the American cowboy. It means acting with choice - which means we can be both autonomous and happily interdependent with others. And while the idea of independence has national and political reverberations, autonomy appears to... See more

The problem with making an extrinsic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road.