Why do Alpha School rewards not undermine intrinsic motivation?

First, is the premise even accurate? Do Alpha graduates have intrinsic motivation for formal academics? Unclear.. they may just prefer the real world projects / life skills afternoons and see formal academic learning as something to “get through” in their 2 hours. Hard to say.

Separately, is intrinsic motivation for formal academics valuable? Lmao. I suppose it’s more intrinsic motivation for broadly learning that’s useful..

But the core question here is that If you already like doing something, receiving external rewards decreases intrinsic motivation. Why does Alpha not seem to suffer from this, assuming the premise is true?

My hypothesis is that it is because they are very personalized rewards chosen by guides who know the kids well and the rewards are based on competence/mastery. Plus there is no comparison to others because each child is going at their own pace (less sure about this given).

Another way to say this – if extrinsic rewards are given to you by someone who you love and you know they love you & want the best for you. It’s believable to me that that doesn’t undermine motivation (or at least not nearly as much). Is this tested in the literature or is it all lab studies by random third party researchers? I don’t recall seeing this when I previously looked into it

Why might this make sense?

Ultimately all rewards in biology are “intrinsic.” Even if someone puts a gun to your head to make you do something, the motivation for doing that thing is internal – you don’t want to die. The “reward” is not dying, and the motivation for that is intrinsic.

If ultimate motivation is always intrinsic, the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation in the psych literature comes down to who is seen as initiating the action and presumably your model of them. If it’s someone who you trust, love, who loves you, wants the best for you, etc, it seems plausible that despite it being “extrinsic” it can be seen as much closer to “intrinsic” motivation. Versus if it’s some amorphous researcher, faceless institution, “society,” etc, it seems plausible that it’s further from you.

Speculation: could even go so far as to say that the former loved person is experienced as more “you” than the latter person you don’t have a relationship with.

Site note: this is probably the main avenue through which mentors/teachers are able to push people’s ambitions & motivation up?