ABSTRACT
The concept of intrinsic motivation has gradually been accepted in our language. Although references in the literature date back to the 1920s, this concept became widely known among behavioral scientists through the work of Herzberg, Mausner, and Snyderman (1959) and Deci (1975). Today, intrinsic motivation also occurs in daily language, e.g., when somebody tries to explain the basic cause of a curious, not very common, leisure-time pursuit.
