http://positivesharing.com/2006/12/why-motivation-by-pizza-doesnt-work/
I found this article for my organizational psych class, so those of you are in there may have already seen this, but I feel it fits our class well also. This is a really good article about the power of intrinsic motivation compared to extrinsic motivation in various situations. The author goes one step further though by distinguishing between negative and positive motivation. Negative motivation is when you attempt to keep someone from doing something negative by reminding them of the negative consequences.
For example, in the article, the author describes how people that have heart surgeries are told if they don't start eating right and taking care of themselves than they will DIE. This is clearly the ultimate negative consequence, yet when people with heart surgeries are told this, then checked in on two years later, only 10% of the people are actually making some sort of change in their lives. Instead encouraging patients to look at the positive things in life and work towards making the most of these, they have a much better results, as about 70% of these people changed their lifestyle.
As we have all heard over and over, intrinsic motivation encourages us to seek out and accomplish difficult tasks much more effectively. Reeve (2009) says that intrinsic motivation is so great because it bring out our encourages us to be persistent, be creative, it enhances our conceptual understanding, allows us to achieve things which in turn contributes to our psychological well-being. The article posted above is a quick and interesting read, and I encourage everyone to check it out!
This information certainly seems to be relevant and applicable to a great many areas. As mentioned above, health and dietary nutrition are especially relevant in this discussion. Empirical evidence seems to indicate that more positive approaches are often necessary. Rather than just spending one's whole life on not giving in to unhealthy foods, there needs to be an emphasis on the short-term benefits of a healthy lifestyle. Habits play a very big role here as well - Growing up, children may hate the restrictions placed on them by their parents, but can wholeheartedly thank them later in their lives, when they have developed, matured, and become more competent to make decisions on their own.
One example of encouraging healthy eating is the promotion of (eating) salmon and other fish. The common strategy is not just to tell you that you will die a horrible death if you eat a box of Twinkies instead, but to tell you about the cognitive/mental benefits. It is not just about telling people what they cannot eat, but also about promoting foods that are healthy and can be made to have acceptable taste (perhaps with the help of recipes, etc.). It never ceases to amaze me how much of an effect framing can have (10% vs. 70% in this study). In some ways, this information can be very reassuring to individuals in less than ideal situations. As bad as things can be, simply taking a more positive outlook can help. This can also extend to interactions with other people - taking simple steps to present what you have to say in a nicer, more respectful tone can have a markedly different effect when dealing with certain people.
I think one of the underlying reasons for the results of this study is that people want to be working for something rather than against something. When dealing with others, we all want to feel as if we're together working for something rather than having certain people working against us. This information is potentially useful for a great many situations.
I think the author of this article overgeneralizes. It's not that the other 3 methods don't work, they just don't work as well. If you don't want to do it, but your job depends on it, that may be enough to make you do it. On the other hand, if you don't want to do it, but you get rewarded, the reward may be incentive enough. If you really love pizza, maybe motivation by pizza does work for you. Individual differences are key here I believe. The author is dead on, however, in that the best motivation is positive, intrinsic motivation. If you want to do something, you are far more likely to want to do it. The article also uses several key terms: Challenge (Being able to challenge yourself and accomplish new tasks), Control (Having choice over what you do), Cooperation (Being able to work with and help others), and Recognition (Getting meaningful, positive recognition for your work). These terms translate to terms from our text. Challenge is connected to Competence. Control is synonymous with Autonomy. Cooperation is similar to Relatedness. Recognition is synonymous with Praise.