The undermining effect revisited: The salience of everyday verbal rewards and self‐determined motivation

• Date: 01 April 2016
• Published date: 01 April 2016
• Author: Neil Conway,Rebecca Hewett
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2051

The undermining effect revisited: The salience of

everyday verbal rewards and self-determined

motivation

REBECCA HEWETT

1

*AND NEIL CONWAY

2

1

University of Greenwich, London, U.K.

2

Royal Holloway, University of London, London, U.K.

Summary Self-determination theory suggests that some rewards can undermine autonomous motivation and related pos-

itive outcomes. Key to this undermining is the extent to which rewards are perceived as salient in a given sit-

uation; when this is the case, individuals tend to attribute their behavior to the incentive, and the intrinsic

value of the task is undermined. The role of salience has yet to be explicitly tested with respect to work mo-

tivation; we know little about whether undermining occurs in relation to verbal rewards, which characterize

everyday work. We examine this in a field-based quantitative diary study of 58 employees reporting 287 crit-

ical incidents of motivated behavior. When considering simple direct effects, the undermining effect was not

supported; highly salient verbal rewards associated positively with introjected and external motivation, but at

no cost to autonomous motivation. However, moderator analysis found support for the undermining effect for

complex tasks; highly salient verbal rewards associated positively with external motivation while associating

negatively with intrinsic and identified motivation. The findings suggest that verbal reward salience is an im-

portant characteristic of verbal reward perceptions and that salient verbal rewards are not advisable for more

complex tasks but can have a valuable motivational impact for simple tasks. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley &

Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: self-determination theory; task complexity; undermining effect; verbal rewards; diary study

Introduction

The relationship between rewards and motivation has long been a point of heated debate (Fall & Roussel, 2014). In

particular, there have been mixed findings in relation to the impact of reward on more autonomous types of motiva-

tion (particularly intrinsic motivation) (Lepper & Greene, 1979). Self-determination theory (SDT) proposes that some

rewards can undermine autonomous motivation—referred to as the undermining effect—and are therefore associated

with less positive outcomes (Deci & Ryan, 1985). This is because extrinsic rewards can be experienced as controlling,

particularly when they are contingent upon achieving a certain level of performance (Ryan, Mims, & Koestner, 1983),

and therefore thwart the satisfaction of individuals’natural psychological need for autonomy (Deci, 1971). However,

research on the undermining effect has largely focused on tangible, financial rewards (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan,

1999a). While these are clearly an essential component of workplace incentive structures, short-term performance in-

centives in everyday work are also likely to be characterized by verbal rewards. Verbal rewards are social recognition

or praise, which can be in oral or written form (Bareket-Bojmel, Hochman, & Ariely, 2014).

Meta-analytic evidence suggests that while verbal rewards have been found, on the whole, to have a more positive

impact on autonomous motivation than tangible rewards, the impact of verbal rewards on motivation is dependent

on the nature of the reward (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 2001). We make the distinction between feedback, which

*Correspondence to: Rebecca Hewett, Business School, University of Greenwich, Old Royal Naval College, 30 Park Row, London SE10 9LS,

U.K. E-mail: R.L.Hewett@greenwich.ac.uk

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 27 May 2014

Revised 20 July 2015, Accepted 27 July 2015

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 436–455 (2016)

Published online 2 September 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2051

Research Article

provides information about one’s progress towards goals (and tends to relate positively to autonomous motivation),

and verbal rewards, which can have a significant controlling effect when they are administered in a controlling way

(Ryan et al., 1983). Verbal rewards can, therefore, undermine autonomous motivation (Deci et al., 2001). One of the

particular characteristics about rewards that theoretically define this motivational impact is whether the reward is sa-

lient while the task is being performed (Ross, 1975). Key characteristics of salience include the extent to which the

reward is expected (Lepper & Greene, 1979) or conspicuous (Eisenberger & Selbst, 1994) while the task is being

performed. More salient rewards emphasize the contingency of the reward, and when greater contingency exists,

the undermining effect is expected to occur (Deci et al., 2001). Despite the centrality of perceived salience to the

undermining effect, it is rarely measured explicitly and is rather inferred as a theoretical explanation for why extrin-

sic rewards predict reduced intrinsic motivation (Lepper, Henderlong, & Gingras, 1999). We know little about the

impact of the salience of everyday verbal rewards on motivation.

This paper therefore contributes to work motivation research and more specifically to a better understanding of the

undermining effect proposed by SDT in relation to verbal rewards by, firstly, explicitly testing the role of perceived

salience. Despite it being recognized as an important concept within psychological research (Taylor & Fiske, 1978),

there appears to be no previous field-based research examining the role of the perceived salience of incentives on

individuals’motivation attributions.

Secondly,while periodic financial rewardsare clearly important in the workenvironment, performance-related incen-

tives typically varyinfrequently, perhaps only annually, unlessthe workplace operates piece-rate or commission-based

pay (Rynes, Gerhart, & Parks, 2005). Instead, verbal rewards (e.g., gratitude spoken or by e-mail) fluctuate on a daily

basis, are a vital part of everyday management rewards, and are consistent with motivation definitions that see

motivation as highly dynamic (Lord, Diefendorff, Schmidt, & Hall, 2010). Despite the fact that verbal rewards are an

integral part of working life (Bareket-Bojmel et al., 2014), we know little about their impact on motivation.

Finally, reward research is dominated by studies that focus on simple, algorithmic tasks (Gerhart & Fang, 2014)

and the extent to which task complexity moderates the motivational impact of rewards has therefore been neglected

(Gagné & Forest, 2008). This is important because relatively simple tasks are less likely to be autonomously moti-

vated (because they have less inherent interest or perceived importance), meaning that the so-called undermining ef-

fect will be less relevant (Deci et al., 1999a). There are also questions about whether research based on simple tasks

is generalizable to more complex jobs (Gerhart & Fang, 2014), which are a characteristic of knowledge work. This

research therefore aims to build our understanding of the motivational impact of everyday verbal rewards by exam-

ining the relationship between individuals’perceived reward salience and their motivation attributions, as well as the

moderating role of task complexity.

Self-determination Theory and the Motivation Types

Central to SDT are four different types of motivation, which vary in the extent to which they are experienced as

more autonomous or more controlled (Chemolli & Gagné, 2014; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Gagné & Deci, 2005). The

first type, intrinsic motivation, is driven by a person developing an interest and therefore enjoyment in the task itself

(e.g., I enjoy analyzing data) and is characterized by an internal perceived locus of causality (PLOC; deC harms,

1968). Intrinsic motivation is seen as autonomous in that individuals experience volition in performing intrinsically

motivating activities. The second type of autonomous motivation is identified motivation. Individuals who are mo-

tivated because they identify with the importance or personal value of the task (e.g., I analyze data because my re-

search is important) also experience a sense of volition and internal PLOC for their behavior (Koestner & Losier,

2002). The third type is introjected motivation, where self-worth is contingent upon performance of the task but

the value of the task has not been accepted as one’s own (Deci et al., 1994). This is therefore characterized by a sense

of internal pressure to seek approval or to avoid feelings of guilt (e.g., I have to analyze these data to be a good re-

searcher) so is internalized into the sense of self but is not autonomous (Chemolli & Gagné, 2014). Finally, behavior

VERBAL REWARD SALIENCE AND MOTIVATION 437

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 436–455 (2016)

DOI: 10.1002/job