Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation—Clearing the Fog (not Fogg!)

Greetings again Michael,

First, thanks again for clarifications about the blog posts from last year. It was deeply useful in clarifying very specific points of understanding for myself and others re the distinction between motivation and rewards.

I was re-reading some content to respond to a colleague and came across this blog, and the following statement.

"Many extrinsic motivations are perfectly good and noble reasons, too. For example, getting good grades can be an extrinsic motivation for reading if you don’t already love to read, because you are doing it to get good grades, not because you just love to read. And there is nothing wrong with wanting to get good grades."

It caused me some dissonance.

You see, Alfie Kohn, (with whom I assume you are familiar), and W. Edwards Deming, (guessing you may not be familiar with him), both decry the use of grading systems, or indeed traditional evaluation systems in general terms. As a teacher and Certified Quality Engineer I have always had to walk a line between a modern view (Deming) and a traditional view (classical) of grading and evaluating in school.

So, in particular, "There is nothing wrong with wanting to get good grades." seems to be presumptive. Kohn and Deming both identify numerous issues with pursuit of evaluation scores. From Kohn's side, the evaluation itself takes away from the student and the teacher's ability to focus on what 'ought' be learned. The grades, in his view, literally diminish, or even destroy, intrinsic motivation. From a slightly less dramatic position, Deming declares that any such evaluation is based on the presumption of accurate predictive outcomes based on the evaluation score. As an eminent statistician, he felt that such predictive assumptions were ludicrous, and based on pure fantasy of judgment, (reinforced, coincidentally, by Khaneman, Thinking Fast and Slow). In his own practice of teaching, at New York University, he never gave a grade other than A. A description of his reasoning can be found online.

I'm wondering if you've been presented with these ideas before, and what counter reasoning you would present to make a case in contradiction to theirs.

A perfect example of a common concept that occurs in relation to the two approaches is the issue of sub-optimization. If we evaluate individuals, they tend to work for the good of the individual. This is seen every day in schools and in work. If a course is graded on a curve, ( the worst example), the best student will work by himself, helping no one, in order to hold others back and thus maximize his own success. The same idea obviously occurs in the workplace.

Peter Scholte's quoted a Japanese CEO as saying, "We don't give our managers rewards based on objectives because we don't want to reward anyone for being lucky." Scholtes would identify other factors those pose an issue in evaluation as well.

What cost do we incur when a person achieves a badge of reasons other than individual effort, or, is prevented from receiving a badge for same? These costs are not measurable, but Deming would suggest that they still occur, and can be managed.

So in saying, "there is nothing wrong with wanting to get good grades", have you not made an assumption that 'nothing is wrong'?

Thanks so much for your previous discourse. I hope this comment is as well received. I look forward to your thoughts on this.

-Terry