In the Theatre, the People Eat Sweets When the Actors are Poor’: Crowding-Out, Overjustification, Pleasure and the Anti-Delian Reading of the Nicomachean Ethics

In the following paper, I examine a psychological phenomenon called the crowding-out effect. Crowding-out sometimes occurs when a subject receives external rewards for performing an activity once executed for its intrinsic pleasure. The external rewards “crowd out” or undermine the innate pleasure the subject once experienced in engaging in the activity. The dominant explanation to account for this paradoxical and obviously deleterious psychological feeling is the overjustification thesis. In the following paper, I demonstrate there are two problems with this explanation and offer an ancient alternative. With the help of Joachim Aufderheide’s Anti-Delian reading of the Nicomachean Ethics, I disclose that Aristotle was not only well aware of this phenomenon but that his model of human flourishing predicated on practical wisdom presents us with a way to prevent subjects from experiencing the crowding-out effect. In short, my operationalization of Aufderheide’s reading of the Nicomachean Ethics provides researchers in psychology, education, and industrial management with new pathways and tools to understand and combat motivational diminishment.