"Inner" and "outer" motivation relates to all of us. When a person is intrinsically motivated to do some activity, he does it because he lihes what he is doing. The activity itself is its own reward. When we are extrinsically motivated to do something, we do it becausF. it leads to an external reward, such as money, praise from someone, or even the avoidance of some experience we wish to avoid.
What can, and often does, happen to a person who starts out in some task because he is basically intrinsically motivated and then receives outside rewards? Studies in both laboratory and in real-life situations show that once subjects begin to receive money for doing an interesting activity, their intrinsic motivation to perform the activity tends to decrease. In theory, the "control" of the motivation can be made to shift from within to the external reward. But in another way, when intrinsically motivated behavior becomes dependent on external controls, it may be difficult to come back to "inner" motivation. The artist may come to depend on money for continuing to paint; the mechanic may find that winning the stock car race comes to mean more than the pleasure he gets from doing a fine tuning job on the engine. Of course, we sometimes find those activities that bring us both motivational satisfactions. Let us take a more extended look at theories of motivation useful to us in thinking about the many "whys" of behavior.
