The Overjustification Effect in Full Effect
Have you ever completed community service hours just to bolster an application or to fulfill membership requirements for an organization?
Numerous extracurricular activities – such as National Honors Society (NHS) – sport hefty community service requirements as a criterion for membership. While these organizations are built on values of leadership, excellence, and community engagement, students tend to focus more on meeting the hourly volunteer requirements than actually choosing service projects that excite them and align with their personal interests. As a result, when thinking about community service activities, students attribute much of their motivation for volunteering to the extrinsic label of an NHS membership versus a more intrinsic, genuine interest in volunteer work. In social psychology, this is known as the overjustification effect – when we tend to overestimate the amount of extrinsic motivation associated with our behavior. The overjustification effect is more likely to occur with activities associated with task-contingent rewards, or rewards that depend on mere completion of the task. On the other hand, it is less likely to occur with performance-contingent rewards, or rewards that depend on the quality of completion of the task.
The National Honors Society service requirement is set up with a task-contingent reward system, with the reward being NHS membership for completion of “x” amount of volunteer hours. However, with this knowledge about the overjustification effect and its functions, I would argue to the NHS Board for the reconsideration of the current system. Rather than earning membership through an hourly requirement, NHS members should be evaluated based on the quality of their service work. Moreover, allowing students to choose their own community service projects that align with their personal interests would provide more intrinsic motivation to engage in the projects to begin with. This is important, because the overjustification effect can lead to decreased enjoyment of the activity as a result of the association with extrinsic rather than intrinsic motivations; I’m sure the last thing National Honors Society wants is to dissuade students from volunteer work! This is an excellent example of how social psychological concepts can help us to understand human tendency and the way it impacts our thoughts and behaviors. This knowledge has larger implications for society, and in this case, has the potential to build a system in which students learn to support their communities in more effective and fulfilling ways.
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