…by diminishing intrinsic motivation… performance, creativity, and even upstanding behavior topple like dominoes.
37
Drive:
If-then rewards require people to forfeit some of their autonomy… that can spring a hole in the bottom of their motivational bucket, draining an activity of its enjoyment.
38
Drive:
’When institutions… focus on the short-term and opt for controlling people’s behavior,’ they do considerable long-term damage.
39
Drive:
People use rewards expecting to gain the benefit of increasing another person’s motivation and behavior, but in so doing, they often incur the unintentional and hidden cost of undermining that person’s intrinsic motivation toward the activity.
39
Drive:
…in many instances, contingent incentives – that cornerstone of how businesses attempt to motivate employees – may be ‘a losing proposition.’
42
Drive:
Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus. That’s helpful when there’s a clear path to a solution. They help us stare ahead and race faster. But ‘if-then’ motivators are terrible for challenges…
44
Drive:
…rewards narrow people’s focus and blinker the wide view that might allow them to see new uses for old objects.
44
Drive:
…artists report feeling significantly more constrained when doing commissioned works than when doing non-commissioned works.
45
Drive:
For artists, scientists, inventors, schoolchildren, and the rest of us, intrinsic motivation – the drive to do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing – is essential for high levels of creativity.
46
Drive:
…’if-then’ motivators that are the staple of most businesses often stifle, rather than stir, creative thinking.
