Effortful cognitive control enhances performance but often incurs cognitive costs, leading to increased subjective negative emotions. Both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation can modulate cognitive control; however, their interplay is complex, and little is known about the underlying mechanism or subjective willingness to engage effortful control processes. The present electroencephalography (EEG) study sought to elucidate underlying mechanisms through which extrinsic and intrinsic motivation synergistically modulate effortful cognitive control during conflict processing. To this end, we employed two variants of the Stroop task (Stroop-Feedback and Stroop-Choice). Extrinsic motivation was induced by evaluative feedback and intrinsic motivation was measured using the Need for Cognition (NFC). Behavioral results showed faster RTs in evaluative compared to neutral feedback, as well as in participants with high NFC relative to low NFC. In addition, after receiving evaluative feedback, participants’ subjective willingness to engage in high-control tasks (70% incongruent trials) was linked to subjective feelings of conflict, which mediated by NFC. At the ERP level, improvements in cognitive control driven by either evaluative feedback or NFC were captured at the conflict SP level. While for feedback-related motivational significance, high-NFC participants exhibited the decreased P3 compared to low-NFC ones. Moreover, the P3, which captured the processing of previous evaluative (negative) feedback, facilitated subsequent behavioral responses in low-NFC participants selectively. These findings suggest that extrinsic and intrinsic motivation independently, rather than interactively, enhance effortful cognitive control, while jointly influencing subjective willingness to allocate effort toward control processes—a process closely linked to negative feelings during prior conflict processing.