W. David Pierce

W. David Pierce (1945–2020) was a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Alberta. His work addressed behavior analysis and learning, including questions about how rewards relate to people’s interest in a task. He coauthored Rewards and Intrinsic Motivation: Resolving the Controversy with Judy Cameron and was also an author of Behavior Analysis and Learning: A Biobehavioral Approach.

Pierce, Cameron and Katherine M. Banko coauthored a 2001 meta-analysis that examined claims that external rewards generally undermine intrinsic motivation. Their findings distinguished among tasks and reward arrangements instead of treating incentives as uniformly beneficial or harmful. The article also acknowledged a competing meta-analysis with different conclusions. This work cautions against blanket claims about rewards, while leaving open the separate question of how a particular organization’s incentives interact with its leadership decisions and norms.