Year: 2012

In Part 1 I discussed Kohn’s argument for rewards/punishments creating self-centered individuals and how urging a focus on rewards/punishments can have unintended consequences by encouraging short-cutting the desired behavior in order to satisfy the requirements of receiving the reward or avoiding the punishment.

In Part 2 I discussed motivation and the interaction between it and rewards/punishments.

Here, in Part 3, I will go over Kohn’s suggested alternatives to rewards and punishments.

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If you have now bought in to the idea that rewards and punishments are not only ineffective but counter-productive, long term, (and even if you haven’t) then you likely want to know what Kohn suggests as an alternative.

He starts with an important question, “What is your goal?”  If your goal is to simply elicit compliance with your demands then there may not be an alternative to rewards and punishment and you probably don’t need one.  So the first question is, do you want blind obedience or internalization of principles?  Back in part 1 I asked you to consider the question of what is is you want your employee/student/child to achieve.  This is where it really matters.

When parents are asked what kind of people they want their children to become they usually respond with things along the lines of: caring, responsible, hard working, self reliant, upstanding, principled, etc.  Unfortunately, with the possible exception of “hard working,” rewards/punishments will help develop none of these qualities.

Rewards and punishments make an appeal to authority and self-interest for why we should behave certain ways.  You do this because someone in authority says so and if you don’t that person will make your life unpleasant.  You do that because someone in authority says so and if you do that person will make your life more pleasant.  It’s condescending.  But it does encourage unquestioning obedience to power.  It reinforces the idea that “might equals right.”  But we can pretty much all agree that it is a flawed sentiment.  It is not inherently correct to obey someone because they have more power than you do.

They also contribute to the idea that it’s OK to manipulate the people around you to get what you want.  Is that not exactly what is happening when a parent bribes a child to pick up their toys?  Is that not exactly what is happening when a teacher promises a class party if everyone gets an A on the test?  And is that not exactly what is happening when an employer promises bonuses to (or threatens firing) employees based on their performance?

Just think how disturbing it would be to witness a husband tell his wife, “If you have all the floors clean when I come home I’ll bring you some flowers.”  So why do we think it’s fundamentally different when we turn around and say to a child, “If you pick up all your toys I’ll give you some ice-cream.”?  It seems clear that the lesson is that manipulation is not only acceptable, but desirable.

The Alternatives

One piece of the alternative solution is to appeal to reason and empathy in our behavioral guidance (in so far as the situation permits).  “Because I said so” is one of the most useless phrases of parenting and almost universally breeds resentment.  It directly says that there isn’t any meaningful reason to take this action other than I want you to and I’m in charge so you have to do as I say.  It comes with no influencing power except the threat of punishment for non-compliance.

Instead of threats or bribes, Kohn suggests explaining the reasoning behind a request.  A calm reasoned approach to help a person understand why they should do something.  As a manager telling your employees they’ll be working late tonight is disrespectful.  Explaining to them that such-and-such needs to be done before tomorrow morning, and that you realize it’s unpleasant to stay late, is less likely to result in disgruntled resentment (though it probably still won’t make anyone happy).

Explaining to a student the utility of learning calculus is more effective (at least it was for me) than just saying it’s part of the curriculum.  This idea really resonated with me because I always found a subject more interesting if I could see useful applications of it within my life.  Understanding that calculus was invented in order to accurately describe physics made it more interesting (especially when applied to specific problems).  Doing contrived problem set after contrived problem set of multi-variable equations while in college was not interesting.

Now, I’m sure every parent is going scoff at the idea of calmly explaining to your toddler why drawing on the wall with poop is unacceptable.  But what are they learning if you punish them?  They might learn that drawing on the wall with poop is unacceptable, they might learn that they need to be more careful not to get caught, or they might learn that you’re mean and bully people around.  You don’t get to control what they learn from the punishment.  So is trying to explain really such a horrible thing?

For those wondering, yes, Alfie Kohn does have children.  He freely admits that it is hard to use his recommended approach.  It requires a lot of patience.  It is much less effort to simply bribe or threaten, but the research still stands that the long-term consequences will be negative.

“Working with” Rather than “Doing to”

One of Kohn’s themes is the idea of approaching children with an attitude of “working with” rather than “doing to.”  He suggests that at some point our relationship with our children needs to change from doing things to them to doing things with them (or working with them to solve problems).  When you have an infant you take them on a walk.  As they grow our mindset should change to going on a walk with them.  This is the fundamental shift behind the idea of working with rather than doing to.

To acknowledge that at some point the child is becoming an individual with their own ideas, emotions, and desires is to realize that doing things “to” them can be as disrespectful as doing things “to” another adult.  He suggests we can apply the three C’s to help with this process: Content, Collaboration, Choice.  And I’ll keep this brief, since we’re running quite long now.

Content

Kohn suggests we should reevaluate our requests.  Does what we’re asking make sense?  Is it reasonable?  Is there a good reason behind it or is it solely for our convenience?  Is it fair to demand compliance solely for our own convenience?

Collaboration

Kohn suggests that when a child makes a mistake we should try to work with them to find a way to make the situation right rather than punish.  Instead of bribing them to do what we want we should try to work with them to get the task done (in so far as the task permits).  With this approach a child is more likely to learn that they can come to you for help fixing something when they make a mistake instead of trying to hide from you to avoid punishment.  They can learn that you are there to help and not to bully.

Choice

This should be the opportunity for children to make real choices in their life.  This is not the idea of choices where we use the words “you chose” as a lead up to a punishment (“You chose to color on the wall, so you chose to go to your room.”).  It is also not the idea of choices where we offer a couple of acceptable options so that we get what we want no matter the “choice.”  This can even mean allowing children to make bad choices (when the results will hopefully present a learning scenario and not lead to permanent damage).

This is the process of letting children become autonomous.  In order to learn how to live their own life they need to be given the opportunity to make choices.  A lack of this opportunity sometimes manifests itself in complete disaster then the child finally leaves home to live their own life.  A sudden requirement of making choices can be disastrous to someone who hasn’t had the opportunity to do so in an environment where it is easy to recover from bad choices.

Developing a self-awareness and autonomy can help children develop and uphold ethical and moral principles.  When they’ve been taught that they can and should think for themselves they’ll be much more likely to stand up for the things they think and believe when challenged.  They’ll also be less likely to accept outside influences because they will have learned the value of their own autonomy.

Final Thoughts

Due to length I’ve ignored most of the business applications that Kohn discusses.  They’re also very interesting and Kohn dives into them fully in the book.

If you can’t tell, I found the book very interesting, but I’ve done a weak and short job of presenting Kohn’s ideas here.  If you found them intriguing I highly recommend you pick up the book and read through it yourself.  I hope to be able to apply Kohn’s suggestions in my life.  I think it represents a better way of dealing with people, including children.  I don’t want to control or manipulate my children because I hate being controlled and manipulated.  I do want to help them grow into responsible, caring, self-aware, principled adults.  And I realize it will be difficult to do so.

In Part 1 I discussed Kohn’s argument for rewards/punishments creating self-centered individuals and how urging a focus on rewards/punishments can have unintended consequences by encouraging short-cutting the desired behavior in order to satisfy the requirements of receiving the reward or avoiding the punishment.

Here, in Part 2, I will discuss motivation and the interaction between it and rewards/punishments.

And in Part 3 I’ll go over Kohn’s alternatives to rewards and punishments.

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Many people want an answer to the question, “How do I motivate my employees/students/children?”  Kohn’s response is that you don’t.  The best you can do is get demotivators out of their way and provide a nurturing, encouraging, environment.

Well, surely this isn’t right.  If I tell my kid that for every piece of paper they fold in half I’ll give them a dollar it’s almost a sure bet that I won’t be able to find an unfolded piece of paper before long.  Certainly that means the promise of payment motivated the child to fold paper, right?  And you are absolutely right.  So let’s discuss what Kohn means and how it applies.

Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Motivation

We make a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.  Intrinsic motivation is your internal desire to do something.  It stems from your own interest in the matter and the enjoyment you find in pursuing it.  Extrinsic motivation is applied from the outside–it is external to your self.  Paying someone money to do something is to give them an extrinsic motivator.  The idea is that we only do things that we are motivated to do, however that motivation may be either intrinsic or extrinsic.  And there’s a big difference between the two.

A person motivated intrinsically is much more likely to persevere at a difficult task and for much longer periods of time than someone motivated extrinsically.  Many actions undertaken because of extrinsic motivation will quickly disappear once the outside factor is removed.

What’s really interesting, however, is the interaction between the two.  Extrinsically motivated actions often disappear at the loss of the motivator, but extrinsic motivation can actually replace intrinsic motivation and getting the intrinsic motivation back is difficult.  That is to say, if a child enjoys drawing pictures and you tell them you’ll pay them for each picture they draw (and do), and then you stop paying them, the child is very likely to no longer have an interest in drawing pictures (at least for some period of time).  You have, essentially, ripped from them their intrinsic motivation, replaced it with an external motivator, and then took away the external motivator.

Think about what this means, long term, for the kinds of things to which we apply extrinsic motivators.  It is possible (though not assured) that you can destroy the joy someone finds in an activity by actively rewarding them for doing the activity.

Consequences of Extrinsic Motivators

The ability for extrinsic to replace intrinsic motivation is not the end of the problems though.  Extrinsic motivators work great on simple, mechanical tasks.  However, they fail miserably at tasks requiring creativity or complex problem solving.  In fact, not only do they fail, they result in worse performance than when no extrinsic motivator is present.  One possible explanation is that because the motivator focuses our attention on the motivator rather than the task we fail to think deeply about the task in our rush to obtain the reward or avoid the punishment.

Artistic works produced for commissions are judged to be less creative than those done without.  Students take longer trying to find the solution to creative problems when told their performance is being measured.   When performance is being measured and reported students become more interested in how they’re doing compared to their peers than how they’re doing on the task.

Extrinsic motivators also harm the relationship between the motivator and the motivatee.  It sets the two apart as one having power and the other not.  It sets up a relationship of control rather than respect.  It often leads to resentment.

And there are plenty of other problems with the use of extrinsic motivators.

Nurturing Intrinsic Motivation

I stated at the beginning that Kohn’s recommendation was to remove demotivators instead of enacting extrinsic motivators.  This is, of course, much harder than just promising rewards.  Part 3 will discuss some of the alternatives.

I’ve just finished reading Alfie Kohn’s book Punished by Rewards.  I found it very interesting.  He approaches the use of rewards (and punishments) from a general position and then specifically within business, school, and parenting.  Most of his arguments are supported with research (and when they aren’t he plainly labels them as his opinions without documented research) with references and end-notes comprising 106 pages.  I’ll also probably be drawing on things I read in Nurture Shock and Drive which cover similar topics.

I’m going to break this up into 3 posts because there’s a lot to discuss and this way you might actually read it.  This post will discuss Kohn’s points on how behaviorist approaches result in self-centeredness and the unintended consequences of reward/punishment fixation.  Part 2 will discuss the effect of rewards/punishment on motivation, and part 3 will go over Kohn’s alternatives.  My apologizes to Mr. Kohn if I misrepresent his arguments in any way.

Unlike Erin’s recent experience of an author’s insistence that a technique will always work, Kohn is much more realistic in the respect that there are very few absolutes (if any) in human behavior and you can only really talk about generalities.  However, if you’re expecting to find a list of “things to do” to get your kids to behave you won’t find it in this book.

One of Kohn’s pet-peeves (if I can call it that) is that people only want quick fixes.  He is first in line to admit that punishments and rewards are quick fixes, but they’re also temporary fixes with lasting negative consequences.  He does not offer an alternative quick fix, but instead offers a much broader approach to situations typically governed by bribes or threats to effect long-term development goals rather than immediate compliance.

While he goes into much greater depth on these subjects than I will, there were several things that stuck with me.  His discussions resonated with my experiences and I really think he makes a strong case.

I’m going to start this discussion in much the same way that Kohn does.  What do you want your employees/students/children to achieve?  What are your goals for them?  I’ll come back to these questions in part 3, but Kohn’s broad point (and the “too long; didn’t read” version of the book) is that the vast majority of stated responses to these questions are directly undermined by the use of rewards and punishments.

Rewards and Punishments

Before we dive in, lets quickly talk about what we mean by a “reward” or “punishment”.  Essentially, anything that imposes a positive emotion (reward) or a negative emotion (punishment) qualifies.  This could be imposing or removing something pleasant, or imposing or removing something unpleasant.  More explicitly, this could be inflicting physical pain, verbal scolding, verbal praising, giving toys, taking away food, giving gold star stickers, monetary bonuses, etc.

That seems like it covers pretty much everything we might do as employers/teachers/parents.  And, from Kohn’s perspective, that speaks to the pervasiveness of behaviorism.  We’ll get to the alternatives in part 3, but for now we should point out that there is a component of intention and perception.  If you intend your action to be controlling or manipulative then you will probably get some of the negative consequences.  Also, if the subject perceives the action as controlling or manipulative you are probably going to see the negative consequences we’ll be discussing.

Self-Centeredness

One of his arguments is that rewards and punishments (the classic behaviorist/Skinnerian approaches) create self-centered individuals.  Everything is governed by how it affects “me.”  I don’t steal because I’ll go to jail.  I do my homework because I’ll get a good grade.  I work hard so I’ll get a bonus.

If you ask a behaviorist to do something they are going to ask, “What’s in it for me?”.

In a strictly behaviorist approach there’s no discussion about others or a greater sense of ethics or morality.  We are taught that we don’t steal simply because we’ll go to jail and we ignore the bigger picture of how stealing affects the person we’re stealing from.  We don’t learn that we shouldn’t steal because it unfairly deprives another person of their property.

A natural consequence seems to be that if we only do things because of how it will affect us, then the moment we think we can get away from any negative effects, there’s nothing stopping us.  Why not steal if no one’s looking and it’s unlikely anyone will find out?  I won’t go to jail, there will be no negative result for me, and I’ll end up with more money.  It becomes much easier to rationalize this position if you’ve only learned to think about yourself and have never been taught to empathize with others or find greater moral/ethical reasons for your actions.

Unintended Consequences

The other side of this is that we learn to focus on the reward/punishment instead of the activity itself.  People, in general, will begin looking for ways to bypass the hard part (generally the desired behavior) and just get the reward (or avoid the punishment).  If we’re taught to focus on good grades then cheating appears as a great way to avoid the hard work of learning, but still get the reward of the good grade.  If we’re taught to focus on not going to jail then we may look for ways to avoid getting caught instead of not doing something illegal in the first place.

One of my favorite expressions of this type of reasoning was incredibly common throughout my high school and undergraduate experiences.  The teacher begins discussing a topic and after a few minutes someone’s hand goes up to ask, “Is this going to be on the test?”.  It’s such a perfect example of focusing on the reward (getting a good grade on the test) instead of the thing that actually matters (you know, actually learning something).  I saw this exact thing happen dozens of times.

Now, I’d like to pause here for a minute to give you the perspective I’m coming from.  I’m not here to argue against grades because I always did poorly and this is my way of making myself feel better by saying grades shouldn’t really matter.

Quite the contrary, I always did very well in school.  I graduated high school at the top of my class as co-salutatorian.  I went through my bachelor’s degree on a full-ride scholarship.  I’m certainly not saying this to toot my horn; I’m saying it to show that, as someone who succeeded in (and highly benefited from) the current system, I see a better way. A way which would serve everyone better and not just those of us that are adept at the specific school setting we went through.