Syntes: Deci, Koestner & Ryan (2001) — rewards and intrinsic motivation in education, reconsidered

Källa: Deci, E. L.; Koestner, R.; Ryan, R. M. (2001). Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation in Education: Reconsidered Once Again. Review of Educational Research 71(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543071001001

Verified content

• [full text] Summarises the authors' 1999 meta-analysis (128 experiments) for an education audience; Table 1 gives the main free-choice and self-report results.
• [full text] Tangible rewards undermined free-choice intrinsic motivation, d = −0.34 (k = 92; CI −0.39 to −0.28); expected tangible d = −0.36 (k = 92); unexpected 0.01 (k = 9); task-noncontingent −0.14 (k = 7, ns).
• [full text] Engagement-contingent rewards (given simply for working on the task): free choice d = −0.40 (k = 55); college students −0.21 (k = 12), children −0.43 (k = 39); "significant for both children and college students, was significantly stronger for children" (pp. 9–10). For tangible rewards overall, undermining "was significantly greater for children than for college students on both behavioral and self-report measures".
• [full text] Completion-contingent −0.44 (k = 19); performance-contingent −0.28 (k = 32), with maximal reward −0.15 and less than maximum −0.88 (k = 6).
• [full text] Verbal rewards: +0.43 for college students (k = 14), +0.11 for children (k = 7, ns).

Limits

• [assessment] Same data as Deci et al. 1999 (not an independent replication); coding of reward contingencies disputed by Cameron and colleagues; lab tasks; outcome is free-choice motivation, not learning.

Why it is in the library

Added 2026-10-30 (nightly attacks): the full-text basis for C22's "children are hit at least as hard as adults" prong, which before rested on the 1999 abstract only.

Added 2026-10-30 by the project. [full text] = read in the full text.