• Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

People Have Both Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivations for Doing What They Do

December 23, 2014 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

People have Both Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivations for Doing What They Do

Motivation is derived from incentives or disincentives that encourage a person to engage in an activity or behave a specific way. These actions are governed by two types of motivation, which is founded either externally or internally, through extrinsic or intrinsic motivation.

A healthy blend of both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation is conducive to success.

Extrinsic Motivation

Extrinsic motivation is the desire to perform a behavior in an effort to receive external rewards or avoid any threatened punishment.

In extrinsic motivation, a person’s primary driving force stems from rewards—a salary raise, bonuses, fame, and recognition—or from constraints, such as punishment or job loss. Thus, averting penalty or retribution, as well as earning such external rewards as recognition, money, or praise contribute to extrinsic motivation.

Examples of Extrinsic Motivation

  • A child tidies up her room to avoid being chastised by her parents.
  • After arriving late to work, a bank employee is told he must exercise punctuality and be prepared to serve customers at the proper time or risk losing his job.
  • A benefactor donates a sum of money large enough for his alma mater to rename its business school in his honor, for which he receives greater recognition and fame.

Intrinsic Motivation

In sharp contrast to extrinsic motivation, its intrinsic complement involves the desire to perform a task for its own sake.

In intrinsic motivation, the foremost reasoning behind a person’s actions includes his or her involvement in or commitment to work, or even the expected satisfaction with the work’s results. Intrinsic motivation reflects the desire to do something because it is pleasant or fulfilling, regardless of any additional benefits.

More specifically, behavior that is intrinsically motivated comes from within an individual. (Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” is an intuitive and potentially convenient theory of human motivation.) That is, the person possesses determination or is naturally interested in a particular activity. An intrinsically motivated person does not require any external rewards or punishments in order to act. Often, the behavior or effort is a reward in itself.

Examples of Intrinsic Motivation

  • A career counselor refuses to help a well-heeled client embellish her resume and practice interview answers that exaggerate her previous accomplishments because the career counselor feels that deceiving his client’s potential employer is ethically wrong.
  • A teenager continues training himself to run long distance so he can compete “against himself” in marathons. He aims to improve his time, not win awards or become a professional athlete.
  • A volunteer offers her services just because “virtue is its own reward,” with no hope of recognition nor desire to avoid punishment.
  • An anonymous donor bestows a large sum of money to a charity because he believes in its cause.
  • A housewife starts a neighborhood bakery because she loves baking and cooking. Though she intends to build a profitable business, she seeks just enough money to compensate for her time and basic costs. Her main motivation lies in a passion for baking, in creating a business she can be proud of, and in serving her community.
  • A lawyer, coming from a low-income family herself, works pro bono to help the less fortunate since she understands their struggles.
  • Though it may prove inapplicable to his own industry, a software engineer learns a new programming language because of the fulfillment he gets from working with numbers and applying logic.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Related

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Easy Ways to Boost Your Focus & Break That Awful Multitasking Habit
  2. This New Year, Forget Resolutions, Set Intentions Instead
  3. How to Turn Your Fears into Fuel
  4. How to … Nap at Work without Sleeping
  5. What Your Messy Desk Says About You

Filed Under: Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Motivation

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Popular Now

Anxiety Assertiveness Attitudes Balance Biases Books Coaching Conflict Conversations Creativity Critical Thinking Decision-Making Discipline Emotions Entrepreneurs Etiquette Feedback Getting Along Getting Things Done Goals Great Manager Leadership Leadership Lessons Likeability Mental Models Mentoring Mindfulness Motivation Networking Parables Performance Management Persuasion Philosophy Problem Solving Procrastination Relationships Simple Living Social Skills Stress Thinking Tools Thought Process Time Management Winning on the Job Wisdom Worry

About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

Get Updates

Signup for emails

Subscribe via RSS

Contact Nagesh Belludi

RECOMMENDED BOOK:
The Power of a Positive No

The Power of a Positive No: William Ury

Harvard's negotiation professor William Ury details a simple, yet effective three-step technique for saying 'No' decisively and successfully, without destroying relationships.

Explore

  • Announcements
  • Belief and Spirituality
  • Business Stories
  • Career Development
  • Effective Communication
  • Great Personalities
  • Health and Well-being
  • Ideas and Insights
  • Inspirational Quotations
  • Leadership
  • Leadership Reading
  • Leading Teams
  • Living the Good Life
  • Managing Business Functions
  • Managing People
  • MBA in a Nutshell
  • Mental Models
  • News Analysis
  • Personal Finance
  • Podcasts
  • Project Management
  • Proverbs & Maxims
  • Sharpening Your Skills
  • The Great Innovators
  • Uncategorized

Recently,

  • Knowing When to Give Up: Establish ‘Kill Criteria’
  • Inspirational Quotations #990
  • To Live a Life of Contentment
  • What You Most Fear Doing is What You Most Need to Do
  • Manage Your Own Career—No One Else Will
  • Be Open to Being Wrong
  • Things Will Look Up Soon

Unless otherwise stated in the individual document, the works above are © Nagesh Belludi under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. You may quote, copy and share them freely, as long as you link back to RightAttitudes.com, don't make money with them, and don't modify the content. Enjoy!

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.