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Summary and Review by StoryShots
Rewards do not motivate people.
They motivate people to get rewards.
The gold star, the bonus, the A on the report card all rest on one belief: pay people to perform and they will perform better.
Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes, by Alfie Kohn, takes that belief apart.
Picture a girl who loves drawing.
Her parents start paying her for every picture.
Within weeks, the question changes from "what shall I draw?"
to "what do I get?"
At least 70 studies show that extrinsic motivators are not merely ineffective over the long haul but counterproductive for desire to learn and commitment to good values.
People offered a reward for work that demands problem solving or creativity tend to produce lower quality work than people offered nothing.
A prize shifts attention from the task to the payoff, so the safest route wins.
Risk and curiosity start to look like obstacles.
Rewards do the most damage to tasks people already enjoy.
You have felt this in every hobby that became a chore the moment someone started keeping score.
A reward turns a task into a toll booth, and nobody lingers at a toll booth.
The damage reaches past the work itself and into the relationships around it.
Rewards and punishments are two sides of the same coin.
Both do things to people rather than working with them, which is why "do this and you'll get that" feels controlling even when the goody is a pizza.
Workplaces make this visible.
When pay or recognition depends on pleasing the person holding the rewards, problems get hidden.
Peers become rivals for a limited supply of prizes, and cooperation breaks down.
Praise is not exempt.
A steady stream of "good job" becomes a verbal bribe that hooks children on approval.
The more kids are induced to do something for a reward, tangible or verbal, the less interest they show the next time.
Withdraw a reward and behavior often returns to where it started, or lands lower.
Rewards produce compliance, and compliance is not commitment.
If carrots corrode and sticks coerce, something else has to carry the load.
The alternative is not a better prize.
It is a different design, built on three Cs: content, community, and choice.
Content means asking whether the task is worth doing.
If it is dull, no sticker will rescue it, and the honest fix is to change the task rather than sweeten it.
Community means collaboration.
People care more, and cooperate more, when they feel part of something instead of competing alone.
In a classroom, that means students who feel safe asking for help and who care about one another without being bribed to share.
Choice means involving people in decisions about what they do, how, with whom, and why.
Kids learn to make good choices by making choices, not by following directions.
Where those three are present, rewards and punishments become unnecessary.
Motivation cannot be installed from outside.
It grows from within, or it does not grow at all.
If this changed how you think about motivation, someone in your life probably needs to hear it too.
This summary of Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn traces one thread: rewards undermine interest, rewards corrode relationships, and content, community, and choice grow motivation without bribes.
Still untouched here are the answers on grades, pay-for-performance, and discipline, plus a handful of research findings that make the case harder to dismiss.
For the full summary of Punished by Rewards, head to the StoryShots app.
