The Effects of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivators in College Athletes

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology and Special Education

Date of Award

9-1-2026

Abstract

College athletes are faced with unique challenges as they manage to balance academics and athletics. These challenges can eventually lead to an increase in stress, anxiety, and risk of burnout. To prevent burnout, previous research has developed new ideas on ways to prolong motivation through the lens of the self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985). This theory explores how motivation exists on a spectrum, comprising both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Achieving intrinsic motivation can result in long-term engagement, resilience, and enjoyment (Paumier & Chanal, 2022). In contrast, extrinsic motivation is often associated with short-term effort, which can lead to the fear of failure and heightened anxiety (Lee et al., 2010; Yıldırım et al., 2023). There is little research that has examined these motivational types in short-term cognitive performance. Additionally, there is no research on how these changes may relate to athletes’ overall confidence levels. The current study examines how intrinsic and extrinsic motivators play a role in performance on short-term cognitive tasks. College athletes recruited from East Texas A&M University and CloudResearch completed validated measures of sports and academic motivation, anxiety, burnout, and confidence. In a mixed-design study, the participants completed a simple reaction time task, a visual search decision-making task, and a Corsi block task. Between the pre- and post-test, individuals either went through an intrinsic or extrinsic intervention. The results of this study indicated that there was no significant interaction between motivational conditions and improvements in reaction time, visual search task, and Corsi block tapping task. However, there were significant improvements in reaction time and visual search from the pre-test to the post-test. In addition, confidence and improvement in cognitive tasks were not positively correlated. These findings suggest that there is no specific motivational condition that improves cognitive performance in athletes in a short-term context. This also provides a better understanding of the relationship between the improvement in performance and levels of confidence.

Advisor

Jessica Udry

Subject Categories

Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences

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