Undermining intrinsic moral motivation: External reward and self-presentation

Ziva Kunda*, Shalom H. Schwartz

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

62 Scopus citations

Abstract

Investigated whether paying people for helping undermines an important source of intrinsic motivation to help--the internalized sense of moral obligation. Self-perception theory suggests that individuals paid to help will infer that they have engaged in this behavior for the reward and not for reasons intrinsic to helping. Previous research has failed to find an undermining of intrinsic motivation that could be traced to the perception that helping was overjustified. In the present study, it was hypothesized that people's desire to appear morally motivated may have prevented the detection of overjustification effects. A bogus pipeline procedure was used to convince Ss that their true attitudes could be tapped, so that they would refrain from socially desirable but inaccurate self-presentation. The design consisted of 2 measurement conditions--bogus pipeline and pencil-and-paper--crossed with 3 activity conditions in which the 60 undergraduate Ss recorded a text either to help a blind student for pay or with no reward or to provide material for a study of vocal intonations. As predicted, payment for help undermined the sense of moral obligation only in the bogus pipeline condition. Unpaid helpers in this condition showed enhanced intrinsic motivation. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)763-771
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of Personality and Social Psychology
Volume45
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 1983

Keywords

  • external rewards, intrinsic motivation to help, college students

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