The Importance of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation for Measuring IQ

Lex Borghans, Huub Meijers and Bas ter Weel

No 7182, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This research provides an economic model of the way people behave during an IQ test. We distinguish a technology that describes how time investment improves performance from preferences that determine how much time people invest in each question. We disentangle these two elements empirically using data from a laboratory experiment. The main findings is that both intrinsic (questions that people like to work on) and extrinsic motivation (incentive payments) increase time investments and as a result performance. The presence of incentive payments seems to be more important than the size of the reward. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation turn out to be complements.

Keywords: cognitive test scores; incentives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J20 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2013-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published - published in: Economics of Education Review, 2013, 34 (1), 17-28

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7182.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The importance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for measuring IQ (2013)
Working Paper: The importance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for measuring IQ (2013)
Working Paper: The importance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for measuring IQ (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7182

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().