old man. After a week, however, the man told them that he could not afford to pay each
of them the two euros that they had been given previously. In fact, all he could manage
was fifty cents each. This disappointed the boys a little but they continued to torment the
man. Another week elapsed and this time, the old man reduced the reward to twenty cents
each. Again, this was very frustrating to the boys who had grown used to receiving a
larger reward. Eventually, the old man reduced the reward to two cents each—at which
time, the leader of the boys grew very angry. Shouting at the old man, he said, “We’Ve
had enough of your meanness. If you think that we’re going to play football for your
entertainment outside your house for two cents, then you’ve got another think coming!
We’re off!” Clearly, the moral of this tale is that when the old man removed extrinsic
motivation for the football, the boys lost interest in doing what they had done previously
for nothing.
Critical thinking questions
Do you think that this story has any relevance for understanding why highly paid sports
performers sometimes lose their motivation? From your knowledge of other areas of
psychology (e.g., behaviour modification), can you think of any other explanation of the
boys’ loss of motivation? Can cognitive evaluation theory (see text for description) offer
any insights into what happened in this story?
As you can see from Box 2.2, if people who are performing an activity for the sheer fun
of it are given external rewards, their level of intrinsic motivation may decrease (Deci,
1971). Interestingly, there is evidence that athletes who engage in sporting activity to
receive a trophy tend to show a subsequent decrease in intrinsic motivation as measured
by self-report scales (Vallerand and Rousseau, 2001). In an effort to explain this
somewhat surprising finding, cognitive evaluation theory (Deci and Ryan, 1991)
suggested that the way in which rewards are perceived must be considered. Briefly, this
theory assumes that rewards can fulfil one of two functions: “controlling” (i.e., those
which influence behaviour) or “informational” (i.e., those which provide feedback about
the performer’s level of performance on a given task). Depending on how athletes
perceive rewards, their intrinsic motivation may be either enhanced or reduced. For
example, if they believe that their sporting behaviour is controlled by external rewards,
their level of intrinsic motivation may decline. On the other hand, if rewards are
perceived as merely providing feedback, then intrinsic motivation will probably increase.
According to cognitive evaluation theory, controlling rewards tend to impair intrinsic
motivation whereas informational rewards may strengthen it. Before we conclude this
section, it is important to consider the relationship between praise (which we can define
as communicating a positive evaluation of another person’s performance or attributes to
him/her) and motivation. It has long been assumed that praise enhances children’s
motivation. But is this really true? In a recent critique of this claim, Henderlong and
Lepper (2002) argued that when praise is perceived as being sincere, it is beneficial to
motivation as long as it conveys attainable standards and expectations and encourages
people to make “attributions” (see later in chapter) to controllable causes. Interestingly,
praise may inadvertently undermine children’s motivation—perhaps because it
encourages invidious social comparison processes.
Motivation and goal-setting in sport 39