Because I Love It.

This is all I could think about while I was reading the section of Chapter 3 about the overjustification effect. The overjustification effect can be defined as a decrease in intrinsic motivation when an activity has become associated with a reward. In other words, when the activity that you do out of pure joy and satisfaction now precedes a reward of some kind, then you begin to lose interest in performing the task because you used to work for the reward and now it just comes easily (Kassin, Fein, and Markus, 2008).

I have been working for the past eleven months on the Large Act concert and FINALLY, we will be able to announce it tomorrow. You have no idea how much effort and emotion we have all given to this event. Our emotions have ranged from extremely sad to terrified to stressed and to ECSTATIC. The happiness that we are all feeling right now because we are preparing to share our hard work with other people is so thrilling. We are concerned with how the campus will respond to the artist we have chosen, but we decided that this is the best choice and time. Because of the work I have done with UPC and Large Act, I have decided to pursue this as a career path. What terrifies me the most is if I will begin to no longer be intrinsically motivated to work as hard on concerts and entertainment public relations. I really love what I do with these things and if the overjustification effect takes over I don't know what I will go into. I think a paycheck would be nice, but I don't want it to turn into an extrinsic motivation.

It's part of the reason I want to go to New York. I want to be in that environment. Fast paced, stressed, and working on music promotion all the time. I am so happy when I am working on it and do not mind doing anything for the success of the event. This is such a big deal that we have a newspaper coming to cover the ping pong drop tomorrow. How awesome is that? If I lose my intrinsic motivation to do this, then I will have lost all the passion I have for work. These emotions that I feel correspond with Shachter's two-factor theory of emotion. The two-factor theory of emotion states that the experience of emotion depends on two factors: physiological arousal and the person's cognitive interpretation of that arousal (Kass, Fein, and Markus, 2008). My heart races and there's a definite increase in galvanic skin response. I smile a lot. When we went downstairs for lunch today I was telling everyone I know and jumping around the entire commons. I don't think anyone has ever seen me that hyper. I perceived this reaction to not only be overcome with excitement and a sense of accomplishment, but that I truly know what I'm doing and that I love doing it. There really isn't a doubt to how much it makes me happy. When I'm doing something right with this, like when I get feedback about the work I am doing, it boosts my confidence and helps me believe in my ability to successfully execute a plan.

Kassin, S., Fein, S., & Markus, H. R. (2008). Self Perceptions of Motivation. In Social Psychology (7th ed., pp. 59-60). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.