When Rewards Kill Creativity
The surprising science of intrinsic motivation—and what really drives original thinking
We reduce creativity when we try to motivate people to be more creative by offering them rewards like higher grades, stronger evaluations, or monetary bonuses. This is counter-intuitive. With almost everything that people do, rewarding them for a good job makes them do a better job. But when it comes to creativity, that common-sense assumption breaks down.
This is one of the most robust and counterintuitive findings from the research of Harvard professor Teresa Amabile, the latest guest on The Science of Creativity podcast. Amabile’s early experiments showed that when people focus on external outcomes—rewards, evaluations, competition—their creativity can actually decline. Even thinking about how your work will be judged, while you’re doing it, can shift your attention in a way that narrows your thinking.
Rewards and evaluations are external, or extrinsic, motivations. Those necessarily lead you to focus on the endpoint of the process. You focus on your final work. And you focus on the rest of the world, instead of your own creative process.
Creativity depends on something very different.
Why Intrinsic Motivation Matters
At the core of Amabile’s theory is a simple but powerful idea:
People are most creative when they are intrinsically motivated.
“Intrinsic motivation” means that you’re motivated to do something because you find pleasure, or joy, or flow, from engaging in the task. That’s not quite the same thing as doing an important or meaningful task. There are lots of jobs that are important but that you don’t enjoy while you’re doing them—let’s say, working at a tedious, boring job at a nonprofit that you believe in. You’re extrinsically motivated to save the world. Of course, that’s not a bad thing, but it’s not enough to lead you to maximum creativity. Intrinsic motivation comes to you in the midst of the task, when it’s interesting, engaging, and personally meaningful. Intrinsic motivation doesn’t necessary mean it’s fun, or that it’s easy, or even enjoyable. Creative work is often difficult, but when it’s compelling, you’re motivated to return to it. And in this mental state, you’re more likely to discover something new and surprising.
Amabile uses the analogy of a maze. If you’re focused on a reward at the end, you’ll take the most direct path. But if you’re intrinsically motivated, you’re more likely to explore—to try different paths, to tolerate dead ends, to keep going.
That exploration is where creativity comes from.
When Rewards Don’t Hurt—and May Help
So what can we do to enhance creativity? Let’s say you’re a teacher and you want to encourage creativity in your students. And now that you’ve read about this research, you think, maybe I shouldn’t tell students they’ll get an A for more creative work. But what the heck am I supposed to do? Just give everyone an A? Amabile continued her research to see, is there any way that we can make external rewards work somehow? This new research discovered a more nuanced picture. Rewards aren’t always harmful. It’s the way you structure and present the rewards.
If a reward feels controlling—do this to get that—it undermines intrinsic motivation and creativity.
But if it feels like a bonus—something extra on top of work you already care about—it doesn’t have that effect. In some cases, it can even enhance creativity.
The difference is subtle, but it points to something fundamental: creativity depends less on the presence of rewards than on how those rewards shape your relationship to the work.
A Practical Shift
Most of us work in environments filled with extrinsic motivators: deadlines, metrics, evaluations. Human resource managers are experts in incentive structures. But over time, the incentives can pull our attention away from the creative process and toward the outcome of the process. And all of the research, for example my recent interview with psychologist Aaron Kozbelt, shows that a process focus drives greater creativity.
Amabile’s research shows that a sense of progress in meaningful work is one of the strongest drivers of intrinsic motivation—and, in turn, creativity.
Increasing Intrinsic Motivation
The obvious way to increase your intrinsic motivation is to do more of the things that you love doing. The most happy people in the world, I always say, are the ones that can find a job where they get paid to do what they would do even without getting paid for it. That’s me—I love researching creativity and I love writing books. I’ll keep doing it after I retire and stop getting a salary.
For career choices, there’s the old bromide, “do what you love and the money will follow.” I’m too cynical to believe that always works, but maybe there’s a half-truth to it. And Amabile’s research shows us the mechanism whereby this works: When you’re intrinsically motivated, you do better work, and you do more creative work. That’s a good way to get promoted, right? And doing a job you hate, that’s not a good way to get promoted.
But, to be realistic, even the best jobs have crap you have to do. Even my job, which is the best job in the universe, at least 20-40 percent I am not intrinsically motivated. (I am definitely intrinsically motivated when I write these Substack posts!) There are ways you can increase your intrinsically motivating state, by restructuring the task. Try to focus on the process instead of the endpoint.
And for the other 60-80 percent of my job, where I’m very intrinsically motivated, there are definitely external rewards (book contracts, Substack followers!) which could potentially interfere with my creativity, according to Amabile’s research. Her research helps me understand how I can prevent those external rewards from interfering with the natural joy I get from doing research and writing.
If you’re responsible for increasing performance and creativity of others, for example if you’re a teacher, this research has huge implications for you. I struggle with this with my own college students. It’s extremely important for them to get A’s. If you’ve read this far, you’re committed to enhancing creativity in your students or your employees. You’re going to want to design incentives, but incentives are by definition extrinsic motivators. Learn about the research on how to “immunize” people from the detrimental effects of external rewards.
The bottom line is that creativity is about the process. It’s about the work you’re doing, the act of engagement. It’s not about the endpoint, not about the think you make. Of course, you have to get it done. If you’re a good student, you should want to get an A. But try to retain a mindset of focus on the work, of focusing on what you enjoy about the doing of the activity. Keep that focus and you will maximize your creativity.