The Debate About Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation: Protests and Accusations Do Not Alter the Results

A prevailing view in education and social psychology is that rewards decrease a person’s intrinsic motivation. However, our meta-analysis (Cameron & Pierce, 1994) of approximately 100 studies does not support this position. The only negative effect of reward occurs under a highly restricted set of conditions, circumstances that are easily avoided. These results have not been well received by those who argue that rewards produce negative effects under a wide range of conditions. Lepper, Keavney, and Drake (1996), Ryan and Deci (1996), and Kohn (1996) have suggested that the questions asked in our meta-analysis were inappropriate, that critical studies were excluded, that important negative effects were not detected, and that the techniques used in our meta-analysis were unsuitable. In this response, we show that the questions we asked are fundamental and that our meta-analytic techniques are appropriate, robust, and statistically correct. In sum, the results and conclusions of our meta-analysis are not altered by our critics’ protests and accusations.

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