Intrinsic vs extrinsic reward culture: the extra burden this places on our mental health
Academia, whether teaching or research based, is built around a group of core characteristics and values. Intrigue, exploration, learning, development, curiosity, and purpose. These underpin the very fabric of what we understand academia to be about. So why has academia developed a culture that places so much emphasis and importance on extrinsic rewards, metrics and ranking systems? The dichotomy between academia’s core values and extrinsic culture causes a real issue to those who work in the industry, and their mental health bares a lot of that burden!
“I wanted to spend as long as possible simply learning, discovering and developing the field. However big or small a role I might have in that.”
As a young, early career researcher, I was born into a world of research purely out of interest. When completing my master’s degree, I remember being so curious as to how, why, and what was happening at a molecular level in my field of research (muscle biology). After all the stuff I had learnt through my undergraduate and masters’ programmes, I was full of genuine intrigue, passion and interest in the field of study. I wanted to spend as long as possible simply learning, discovering and developing the field. However big or small a role I might have in that. So, when the opportunity to undertake a PhD doing exactly that came about, I didn’t think twice about it. It seemed, that my core values of curiosity for my work, were matched by that of the underlying values of the research and academic circuit.
Jump forward 6-7 years from this point, I have spoken to a lot of young career researchers, academics, and some senior persons within the industry as well regarding this initial period of thought. They all seem to hint at the same thing. The reason they continued onto a PhD, largely, was due to these core values.
During the next few months and years, however, I slowly became aware of a subconscious dichotomy between the core values that academia is built on, and those with which the current culture of our industry practises with. Instead of basing itself around those core values of intrigue, interest, development, learning and exploration, I noticed the use of proxy measures for success. Metrics that have been made up to gauge how ‘successful’ a person, department, institute, or University is. Further, I noticed that not only were these metrics quite prominent, but the importance of these also outweighed the importance placed on the core values of academia. So much so that I noticed that more senior persons within academia placed more energy, stress, and pressure on securing the best possible outcomes of these metrics.
Does this story sound familiar? Does it resonate?
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“I had a conflicting storm brewing in my head. It manifested itself into me working longer and longer hours, becoming more and more stressed, feeling more and more pressured. I struggled to sleep. I couldn’t focus. My physical health deteriorated quickly. And, probably most worryingly, my interest and excitement for my work began to deteriorate. The very reason I got into this line of work, and undertook my PhD in the first place, was no wavering.
”
Taking a step back it doesn’t take you long to realise that metrics litter the academic world. They are literally everywhere. We are evaluated on the number of papers we publish. The ‘impact factor’ of the journals these papers are published in. And then the citation count, the downloaded number or the ‘altmetric score’ of these published papers. The number of grants we receive. The amount of money of those grants. At a higher hierarchical level, there are research excellence framework scores, the same again for teaching. Universities are ranked, continuously, in country, European and worldwide rankings. On an individual level, we as people are given H-index scores, ResearchGate scores and even evaluated by the number of social media (usually twitter) followers we have (apparently this is called the Kardashian index?!?). This is just the very tip of the iceberg. Im sure more experienced, more senior academics will know even more metrics that are used and intwined in our industry. The academic culture has become so fixated on these metrics and evaluating systems that more and more of them are being developed to try and rank people/things/departments. The issue is that all of these evaluations, metrics, extrinsic and tangible rewards place immense pressure on every person within the academic hierarchy – and as a young naïve researcher, PhD students, ECRs bare a large brunt!
“I don’t know how we change this culture back to what academia’s core values are. But, in recognising this ‘facade’, it has helped me to think more contextually about the culture that we work in.”
So, as a young perhaps naïve researcher, I was full of enthusiasm, intrigue, excitement, and curiosity for my work. As the months and years unfolded the subconscious culture of extrinsic rewards and evaluations soon began to wash off on me. I became more and more fixated on end goals, completing tasks, finishing projects just to try and acquire/ accrue some of these extrinsic rewards. This soon took its toll. As a person who, fundamentally, was simply excited by doing research, but had now developed a tendency for a purely performance based and extrinsic reward seeking mindset, I had a conflicting storm brewing in my head. It manifested itself into me working longer and longer hours, becoming more and more stressed, feeling more and more pressured. I struggled to sleep. I couldn’t focus. My physical health deteriorated quickly. And, probably most worryingly, my interest and excitement for my work began to deteriorate. The very reason I got into this line of work, and undertook my PhD in the first place, was no wavering.
I am also not going to sit here and say that the culture of performance metrics and extrinsic rewards was the sole reason for any of this, but again, it certainly was a contributing factor. And speaking to more academics recently, they share the same thoughts. That the core values of academia, are being spoilt by this importance for extrinsic rewards, performance metrics and general ranking systems.
It has been a few years of me thinking about this dichotomy, and more recently, a few months of me trying to work out how to express my thoughts. After all this time, however, the only summary I have been able to conjure is one of pure conflict. It seems to me that an industry built on fundamental intrinsic values (learning, development, discovery, raw interest etc), has developed a culture that sits at odds with its values. We have placed a large reliance and importance on ranking systems, on evaluation frameworks and providing extrinsic/tangible rewards for those who ‘do well’.
I don’t know how we change this culture back to what academia’s core values are. But, in recognising this ‘facade’, it has helped me to think more contextually about the culture that we work in. This has in-turn allowed me to re-align my own values and become more at peace with the reason I am doing research. It has allowed me to get back to being the person who is curious at to the how, why and what.
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written by: Dr Robert Seaborne
twitter: @RobbySeaborne
edited by: Robert Seaborne
