Case Study

External Contingency Effects

Let’s further explore some contingency effects using another example. In this scenario, students in an after-school art class are allowed to freely engage in a variety of artistic pursuits, including drawing, sculpting, and painting, for any duration of time they choose. Many of the students prefer painting, and voluntarily spend several hours each week practicing. The students also enjoy giving their paintings to family members and friends as gifts.

Engagement and Completion

After a few months in the art class, the art instructor decides that too few students are learning to paint. She informs her students they may no longer choose their artistic mediums or subjects. Instead, they must paint, and they must only paint her favorite subject, apples. Further, reward points will now be given based on how much time students spend painting apples (an engagement contingency) and whether they have completed a particular number of paintings (a completion contingency).

Performance and Competition

A few weeks later, the art instructor observes that although the students are now spending more time painting, their pictures are still not very good. So, the art instructor distributes a handout with a picture of a painted apple. The instructor informs the students that additional reward points will be given to those whose painted apples most resemble the example shown in the handout (a performance contingency) and a special prize will be given to the student who paints the highest number of apples correctly (competitive contingency). 

Autonomy-Support and Mastery

During the first week with the revised contingencies, the art instructor noticed an improvement in many of the students’ engagement and performance. In the month that followed, however, both soon declined, as did students’ attendance in the after-school art class. 

Instead of creating an increasingly controlled environment by pairing these various contingencies with a behavior some students were already intrinsically motivated to perform, imagine the instructor again allowed her students to choose any medium or subject, modeled the appropriate techniques for particular mediums, and provided encouragement and detailed feedback about students’ mastery. 

These examples of extrinsic contingencies are not meant to imply that standards, deadlines, and competition are always bad. As stated before, the effects of these conditions largely depend on individuals’ perceptions of the social contexts in which they occur, particularly whether the conditions are supporting or hindering one’s basic psychological needs. 

For instance, rewards that are expected, tangible, salient (meaning very noticeable), and potent (meaning powerful or coercive) are all more likely to be perceived as controlling, and, therefore, undermine intrinsic motivation, while unexpected small rewards or praise are more likely to be perceived as informational in nature because they convey a sense of competence, understanding, or effectiveness without feeling controlling (Ryan & Deci, 2018, p. 131). This is especially true in the context of an autonomy-supportive environment that emphasizes choice, rationales, caring relationships, and rich feedback. Even just a positive verbal reinforcer from a teacher, such as praising a student’s correct answer or acknowledging the effort to successfully complete a task, is a simple way to communicate mastery and support motivation without seeming coercive or implying conditional approval based on compliance with a teacher’s demands.