When you are given an external reward for something you already find intrinsically rewarding, your internal interest can decrease. That’s also why rewarding people with food, money, etc, to do something, might actually make them less motivated on the inside. For instance, I used to love Math as a child, but due to schools making it into a competitive zero-sum endeavor, I no longer like it as much, which is a shame.
Well, if anyone asks me why I didn’t take psychology, it’s because of the overjustification effect and also the learning drive, both of which would make me not want to do this anymore if there is a standardised examination with a set syllabus affecting my mind. Learning drive is whether I actually want to learn this and remember this until I die, not just for an exam; I already theorised that I somehow learn things better and happier when there is no external pressure. It’s more fun to discover myself, whatever I want, whenever I want.
To the outside world, they only care about the grade of examinations, so there is indeed quite a bit of a mismatch there! Intrinsic is, of course, more powerful; extrinsic is more so a means to an end rather than any special passion towards the task. Might also be one reason for demotivation from the examination systems, though humans usually are in fact quite passionate about learning, people indeed rot when they have to deal with things like “mark scheme trickery” and “forced to learn specific things in the syllabus instead of whatever their mind flows to.” However, I think the problem here is that there is little way to certify internally learnt things other than self-proclamation (which has less value in university interviews and job interviews).
"You
can do it" is meaningless, yet schools love saying that to falsely create motivation.
Because while it technically is true, it is already implied, as if
someone cannot do something like flying, nobody would demand or even
think about telling them to fly… And it doesn’t even work as
encouragement anymore due to, again, the overjustification effect, and thus
feeling a sense of being pressured by others’ expectations.
And also “I believe in you”, "Aim high”, “I trust in you” are a similar
thing, and it’s not like external opinions even matter anyways to
intrinsic motivation... but they do, psychologically,
increase stress
which would unfortunately backfire through no fault of the person
himself or herself.