Intrinsic Motivation at Work, 2nd Edition

5How the Intrinsic Rewards Work-and Their Effects

This chapter will help you reexamine some old half-truths about motivation, give you a basic understanding of how the intrinsic rewards work, and provide you with some research findings on the widespread benefits of those rewards in the workplace.

Let’s start with some common, but misleading, assumptions about motivation.

If you are like me, the notion that you are energized or de-energized by your work fits your experience—it rings true at a gut level. When I first heard this idea, however, I remember that it had a flavor of New Age mysticism. (Is it psychic energy? I wondered.) I now realize that the idea seemed strange to me because it did not fit the rational-economic model that had long ...