Essays on Intrinsic Motivation of Students and Workers

This thesis focuses on intrinsic motivation. In the first part of the thesis I examine the effects of motivating university students to set goals on study performance. In particular I study whether encouraging students to set a grade goal and further motivating them to set a more ambitious grade goal has an effect on their study performance. In this setting, goals are not combined with any extrinsic rewards or punishments. Hence the effects from goal setting on performance stem from students’ intrinsic motivation to achieve their goal.
The other two essays focus on workers’ motivations to help others. I focus on two prominent ways to help others:
i) by exerting effort on the job and
ii) by making contributions to charity.
I study the relation between helping others by exerting effort on the job and helping others outside the workplace by comparing equally altruistic workers’ money and time donations.