Overjustification Effect

Children who loved drawing were offered rewards for drawing. When the rewards stopped, they stopped drawing — more completely than children who were never paid at all. The payment did not add to the love. It evicted it.

This is the overjustification effect: an activity with two reasons collapses to one, and if the external reason is removed, the activity finds itself homeless. The mind asks "why do I do this?" and accepts the most visible answer — the prize, the grade, the salary — while the quieter internal reason is forgotten.

Parents and managers deploy this daily with the best intentions: pay for grades, bonus for reading, prize for piano. Each works briefly and mortgages the long term.

So be careful what you pay for, including in yourself. Rewards are fine for tasks no one could love. But for the work you want to endure — the craft, the practice, the calling — keep the accounts clean. Let the doing be the reason. Payment can rent behaviour. Only interest can own it.