Below you’ll find my MA dissertation.
This one has been a long time coming! The central question is: Can extrinsic rewards be used to induce intrinsic motivation for virtuous behaviour? I first wrote about this controversial question in the final essay of my PGCE in 2022, and then in the first, second, third, and fifth essays of my MA. At last, I actually put the idea to the test in the classroom!
To recap, intrinsic motivation is considered essential for character development: Aristotle himself wrote that an act is virtuous only if it is chosen for its own sake. While extrinsic rewards have been shown to undermine intrinsic motivation, this result only applies to those who are already intrinsically motivated. What about those who are initially unmotivated? Could the promise of rewards be used to lure them into developing intrinsic motivation for virtuous behaviour? Indeed, if extrinsic rewards can prompt an outward motivational shift in those who start off intrinsically motivated, then perhaps an internally satisfying activity (a virtuous activity) could prompt an inward motivational shift in those who start off extrinsically motivated.
To test this idea, I recruited 22 students who were extrinsically motivated to engage in a journaling activity at lunchtime once a week for six weeks. 10 did gratitude journaling (the virtuous activity), while the other 12 did generic journaling (the control activity). I measured intrinsic motivation using self-report questionnaires at three timepoints, before comparing results between groups. The hypothesis was that students doing gratitude journaling would become significantly more intrinsically motivated than those doing generic journaling. That’s what I was looking for…
But it wasn’t what I found. The only significant finding was an increase in perceived choice (one aspect of intrinsic motivation) across both groups: whether doing gratitude or generic journaling, students came to feel more autonomous over the course of the intervention. There are several possible explanations: despite being intially extrinscially motivated, students may have come to feel more autonomous as the activites became part of their weekly routines; and perhaps no group difference was detected because the sample size was too small, or because the activities were too similar.
What does this mean for character education? Can extrinsic rewards play a role, or not? We must be careful here. But the results tentatively suggest that rewards might help establish routines and habits, and that once habits are in place, they can be experienced as more autonomous. Educators just need to ensure that they are cultivating the right habits!