The Trouble with Carrots and Sticks Whittney Smith

The Trouble with Carrots and Sticks Whittney Smith, Ed. D.

Five problems with rewards 1. Rewards punish 2. Rewards rupture relationships 3. Rewards ignore reasons 4. Rewards discourage risk-taking 5. Cutting the interest rate

#1 Rewards Punish • “Rewards and punishments are not opposites at all; they are two sides of the same coin. . . and it is a coin that does not buy very much. ”

Positive and Negative Reinforcement • “Do this and you’ll get that” • “Do this or here’s what will happen to you” • If reward recipients feel controlled, it is likely that the experience will assume a punitive quality over time

Effects • “some students do not get the rewards they were hoping to get, and the effect of this is, in practice, indistinguishable from punishment”

#2 Rewards Rupture Relationships • Imbalance of power is created • “I want to see what you can do, not what your neighbor can do” • rewards are not conducive to developing and maintaining positive relationships

Artificial Scarcity • “The student who scores highest on each Friday’s quiz will wear the ‘Genius’ badge and enjoy the privileges that go with it” 1. How will you view your classmates? 2. How inclined will you be to help someone with an assignment? 3. How easy will it be for a sense of community to be built?

“Race to the Top” • Competition creates anxiety that interferes with performance • Only those you think they can win are excited; others are discouraged • people tend to attribute results of contests to factors beyond their control (e. g. innate ability or luck)

Collective Reward or Punishment • “whether or not people are offered a direct incentive to wish each other ill, the very fact that they have been led to see themselves as working or learning in order to get something means that they are not very likely to feel well disposed toward others and to put their heads together. ”

Behavioral Manipulation • “both rewards and punishments induce a behavior pattern whereby we try to impress and curry favor with the person who hands them out”

#3 Rewards Ignore Reasons • rewards usually come out when something is going wrong • rewards do not require any attention to the reasons that the trouble developed in the first place • Reasons may require multiple solutions. . . rewards are a quick fix.

The Repeat Offender • Let’s say that a student repeatedly comes late to class or daydreams. Such behavior may signal that the student has given up on the subject matter due to struggling on assignments, or lack of study skills, or how the teacher presents the material. . .

#4 Rewards Discourage Risk-taking • “when we are working for a reward, we do exactly what is necessary to get it and no more” • Rubrics?

Creativity? Innovation? • “when we are rewarded for what we are doing, we are less likely to be flexible and innovative in the way we solve problems even very different problems - that come along later” (Barry Schwartz). • reinforcement encourages repetition of what worked in the past because the goal is another reinforcer. . . not innovation

Pizza Party! • Consider a program that offers pizza to children for reading a certain number of books. If you were a participant in this program. . . 1. What sort of books would you choose? 2. What would be the effect on your reading skills and attitude toward books? Is this how we want to increase reading, and have children care about it? ? ?

#5 Cutting the Interest Rate • Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Motivation • rewards and punishments undermine the intrinsic motivation that promotes optimal performance

Another Carrot. . . • promising a reward for an activity declares that the activity is not worth doing for its own sake • “If you finish your math homework, you may watch an hour of TV” teaches the child to think of math as something that is not fun.

Other factors that cut interest • Feeling threatened • Watched • Expecting to be evaluated • Forced to work under a deadline • Ordered around • Competing against others

The Ten Pound Hershey Bar • “As rewards continue to co-opt intrinsic motivation and preclude intrinsic satisfaction, the extrinsic needs. . . become stronger in themselves. Thus, people develop stronger extrinsic needs as substitutes for more basic, unsatisfied needs. . . They end up behaving as if they were addicted to extrinsic rewards. ”