Summary

Decci, Koestner and Ryan (1999) examine the effect of various kinds of rewards on behaviors that people already have some intrinsic interest in doing. They divide rewards according to the following taxonomy: 

Verbal

Tangible

    - Unexpected

    - Expected

       - Task non-contingent (reward is given no matter what)

       - Engagement contingent (reward is given if people do the task)

       - Completion contingent (reward is given if people finish the task)

       - Performance contingent (reward is given if people meet certain performance expectations)
 

 Deci et al. find that verbal rewards have a positive effect on people's motivation (providing that it is seen as informational rather than controlling) but that tangible rewards have a negative effect (unless unexpected or non-contingent). Finally they note that performance-contingent rewards have a particularly negative effect if people do not receive the maximum possible reward.

There are two explanations for this effect. Deci's CET explains these findings by noting that rewards are often double-edged swords. On one hand, being rewarded feels good because it assures people that they are living up to the standards of a community. On the other hand, being rewarded feels bad, because it undermines people's own feelings of autonomy. The alternative explanation is an attributional account. Essentially, in reward conditions people misattribute their intrinsic enjoyment of a task as caused by the reward, leading them to conclude that they are in fact not interested in the task at hand. At the time of publication, the data did not allow these two accounts to be pitted against each other.

Criticism

There are a number of ambiguities about why verbal rewards function differently than tangible rewards (e.g. the degree of expectedness, informational content etc.). The supplementary analysis on that looked at informational versus controlling verbal rewards was a useful step towards addressing this question, but it seems to me that many of the categories used to describe tangible rewards (non-contingent --> performance contingent) could also be used to classify verbal rewards. This would allow a more careful analysis of the interaction between reward type and contingency. Deci et al. only had 21 verbal reward studies to work with, so this was probably not possible at the time, but someone should follow up on this.

Application

This paper left me wondering whether feedback is best considered a verbal reward or a tangible reward, or what their model would have to say about feedback. Intuitively, feedback feels more like a verbal reward, in that it is the direct communication of performance feedback rather that an end in itself. However, it does have a certain physicality, permanence and economic implication inherent in it as well (see Friedman).

The main point of this article is that rewards can either control behavior or serve as proof of competence to the performer. The author pays particular attention to the concept of behavior control throughout the article, and for that I am thankful because frankly, I found it to be the most shocking.

The type of the reward motivates which of these two situations occurs:

• Engagement-contingent: When people are rewarded simply for working on (and/or completing) a task, the reward controls the person and therefore undermines their own motivation to do the task. In other words, if a user is promised a reward to do something they may not enjoy, they are more likely to do it because they are motivated by the reward more than their own desires.
• Task-noncontingent: When people are rewarded simply for participating in some way (without actually engaging in the task activity), the reward does NOT control behavior because there is no motivation to do the task unless one truly wants to do it.
• Performance-contingent: When people have to strive for a certain level of quality in task completion, they are even more controlled than in engagement-contingent situations, and thus will motivate people even more to do things they may not otherwise do. However, performance-contingent rewards also provide the benefit of upping one's self-assessment of competency.

In addition to rewards, the author points out "social ambience" (environment, people, mood, etc) and verbal cues that exist during task completion as being strong motivators in behavior. Platania and Moran's article on mere presence strengthens this argument: mere presence is certainly a part of social ambience that controls performance by creating an element of pressure to respond more strongly to tasks or stimuli. Further, Platania and Moran point out that people tend to respond more strongly to tasks when they expect to receive positive feedback (what Deci et al call "verbal rewards") than when they expect to receive negative feedback.

Now here's what I found most interesting-- not only can rewards change our motivations for completing a task, rewards can also change our impression of whether we were ever interested in the task in the first place. In other words, if a reward is offered for completing a task, people assume it is because the task is trivial, boring, or otherwise something they wouldn't do if left to their own devices, even if they would have actually done the task (and liked it!) prior to being offered a reward. Altogether, I have to wonder what this means for online communities. Like the Platania and Moran article, I am left to see that participants in online communities can be puppeteered to act civilly, post frequently, etc. because they are immersed in a social ambience that influences it, because they are rewarded for doing so (I must write the most excellent blog entry EVER, because then I will receive the praise and adoration of my professor and classmates, and that would be super-sweet), and because really, I'm not all that interested in participating in blogs and online discussions unless I get praise and adoration for it. Right.

So now, how can I parallel this with the geo-aware communities I am studying? Since I am studying user profiles and haven't (yet?) interviewed any members of these communities, I don't actually know for sure if they ever feel like they are motivated by rewards (in this case, rewards would be things like receiving praise for a particularly challenging cache, having a map ranked as best-of-the-best in a city, etc). I suspect they would be motivated by this fame and glory to some extent, but I doubt that they would attribute their interest solely to receiving the fame and glory. After all, we are talking about REALLY geeky people here!

Summary
The authors explore the idea that people are intrinsically motivated to perform certain activities, and that the addition of extrinsic rewards as a motivator serves to undermine the interest in completing the activity. In other words, there are times when it is not necessary or appropriate to provide a reward for completing an activity; internal motivation is sufficient to complete the task.

Psychologists are unable to sufficiently explain why this is, though. Three categories of explanations for this undermining effect are offered.

• "the effects of an event such as a reward depend on how it affects perceived self-determination and perceived competence" (628). Rewards may undermine if they make the subject feel that they are not accomplishing the task on their own.
• Whether rewards are expected affects intrinsic motivation
• The degree to which people feel "interpersonal" pressure to think or perform a task affects their intrinsic motivation (more pressure = less intrinsic motivation)
• Verbal rewards enhance intrinsic motivation
• Rewards that are given contingent on a person completing an activity work to reduce intrinsic motivation. When rewards attribute to the person signals of positive competence, they are less likely to undermine intrinsic motivation

Application
This type of study touches on some important issues for Cool Running. The community is invested in creating or sustaining motivation to run. The reward structure for a Cool Running user who runs is twofold: presumably she gets some physical benefit from running that makes her feel good, and she may post about a run and receive encouraging or supportive replies from others.

The authors advise that tangible rewards can be administered without reducing intrinsic motivation if they administered informationally rather than controllingly. Informational rewards are more likely to be given by Cool Running members to each other; these rewards demonstrate the characteristics of informational rewards as described in this article:

• authority and pressure involved with posting about running are minimized
• don't strengthen or control the behavior (ie, it's not clear that people run because they know they'll receive positive reinfocement for it in the forum)
• provide choice about how to run (less the case with structured running programs)
• emphasize interesting or challenging aspects of the tasks (ie, members often post about the ease or difficulty of the run and get comments back concerning these insights)

As has already been summarized so comprehensively by Jesse, Matt and
Nika, this article reports on the meta-analysis of 128 studies on the
effects of external rewards on intrinsic motivation, ranging over two
decades of research, from the mid 70s to the late 90s. The take away is
that, for the most part, they all seem to support the CET (cognitive
evaluation theory) viewpoint that instrinsic motivation equates to the
psychological needs for autonomy and competence, and the motivational
effects of any reward depend upon how it is perceived in light of these
two factors.

Like Matt's Cool Running community, the Becomming a
Webhead (BaW) community I am studying is centered around the delicate
enterprise of fostering motivation and mutual support. The primary
purpose of the BaW community is to collaboratively explore and learn
about online CMC and learning technologies, as a means of professional
development and professional networking with other
English-as-a-foreign-language instructors from around the world.

What strikes me about the BaW community is the almost puzzlingly high degree of intrinsic motivation participants and facilitators of the workshop seem to have. The process of 'becoming a webhead' and assisting others in becomming webheads is time- and labor-intensive, and the facilitators (to my knowledge) do not get paid for their hard work, nor do the participants earn any officially recognized credentials. The highly participatory community seems to thrive alone on good will, mutual encouragement and each participants intrinsic motivation to learn and help others to learn.

Just as this article would predict, however, I can see how this remarkably sanguine atmosphere might instantly forfeit its rich stock of social capital if certain rewards were introduced in such a way that tampered with the sense of autonomy and competence of the individual participants. For instance, were a completion-contingent system established to exclusively reward participants who finished all of the "optional" reading and project assignments, the BaW experience itself would begin to feel more compulsory than recreational, and soon after, transform the playful atmosphere into one of seriousness, competition, and possibly even provoke a sense of guilt in those that were too busy to participate during certain weeks. This kind of reward system could be something as simple as the facilitators suddenly choosing to publicly praise and communicate with only the people who are the most active participants. As everyone already esteems the facilitators so highly and jockies for the position of teacher's pet, this change could be enough to tip the scales of intrinsic motivation.

This paper gave me some hints for thinking about why there are many rites of passage and so forth in highly structured wiki, such as Wikipedia (large example) or Wiki Index (small example), and few or none in less structured wiki. Extrinsic rewards -- such as being thanked, affirmed, having your work recognized or improved -- detract (or distract) from the intrinsic motivation that contributors bring to the wiki. Much of the structure of a few strange wikis I can now recognize as trying to attract intrinsically-motivated persons and then help them hang onto their autonomy within the space.

This paper by Deci et al. aims to answer the question how does extrinsic rewards affect people’s intrinsic motivation for some activities? As Erika mentioned, Jesse, Matt, and Nika did an excellent job in summarizing the article ☺ So, I will try to apply the reward concept to 43T.

43T is a community of individuals working on their personal goals collectively. Interactions are designed so that users can get help from other users in completing their own goals. As I explained in one of my previous posts, users support each other by cheering their progress on their goals. This is the only feedback/reward mechanism that I could observe on the site. Cheer might be given even if the goal is not completed. Thus, it can be said that cheering is engagement contingent.  

But it’s important to note that the users are not there for the cheers. I think the members of 43T are highly self-motivated. Cheering is like a nice treat for them. Further, the cheer information is not displayed in user profiles. Even if they get some benefit from being socially recognized, it is not immediately visible since cheer information is attached to specific entity such as goals, entries, and comments. So, I am not sure whether it can be said that cheers are tangible rewards.

And I'll add myself to the chorus for Jesse, Matt, and Nika. 

I'm going to need to ponder it a little more, but this study might apply to the Milliways community more than at first I thought it would. In recent weeks there have been several 'meme' threads. Most of these are variations on theme of "Tell who your favorite [X] in the game is."

 Participation in these memes is usually good (most seem to reach three or more pages of responses very easily), but they also seem to provoke a lot of criticism from members who feel they are simply excuses for the more "popular" players to praise one another's roleplaying. Given that the memes are not a formal part of Milliways, I wonder if the memes are introducing, for at least some players, an unwelcome performance-contingent reward that undermines their intrinsic desire to participate in the game.

I'll need to think a bit more about this one.

This paper was honestly very confusing for me. One of the
things that I picked up was that extrinsic rewards discourage intrinsic rewards
in the topic of motivation. The rest of the paper was pretty much paragraph
after paragraph of pure test without pictures. It was very hard to get through.

I do agree with the fact that extrinsic rewards discourage
intrinsic rewards. One of the most practical examples is homework. It seems
like a lot of the readings for this class is very interesting. However, I think
of it as homework and put it off into the last minute. If this were just some
reading on the side, I probably would finish all of it on time. I think giving
out extrinsic rewards could be very dangerous as well if the qualification of
the reward is misleading. This often lead people to try and work the system.

This can be connected to Ling’s paper and Locke’s paper on
motivation. The compilation of all their studies show what rewards and
motivation techniques work in which scenarios.

When designing the online community, I will try to make the
extrinsic rewards very subtle to encourage more intrinsic motivation.