Tag: books

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.

This is another post elicited from The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo.  First, a word about the book.  The first bit of the book is a walk-through of the events that occurred during the Stanford Prison Experiment.  He bases it off of the transcripts and recordings that were made and he keeps it accurate and scientific, but the transcripts of interactions between guards and prisoners is riddled with obscenities--just a word of warning to anyone planning to read it.  If that bothers you, you can just skip those chapters and move right into the discussion afterwards, but you may not fully appreciate the transformation of the participants.

This post comes from chapter 12, from a subsection entitled "Ten Lessons from the Milgram Studies: Creating Evil Traps for Good People" which begins on page 273.

Stanley Milgram ran a long series of experiments that involve participants believing that they are inducing increasingly powerful electro-shocks to another participant (a confederate acting the part of being shocked).  They do so under the guise of a memory-enhancement training program while being watched and ordered about by an official looking "scientist."  During the course of the experiment the participants must administer a shock each time the "learner" provides a wrong answer.  During the course of the experiment the confederate "learner" screams in pain, demands to be released (he's strapped down), complains about his heart hurting, and eventually stops responding (suggesting to the participant that the learner has become unconscious).

The participants almost always look to the "scientist" for guidance as things get bad, but the scientist always gives them reasons to continue with the experiment unless they simply get up and leave.  65% of participants followed the experiment all the way through the 30 levels of shocks.

Milgram ran this experiment over and over again all around the world making slight variations on the design to try and learn more about what factors contribute to participants' conformity.  It's really interesting.

I want to talk about the 10 methods of inducing compliance that are pulled from Milgram's experiments.  These techniques are used very successfully in myriad settings including: salespeople, cults, the military, governments, advertising, and others.  Each item has its own paragraph, so I'm going to summarize them briefly:

1. Create a contractual obligation (verbal or written).
2. Give participants a role to fill ("teacher" in the above).
3. Dictate a set of rules to be followed which can then be used to coerce behavior.
4. Replace potential unpleasant descriptions with positive descriptions ("shocking victims" to "helping a person learn").
5. Tell participants that someone else will take responsibility for what happens.
6. Use an initial innocuous-appearing step to elicit initial compliance.
7. Use successive steps towards the end goal, each of which seems like a negligible change from the previous step.
8. Have the authority figure slowly change from "just and reasonable" to "unjust and demanding."
9. Make it difficult and expensive (in some form, not necessarily monetary) to exit the situation, but allow verbal dissent while demanding behavioral compliance.
10. Provide some "greater good" for participants to believe in.

The last one is interesting.  Zimbardo elaborates discussing Erich Fromm's 1941 work Escape from Freedom.  In this work, Fromm discusses how throughout time the "greater good" used by dictators and tyrants in order to convince citizens to give up their freedoms is a promise of security.

I also can't help but read that list and think of how accurately it fits with how the TSA has operated since its creation.  Here's how I think the rules (except 2 and 5) easily apply to the TSA's behavior:

1. Can't fly unless you agree to be screened.
2. --
3. Laptops out, liquids in baggy, shoes off, belts off, coats off, "step over here."
4. We're not violating your civil rights, we're protecting you from terrorists!
5. --
6. Just step through the metal detector, it's quick, easy, and somewhat effective.
7. Okay, now we just need you to take your shoes off.  And your belt.  And your coat.  And remove your computer.  Oh and just put your liquids in a baggy for us.  And stand in this chemical sniffer.  Also, if you wouldn't mind, just stand here while we bounce radiation off of you to create an image of your body.
8. Any appeal to reason or logic is met with a stiff reference to the rules and to fall in line or you just might miss your flight.
9. Don't want to be part of the TSA process?  Your only option is to not travel by plane (and soon by bus or rail if the TSA gets its way).  Have a complaint? You can file it with headquarters and we'll say "thanks for your concern" and then completely ignore it and tell you to get back in line.
10. It's for your own protection.

If you're so inclined you can probably turn these around and see how they are used against the TSA agents to convince them that further abuse of passenger's civil rights is acceptable.

It's incredibly effective.  Just think of what the national reaction would have been if, when the TSA was instituted, they had rolled out the body imaging scanners and said these are now required for all flights.  People would have flipped out.  Instead it was one slow addition to the rules after another until people just accepted the new scanners.  Those that did complain were told that their comments were appreciated and then nothing changed.  Now the TSA talks about how few complaints they get about the scanners / pat-downs (only several hundred per year!) which is a useless figure because it ignores the thousands of people who will no longer fly to avoid the issue (like myself).  As of July  2011, Amtrak has had 20 consecutive months of record numbers of passengers, but surely that has nothing to do with how awful and demeaning airports have become.

I don't remember where I heard about it originally, but I've had the book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (by Philip Zimbardo) on my wishlist for a little while.  Yesterday I was able to pick it up at the library and I'm reading it now.  I have a feeling there may be several blog posts that come out of this book.

The author is the creator of the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment (wherein students were randomly assigned as prisoners or guards and during which things went terribly wrong).  So he has a long and varied history of studying human behavior.

I'm only on page 11 but he already describes something that is all too apropos:

When a power elite wants to destroy an enemy nation, it turns to propaganda experts to fashion a program of hate.  What does it take for the citizens of one society to hate the citizens of another society to the degree that they want to segregate them, torment them, even kill them?  It requires a "hostile imagination," a psychological construction embedded deeply in their minds by propaganda that transforms those others into "The Enemy."  That image is a soldier's most powerful motive, one that loads his rifle with ammunition of hate and fear.  The image of a dreaded enemy threatening one's personal well-being and the society's national security emboldens mothers and fathers to send sons to war and empowers governments to rearrange priorities to turn plowshares into swords of destruction.

It is all done with words and images.  To modify an old adage: Sticks and stones may break your bones, but names can sometimes kill you.  The process begins with creating stereotyped conceptions of the other, dehumanized perceptions of the other, the other as worthless, the other as all-powerful, the other as demonic, the other as an abstract monster, the other as a fundamental threat to our cherished values and beliefs.  With public fear notched up and the enemy threat imminent, reasonable people act irrationally, independent people act in mindless conformity, and peaceful people act as warriors.  Dramatic visual images of the enemy on posters, television, magazine covers, movies, and the Internet imprint on the recesses of the limbic system, the primitive brain, with the powerful emotions of fear and hate. [The Lucifer Effect p11 - emphasis mine]

I read that and I can't help but think of what's happened in our country since 2001.  How much blind hatred has been stirred up against an entire people because of the actions of a few?  How many ways have we willingly allowed the feelings of fear, suspicion, and vulnerability be used as reason to change our society without factual basis?

It certainly has happened and is happening against anyone with a Middle-Eastern skin tone or practicing Islam.  But it's also spilling over into the rest of our societal interactions as well.  Has this not been the exact effect we've been seeing in political debates?  It's always how the "other side" is trying to destroy everything we hold near and dear.  Political ads are designed to instill fear and anger about what the "other side" is doing.  Carefully designed to get you to react emotionally rather than intellectually.  Because an intellectual position can be discussed and reconsidered; attempting to discuss an emotional position makes you "one of them."

As a society we're being pitted against each other.  It bothers me how much outright propaganda we allow because even when you know it to be nonsense and predatory it still achieves its goal of creating a new baseline of emotion.  A new baseline of suspicion, fear, and anger.  And making those emotions normal is only going to lead to trouble.

I've been on another non-fiction kick lately. Here are the most recent books I've read:

The Man Who Lied to His Laptop - Clifford Nass:
I really enjoyed this one. Nass has spent his career studying human-computer interactions and then using computers to help him study human-human interactions. Very well written. One area he and his team researched was why everyone hates Clippy so much (that stupid paper clip in Microsoft Office that tries to help you). He also worked on a project to improve Clippy's image. He found the most effective way to get people to like Clippy was to have Clippy insult Microsoft anytime something went wrong. This put Clippy on the same side as the user instead of against the user. Users loved it, but Microsoft didn't end up using that idea. There are many other fascinating insights all backed up with extensive research.

Raving Fans - Ken Blanchard & Sheldon Bowles:
This one I didn't enjoy nearly as much. I was hoping for a similarly data-driven approach but was disappointed. Instead it's written as a matter-of-fact narrative. There are no cited studies to back up their claims. I like the ideas they present, but they simply provided no evidence that they're legit. It's about improving customer service but they never address the fact that all of their suggestions cost money and unless the better customer service brings in enough additional money to cover the costs it's not going to work. I can see it as the kind of book your stereotypical MBA would get excited over.

For Better - Tara Parker-Pope:
This book was recommended on the GeekDad Blog. I found it quite interesting. It follows my preferred model of heavily citing studies that back up the claims being made. It begins with an overview of current trends in marriage success. Namely, marriages are far more successful today than many people believe. People like to kick around "50% of marriages end in divorce," which ostensibly is still mostly true, but not nearly true for all demographics. When broken down by demographics you see that many common groups have a greatly reduced risk of divorce compared to others. The book goes over risk factors and warning signs and provides evidence-backed suggestions on changes that can improve your relationship.

One interesting point is that a lot of the troubles they cover stem from husbands and wives who expect to maintain the same life they had before marriage afterwards and when raising children. They both want to keep working full-time and going out at night and such and for a lot of people things completely fall apart when they have children and realize that they might have to adjust their lifestyles.

Another major trouble for many people is financial arguments. But the authors point out that financial arguments are rarely about finances and almost always about overall values and the financial arguments are just a symptom. You probably wouldn't be arguing about how money is spent if you both had the same goals in life.

How Risky is it, Really? - David Ropeik
I enjoyed this one too. Ropeik does a great job covering the neuroscience behind threat response. I found the discussion fascinating, though frustrating. He talks about the things that contribute to threat responses, but mainly admits defeat when people over/under-react. Ropeik suggests that once it comes down to it, someone who has over/under-reacted to a threat won't change their opinion unless they are honestly interested in adjusting their attitude to more closely match reality. Regardless, it still provided interesting insight into why Americans are still afraid of nuclear power despite the long safety history and other improvements compared to other fuel sources (and many other society-wide issues). He also provides some guidelines of steps you can take to better understand a threat to prevent yourself from over/under-reacting.

NurtureShock - Po Bronson & Ashely Merryman
This is probably my favorite out of this bunch of books. I also found it via the GeekDad Blog. It discusses a whole slew of aspects of the current understanding of child development. With 62 pages of citations at the end of the book, it's well documented and based on empirical studies. I definitely recommend it for anyone interested in the subject matter. I'll just go over a couple of the most interesting things.

One of the most interesting things was the studies of the effect of praise on children's motivation. It basically boils down to the idea that children who are unconditionally praised for being smart (or other inherent qualities) have their internal motivation destroyed. Because when they fail at a task it must be because they weren't smart enough (or other inherent quality). However, children who are praised on their effort and work ethic are far more likely to continue working on difficult (even impossible) tasks. They believe that their lack of success is due to a lack of effort rather than inherent failings which they can't control. This discussion all occurs in the context of the self-esteem society that was so popular in the 90's. An entire generation of children being told unconditionally how special and great they were, basically resulting in an entire generation of adults who don't like working on things that are hard. I guess growing up with a bunch of siblings who made sure you never thought too much of yourself has some benefits.

Another chapter that I found really interesting was about teenage sleep patterns. So, melatonin buildup is a big factor in what makes us feel sleepy. When it gets dark outside melatonin begins building up in our brains and we get sleepy. However, for teenagers, the melatonin buildup doesn't start until 90 minutes after it begins for adults and children. Meaning, chemically speaking, teenagers aren't tired until 90 minutes after adults. This is a major factor in why teenagers stay up later at night. The flip side is that the melatonin production continues later in the morning and is a factor in teenagers feeling sleepy in the mornings more than adults.

Here's where it gets more interesting. Several school districts in the country have used this information to guide their school start times. They've pushed back the high school start times by 90 minutes and the results were incredible. Truancy rates dropped, grades went up, SAT scores went up, the number of fights dropped, and aggressive behavior dropped. Basically, everything got better and has remained at those elevated rates ever since the start time change. Yet, most school districts still haven't adopted these changes.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested.

The Smart Swarm - Peter Miller
I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as I could have, but it still had a bunch of interesting things in it. The author makes a couple of dubious conclusions in some places, but overall it's a great discussion. I learned about how ants cooperate, how bees find new hives, how termites build their complicated mounds, why starling flocks and schools of fish move the ways they do. Those were all really interesting. The other aspect of the book is applying those studies to human behavior, computer/robot designs, and other places where large complex systems interact. It's interesting to read about how scientists and engineers have used these studies to improve telephone networks, industrial chemical production systems, delivery systems, traffic flow, and other complex problems.