Extrinsic motivation in education or learning is defined as behaviour encouraged by external rewards. These rewards can be tangible or intangible (money, grades, fame, praise, etc.). This type of motivation arises purely from outside rewards or punishments. For example, a teacher gives extra credit to the student for bringing new things into the classroom, School Analytics. Certain people only do best when extrinsic motivation is used. Such people rely on the outer world more than themselves to stay focused, motivated, and determined.

Extrinsically motivated people will keep on performing tasks that they might not be into or which are not rewarding. For instance, an individual does certain tasks at their job that they don’t find interesting or enjoyable just to get paid. In extrinsic motivation, operant conditioning is exercised when someone or something is conditioned to act in a certain manner due to a reward or consequence.

Some examples of extrinsic motivation include doing schoolwork to earn a good grade, working hard on a task to receive recognition or praise, competing to get a trophy or prize, doing tasks to get paid, etc. However, one should be careful that external rewards can include negative outcomes or avoiding punishments. Like, a person might behave in a way to avoid being assessed for a fine.

How to Use Extrinsic Motivation

That depends totally on the situation to determine if extrinsic motivation can be helpful or not. Such specific situations can be-

·   When people lack skills

·   When people have low or zero interest in the activity

·   When short-term motivation is needed to get the task done

·   When small incentives can boost the motivation to get long-term objectives done