The interest-enjoyment distinction in intrinsic motivation

Contemporary research often presupposes intrinsic motivation to be a unitary construct. Two experiments tested whether interest and enjoyment could be distinguished on the basis of differential determinants. It was hypothesized that collative motivation (Berlyne, 1963a) predicts interest ratings, while performance evaluation predicts enjoyment ratings. In both experiments, participants saw either novel, changing, and variable or monotonous, repetitive, and redundant stimulus patterns. Following their performance, participants made competence performance appraisals and rated an anagram (Experiment 1) or a puzzle (Experiment 2) task in terms of interest and enjoyment. Regression analyses were used to construct separate path analytic models for interest and enjoyment. In both experiments, collative motivation predicted interest, while perceived performance predicted enjoyment. The discussion concluded that interest and enjoyment have differential determinants and differential contributions to intrinsically motivated behavior. Interest contributes to intrinsic motivation by arousing the initiation and direction of attention and exploratory behavior, while enjoyment contributes to intrinsic motivation by sustaining the willingness to continue and persist in the activity.