If you ever felt your motivation drain away under a micromanaging boss, he gave you the language for what was happening to you. If you ever sensed that grades and gold stars were somehow diminishing the very learning they were supposed to enhance, he explained why. And in doing so, he helped liberate psychology from one of its most limiting assumptions. The Black Box of Behaviorism For much of the 20th century, the dominant paradigm in psychological research, behaviorism, treated humans as input-output machines.
Extrinsic motivation (also known as external motivation) involves using rewards such as praise, stickers, or grades to encourage effort and engagement. Such extrinsic rewards can work to boost student motivation, and extrinsic motivation has its place, but it is often not enough to maintain engagement in the long term. Too often, the "external payoff" isn't enough to sustain efforts, especially when the task seems overwhelming.
The questions you ask yourself while learning reveal not just what you don't know but how you think, what confuses you, what excites you, how you make connections, and how you construct meaning from new information. Traditionally, much of this process happened in private-a child working through a math problem in their notebook, a teenager wondering about a concept while walking to school, someone lying in bed thinking about something they heard that day.
Levels = Grades. Each year is a level. Pass to advance, fail and repeat. Quests = Academic years. Fixed-time missions with objectives to complete. Points = Marks. Harder questions yield more points. Leaderboards = Ranks. Students are compared against each other. Some schools even split leaderboards across sections of the same grade. Boss fights = Board exams. High-stakes challenges that gate access to the next stage.
In a 2021 study published in Psychological Reports, researchers explored how intrinsic motivation, the internal drive to act based on interest, personal importance or inner values, affects satisfaction in long-term romantic relationships. Using a sample of 331 adults, including many who were married for over a decade, they found that higher levels of intrinsic motivation were significantly associated with greater emotional closeness, perceived relationship support and marital satisfaction.
