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1.1 root 1: STUDIES FIND REWARD OFTEN NO MOTIVATOR
2:
3: Creativity and intrinsic interest diminish if task is done for gain
4:
5: By Alfie Kohn
6: Special to the Boston Globe
7: [reprinted with permission of the author
8: from the Monday 19 January 1987 Boston Globe]
9:
10: In the laboratory, rats get Rice Krispies. In the classroom the top
11: students get A's, and in the factory or office the best workers get
12: raises. It's an article of faith for most of us that rewards promote
13: better performance.
14:
15: But a growing body of research suggests that this law is not nearly as
16: ironclad as was once thought. Psychologists have been finding that
17: rewards can lower performance levels, especially when the performance
18: involves creativity.
19:
20: A related series of studies shows that intrinsic interest in a task -
21: the sense that something is worth doing for its own sake - typically
22: declines when someone is rewarded for doing it.
23:
24: If a reward - money, awards, praise, or winning a contest - comes to
25: be seen as the reason one is engaging in an activity, that activity
26: will be viewed as less enjoyable in its own right.
27:
28: With the exception of some behaviorists who doubt the very existence
29: of intrinsic motivation, these conclusions are now widely accepted
30: among psychologists. Taken together, they suggest we may unwittingly
31: be squelching interest and discouraging innovation among workers,
32: students and artists.
33:
34: The recognition that rewards can have counter-productive effects is
35: based on a variety of studies, which have come up with such findings
36: as these: Young children who are rewarded for drawing are less likely
37: to draw on their own that are children who draw just for the fun of
38: it. Teenagers offered rewards for playing word games enjoy the games
39: less and do not do as well as those who play with no rewards.
40: Employees who are praised for meeting a manager's expectations suffer
41: a drop in motivation.
42:
43: Much of the research on creativity and motivation has been performed
44: by Theresa Amabile, associate professor of psychology at Brandeis
45: University. In a paper published early last year on her most recent
46: study, she reported on experiments involving elementary school and
47: college students. Both groups were asked to make "silly" collages.
48: The young children were also asked to invent stories.
49:
50: The least-creative projects, as rated by several teachers, were done
51: by those students who had contracted for rewards. "It may be that
52: commissioned work will, in general, be less creative than work that is
53: done out of pure interest," Amabile said.
54:
55: In 1985, Amabile asked 72 creative writers at Brandeis and at Boston
56: University to write poetry. Some students then were given a list of
57: extrinsic (external) reasons for writing, such as impressing teachers,
58: making money and getting into graduate school, and were asked to think
59: about their own writing with respect to these reasons. Others were
60: given a list of intrinsic reasons: the enjoyment of playing with
61: words, satisfaction from self-expression, and so forth. A third group
62: was not given any list. All were then asked to do more writing.
63:
64: The results were clear. Students given the extrinsic reasons not only
65: wrote less creatively than the others, as judged by 12 independent
66: poets, but the quality of their work dropped significantly. Rewards,
67: Amabile says, have this destructive effect primarily with creative
68: tasks, including higher-level problem-solving. "The more complex the
69: activity, the more it's hurt by extrinsic reward," she said.
70:
71: But other research shows that artists are by no means the only ones
72: affected.
73:
74: In one study, girls in the fifth and sixth grades tutored younger
75: children much less effectively if they were promised free movie
76: tickets for teaching well. The study, by James Gabarino, now
77: president of Chicago's Erikson Institute for Advanced Studies in Child
78: Development, showed that tutors working for the reward took longer to
79: communicate ideas, got frustrated more easily, and did a poorer job in
80: the end than those who were not rewarded.
81:
82: Such findings call into question the widespread belief that money is
83: an effective and even necessary way to motivate people. They also
84: challenge the behaviorist assumption that any activity is more likely
85: to occur if it is rewarded. Amabile says her research "definitely
86: refutes the notion that creativity can be operantly conditioned."
87:
88: But Kenneth McGraw, associate professor of psychology at the
89: University of Mississippi, cautions that this does not mean
90: behaviorism itself has been invalidated. "The basic principles of
91: reinforcement and rewards certainly work, but in a restricted context"
92: - restricted, that is, to tasks that are not especially interesting.
93:
94: Researchers offer several explanations for their surprising findings
95: about rewards and performance.
96:
97: First, rewards encourage people to focus narrowly on a task, to do it
98: as quickly as possible and to take few risks. "If they feel that
99: 'this is something I hve to get through to get the prize,' the're
100: going to be less creative," Amabile said.
101:
102: Second, people come to see themselves as being controlled by the
103: reward. They feel less autonomous, and this may interfere with
104: performance. "To the extent one's experience of being
105: self-determined is limited," said Richard Ryan, associate psychology
106: professor at the University of Rochester, "one's creativity will be
107: reduced as well."
108:
109: Finally, extrinsic rewards can erode intrinsic interest. People who
110: see themselves as working for money, approval or competitive success
111: find their tasks less pleasurable, and therefore do not do them as
112: well.
113:
114: The last explanation reflects 15 years of work by Ryan's mentor at the
115: University of Rochester, Edward Deci. In 1971, Deci showed that
116: "money may work to buy off one's intrinsic motivation for an activity"
117: on a long-term basis. Ten years later, Deci and his colleagues
118: demonstrated that trying to best others has the same effect. Students
119: who competed to solve a puzzle quickly were less likely than those who
120: were not competing to keep working at it once the experiment was over.
121:
122: Control plays role
123:
124: There is general agreement, however, that not all rewards have the
125: same effect. Offering a flat fee for participating in an experiment -
126: similar to an hourly wage in the workplace - usually does not reduce
127: intrinsic motivation. It is only when the rewards are based on
128: performing a given task or doing a good job at it - analogous to
129: piece-rate payment and bonuses, respectively - that the problem
130: develops.
131:
132: The key, then, lies in how a reward is experienced. If we come to
133: view ourselves as working to get something, we will no longer find
134: that activity worth doing in its own right.
135:
136: There is an old joke that nicely illustrates the principle. An
137: elderly man, harassed by the taunts of neighborhood children, finally
138: devises a scheme. He offered to pay each child a dollar if they would
139: all return Tuesday and yell their insults again. They did so eagerly
140: and received the money, but he told them he could only pay 25 cents on
141: Wednesday. When they returned, insulted him again and collected their
142: quarters, he informed them that Thursday's rate would be just a penny.
143: "Forget it," they said - and never taunted him again.
144:
145: Means to and end
146:
147: In a 1982 study, Stanford psychologist Mark L. Lepper showed that any
148: task, no matter how enjoyable it once seemed, would be devalued if it
149: were presented as a means rather than an end. He told a group of
150: preschoolers they could not engage in one activity they liked until
151: they first took part in another. Although they had enjoyed both
152: activities equally, the children came to dislike the task that was a
153: prerequisite for the other.
154:
155: It should not be surprising that when verbal feedback is experienced
156: as controlling, the effect on motivation can be similar to that of
157: payment. In a study of corporate employees, Ryan found that those who
158: were told, "Good, you're doing as you /should/" were "significantly
159: less intrinsically motivated than those who received feedback
160: informationally."
161:
162: There's a difference, Ryan says, between saying, "I'm giving you this
163: reward because I recognize the value of your work" and "You're getting
164: this reward because you've lived up to my standards."
165:
166: A different but related set of problems exists in the case of
167: creativity. Artists must make a living, of course, but Amabile
168: emphasizes that "the negative impact on creativity of working for
169: rewards can be minimized" by playing down the significance of these
170: rewards and trying not to use them in a controlling way. Creative
171: work, the research suggests, cannot be forced, but only allowed to
172: happen.
173:
174: /Alfie Kohn, a Cambridge, MA writer, is the author of "No Contest: The
175: Case Against Competition," recently published by Houghton Mifflin Co.,
176: Boston, MA. ISBN 0-395-39387-6. /
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