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1 STUDIES FIND REWARD OFTEN NO MOTIVATOR
3 Creativity and intrinsic interest diminish if task is done for gain
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]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
71 But other research shows that artists are by no means the only ones
72 affected.
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.
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."
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.
94 Researchers offer several explanations for their surprising findings
95 about rewards and performance.
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 have to get through to get the prize,' they're
100 going to be less creative," Amabile said.
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."
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.
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.
122 Control plays role
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.
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.
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.
145 Means to and end
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.
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."
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."
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.
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. /