Dr. Kentaro Fujita

they appear at odds with current practices and intuitions that we might have.

And the best example I can think of is being paid for your job.

So being paid for your job is an extrinsic reward for something that you may or may not be intrinsically interested in.

And so the big question is, if you love your job and then I pay you to do the job that you love, does the love that you have for that job go down?

Now, I don't think this is that perplexing if you understand what was actually going on in those Stanford studies.

So they were children.

So again, the children intrinsically enjoyed playing with markers.

And then all of a sudden, in one condition, they would say, OK, now I want you to play with these markers.

And if you play with these markers, I will give you a reward.

A second condition, they said, surprise, you just play with the markers, but we're going to also give you a reward.

And then the third condition, there was no reward, right?

And where you saw intrinsic motivation go down is when the child knew before they got to play with the markers the second time that they were going to get the reward.

So they knew they were playing with the markers to get the reward.

It's unclear to me whether that same confusion would happen with adults.

So if I know I love this job and now you're paying me a lot of money to do this job that I love—

Is it possible that I will get confused and start to think, oh, I'm actually doing it because I'm getting paid?

Yes, and I think we can think of people who have had that experience.

But you can also imagine that as adults, I know what I love.

And I'm not even paying attention to how much money I'm being paid, even though I'm being paid.

What matters here is the confusion.