Paying kids to draw made them draw less for fun

In a classic experiment, children who already loved drawing were split into groups: some got an expected reward for drawing, some got an unexpected reward, and some got none. Only the group promised a reward beforehand later spent less free time drawing on their own — turning a pleasure into a job quietly killed the pleasure.

— Mark R. Lepper, David Greene & Richard E. Nisbett, Undermining Children's Intrinsic Interest with Extrinsic Reward: A Test of the 'Overjustification' Hypothesis — Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1973

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