# The Overjustification Effect: Why Rewards Killed Drawing

*Society, Psychology & Life · Daniel Foss · 2026-10-29*

## TL;DR

In a 1970s kindergarten drawing study, children who were promised a reward for drawing later showed less spontaneous interest in the activity than children who received no reward. The work helped define the overjustification effect, in which external incentives can undermine intrinsic motivation for activities people already enjoy.

## Key facts

- The study took place in a kindergarten setting in the 1970s, where young children were observed drawing during free time.
- Researchers compared children promised a reward for drawing with children who received no reward or an unexpected one.
- Children who expected a reward spent less free time drawing afterward than those who were not rewarded.
- The results became a classic illustration of the overjustification effect in psychology.
- The finding suggests that extrinsic rewards can reduce intrinsic motivation for enjoyable activities.

## The Room Where Drawing Was Just Playing

Picture a kindergarten classroom in the early 1970s. The tables are low, the crayons are worn down to stubs, and nobody has told the children what to do. During free play, a handful of them drift over to the paper on their own, sit down, and start to draw. Not because a teacher asked. Not because a sticker was waiting. They draw because the drawing itself is the fun part.

For these kids, crayons and paper were never a task. Drawing was play. It was not a goal to reach but a pleasure to sink into, the way some children lose themselves in blocks or sand. That quiet, unforced joy is the whole scene here, and it is exactly what the researchers walked in on before they changed a single thing.

The team behind the study, Mark Lepper, David Greene, and Richard Nisbett, whose findings appeared in the *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology* in 1973, were careful about who they watched. They did not grab just any child. They picked the ones who already showed a strong, spontaneous pull toward drawing during free-play periods, the kids who reached for crayons without being nudged. That mattered, because the experiment needed a baseline: intrinsic motivation at its purest, captured before any adult got involved.

So before any reward ever entered the room, there was just this. Children at tables, heads bent, crayons moving, doing the thing they loved for no reason other than that they loved it. Hold onto that picture. Everything that follows is measured against it, and that is where the **overjustification effect** starts to creep in.

## The Adult Brain Intervenes: The "Good Player" Award

Somewhere in a kindergarten in the early 1970s, the grown-ups decided they could do better than a child's own joy. The children already loved to draw. So the researchers and teachers asked themselves a reasonable-sounding question: they already enjoy it, so wouldn't a little encouragement make it even better? That single well-meaning thought is where the trouble started.

So they introduced rewards for drawing. The one the original 1973 study by Lepper, Greene, and Nisbett documented was a "good player" certificate, complete with a gold star and a ribbon. Popular retellings sometimes add medals and toys to the list, but those extras are hard to confirm. A certificate with a shiny star was apparently plenty.

And at first, it looked like a triumph. Children drew more than they had before. They sat down at the tables faster. They seemed more eager, more focused, more excited about the paper and pencils. During this reward phase the rewarded group drew more often than before, exactly the boost any teacher would want. Everyone was satisfied. The system seemed to work perfectly.

Picture the scene: little hands reaching for crayons with fresh urgency, a gold star waiting at the end. On the surface, nothing had gone wrong. The adults had found a lever and pulled it, and the children had responded. What no one could see yet was that the meaning of the drawing had quietly begun to shift, and that is the quiet setup for the overjustification effect.

## The Rewards Disappear, and the Drawing Fades

Then one morning, the rewards simply stopped. No scolding, no punishment, no explanation, just the quiet message that there would be no more certificates. What happened next is where the popular version of this story gets carried away. According to the dramatic retelling, the children put down their crayons for good. The actual 1973 findings from Lepper, Greene, and Nisbett tell a more precise story: the children who had been promised a reward now drew in their free time significantly less than they had before the prizes ever appeared. Not zero. Below where they started.

That distinction matters more than it first seems. A child who never touches a crayon again is a dramatic anecdote. A group of children sliding beneath their own baseline, backsliding past the enthusiasm they had before any adult intervened, is a measurable collapse in motivation. And it happened with the same crayons and the same paper sitting right there on the same tables. Nothing physical had changed. The only thing that shifted was what drawing now meant inside those small heads.

You can almost hear the logic clicking into place. Before the awards, drawing was play. Once the gold stars arrived, drawing became a job with a payoff. So when the payoff vanished, the job vanished with it. Some of the children, as the account goes, even shrugged and asked why they should bother. That question is the whole experiment in miniature.

This is the overjustification effect in its purest form: hand someone a tangible reward for something they already love, and you quietly rewrite their reason for doing it. The old internal reason, the simple pleasure of the thing, gets crowded out. Take the reward away and the new reason goes too, leaving less motivation than the child began with.

## What the Overjustification Effect Actually Is

The overjustification effect is the mind's quiet accounting trick: give someone a reward for something they already love, and their brain starts explaining the activity as a job done for the reward. It was first demonstrated in a kindergarten study published in 1973 by researchers Mark Lepper, David Greene and Richard Nisbett, and it shows how a small external prize can quietly dismantle a genuine internal drive.

Think about what changed in that room. The pencils were the same pencils. The paper was the same paper. Nothing about drawing itself had been taken away. But the children had been handed a new explanation for why they were sitting at that table, and that explanation was a reward. Once the reward was gone, so was the reason. The activity hadn't lost its joy on its own. The joy had been overwritten by a transaction.

Before the reward, drawing was play. After the reward, drawing was work done to earn something. When the earning stopped, the work had no purpose left.

That is the mechanism in one sentence. The overjustification effect says that explaining to people why they do something they already love can break the reason itself. An inner motivation gets replaced by an outer one, and the outer one is fragile. It vanishes the instant the payment does.

You can feel it outside a classroom too. The moment you measure a behavior with money, points or stars, you detach it from meaning. It stops being something done because it is right or because it feels good, and becomes something done because it pays. And when the pay stops, what's left is not the old love. What's left is emptiness.

None of this makes rewards evil. A good player certificate handed to a child is not a crime. The point is subtler: incentives can quietly rewrite the story a person tells themselves about their own choices, and once that story changes, it is very hard to change it back.

## Why Good Intentions Backfire: In Schools, Offices, and Beyond

The kindergarten drawing study is not really a story about crayons. It is a small, controlled window into the overjustification effect, and that same mechanism shows up wherever adults try to reward behavior they want more of. The pattern repeats: a system meant to encourage something ends up draining the very interest it was built to protect.

Start with school. When children are graded on a subject they once loved, the grade can quietly replace the joy. A kid who read for pleasure starts reading for the letter on the report card. The activity is unchanged, but its meaning shifts from play to performance, and the internal pull weakens.

Offices tell the same story. Put a bonus on a task and the work can start to feel hollow. Employees begin asking why they are doing it, and the honest answer becomes the bonus. Take the bonus away and the sense of purpose goes with it.

Then there is ethics. Price every behavior and morality itself can thin out. A good deed done for its own sake becomes a transaction, and once you attach a figure to honesty or kindness, people start calculating instead of simply acting well.

These are not three separate problems. They are one mechanism wearing three costumes. Humans are not just calculating beings. Some things lose their value the moment they are rewarded, and the overjustification effect explains why a well-meant incentive can cancel out the motivation it was supposed to boost.

The takeaway is blunt. If you try to incentivize everything, in the end no one will do anything because they truly want to.


## Frequently asked questions

**What was the kindergarten drawing experiment in the 1970s?**

In the early 1970s, researchers Mark Lepper, David Greene and Richard Nisbett ran a field experiment in a kindergarten classroom, published in 1973 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. They chose children who already drew on their own during free time, then introduced a reward for drawing. The study is the classic demonstration of what became known as the overjustification effect.

**Why did children stop drawing after being given rewards?**

The reward quietly changed what drawing meant to them. Before, they drew because it was fun. Once a certificate arrived for doing it, drawing became a job done for pay. When the reward ended, the job had no reason left behind it, so their free-time drawing dropped well below where it had started. The paper and pencils never changed. The meaning did.

**What is the overjustification effect in psychology?**

The overjustification effect is the finding that an expected external reward can undercut a person's internal drive to do something they already enjoy. Give someone a prize for an activity they love, and they start attributing the behavior to the prize rather than to their own interest. Take the prize away, and the interest has already been crowded out.

**How do external rewards reduce intrinsic motivation?**

Rewards work as a kind of explanation. When you pay, score or star a behavior, you hand the person a reason that lives outside themselves. Their mind shifts from "I do this because I like it" to "I do this because I get something." That shift is subtle, but it rewires how they see the activity, and the internal reason fades.

**Did the children continue to draw after rewards were removed?**

No, and that was the surprise. Contrary to the popular retelling, they did not stop entirely. Their free-time drawing fell significantly below the level it had reached before any reward appeared. Some reportedly asked why they should bother at all. The pencils sat untouched more often than before, which is the real damage the study recorded.

**Why do incentive systems sometimes backfire?**

Because a reward can strip an activity of its own meaning. Grade students and some stop loving the learning. Add a bonus for employees and the work can start to feel pointless without it. Put a price on every good deed and the moral pull weakens. The same mechanism runs underneath all of them.

**What does the drawing experiment teach about motivation?**

It teaches that trying to explain or reward something people already love can break the very reason they loved it. Measure a behavior with money, points or stars, and you detach it from meaning. Push incentives onto everything, and you may end up with no one who does anything simply because they want to. Editorial note: details that remain unconfirmed are presented as such and hedged accordingly.

Canonical: https://curio.madeda.com/the-overjustification-effect-why-rewards-killed-drawing/