| 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 | Verbatim copying and distribution is permitted in any medium |
| 11 | provided this notice is preserved. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | In the laboratory, rats get Rice Krispies. In the classroom the top |
| 14 | students get A's, and in the factory or office the best workers get |
| 15 | raises. It's an article of faith for most of us that rewards promote |
| 16 | better performance. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | But a growing body of research suggests that this law is not nearly as |
| 19 | ironclad as was once thought. Psychologists have been finding that |
| 20 | rewards can lower performance levels, especially when the performance |
| 21 | involves creativity. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | A related series of studies shows that intrinsic interest in a task - |
| 24 | the sense that something is worth doing for its own sake - typically |
| 25 | declines when someone is rewarded for doing it. |
| 26 | |
| 27 | If a reward - money, awards, praise, or winning a contest - comes to |
| 28 | be seen as the reason one is engaging in an activity, that activity |
| 29 | will be viewed as less enjoyable in its own right. |
| 30 | |
| 31 | With the exception of some behaviorists who doubt the very existence |
| 32 | of intrinsic motivation, these conclusions are now widely accepted |
| 33 | among psychologists. Taken together, they suggest we may unwittingly |
| 34 | be squelching interest and discouraging innovation among workers, |
| 35 | students and artists. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | The recognition that rewards can have counter-productive effects is |
| 38 | based on a variety of studies, which have come up with such findings |
| 39 | as these: Young children who are rewarded for drawing are less likely |
| 40 | to draw on their own that are children who draw just for the fun of |
| 41 | it. Teenagers offered rewards for playing word games enjoy the games |
| 42 | less and do not do as well as those who play with no rewards. |
| 43 | Employees who are praised for meeting a manager's expectations suffer |
| 44 | a drop in motivation. |
| 45 | |
| 46 | Much of the research on creativity and motivation has been performed |
| 47 | by Theresa Amabile, associate professor of psychology at Brandeis |
| 48 | University. In a paper published early last year on her most recent |
| 49 | study, she reported on experiments involving elementary school and |
| 50 | college students. Both groups were asked to make "silly" collages. |
| 51 | The young children were also asked to invent stories. |
| 52 | |
| 53 | The least-creative projects, as rated by several teachers, were done |
| 54 | by those students who had contracted for rewards. "It may be that |
| 55 | commissioned work will, in general, be less creative than work that is |
| 56 | done out of pure interest," Amabile said. |
| 57 | |
| 58 | In 1985, Amabile asked 72 creative writers at Brandeis and at Boston |
| 59 | University to write poetry. Some students then were given a list of |
| 60 | extrinsic (external) reasons for writing, such as impressing teachers, |
| 61 | making money and getting into graduate school, and were asked to think |
| 62 | about their own writing with respect to these reasons. Others were |
| 63 | given a list of intrinsic reasons: the enjoyment of playing with |
| 64 | words, satisfaction from self-expression, and so forth. A third group |
| 65 | was not given any list. All were then asked to do more writing. |
| 66 | |
| 67 | The results were clear. Students given the extrinsic reasons not only |
| 68 | wrote less creatively than the others, as judged by 12 independent |
| 69 | poets, but the quality of their work dropped significantly. Rewards, |
| 70 | Amabile says, have this destructive effect primarily with creative |
| 71 | tasks, including higher-level problem-solving. "The more complex the |
| 72 | activity, the more it's hurt by extrinsic reward," she said. |
| 73 | |
| 74 | But other research shows that artists are by no means the only ones |
| 75 | affected. |
| 76 | |
| 77 | In one study, girls in the fifth and sixth grades tutored younger |
| 78 | children much less effectively if they were promised free movie |
| 79 | tickets for teaching well. The study, by James Gabarino, now |
| 80 | president of Chicago's Erikson Institute for Advanced Studies in Child |
| 81 | Development, showed that tutors working for the reward took longer to |
| 82 | communicate ideas, got frustrated more easily, and did a poorer job in |
| 83 | the end than those who were not rewarded. |
| 84 | |
| 85 | Such findings call into question the widespread belief that money is |
| 86 | an effective and even necessary way to motivate people. They also |
| 87 | challenge the behaviorist assumption that any activity is more likely |
| 88 | to occur if it is rewarded. Amabile says her research "definitely |
| 89 | refutes the notion that creativity can be operantly conditioned." |
| 90 | |
| 91 | But Kenneth McGraw, associate professor of psychology at the |
| 92 | University of Mississippi, cautions that this does not mean |
| 93 | behaviorism itself has been invalidated. "The basic principles of |
| 94 | reinforcement and rewards certainly work, but in a restricted context" |
| 95 | - restricted, that is, to tasks that are not especially interesting. |
| 96 | |
| 97 | Researchers offer several explanations for their surprising findings |
| 98 | about rewards and performance. |
| 99 | |
| 100 | First, rewards encourage people to focus narrowly on a task, to do it |
| 101 | as quickly as possible and to take few risks. "If they feel that |
| 102 | 'this is something I have to get through to get the prize,' they're |
| 103 | going to be less creative," Amabile said. |
| 104 | |
| 105 | Second, people come to see themselves as being controlled by the |
| 106 | reward. They feel less autonomous, and this may interfere with |
| 107 | performance. "To the extent one's experience of being |
| 108 | self-determined is limited," said Richard Ryan, associate psychology |
| 109 | professor at the University of Rochester, "one's creativity will be |
| 110 | reduced as well." |
| 111 | |
| 112 | Finally, extrinsic rewards can erode intrinsic interest. People who |
| 113 | see themselves as working for money, approval or competitive success |
| 114 | find their tasks less pleasurable, and therefore do not do them as |
| 115 | well. |
| 116 | |
| 117 | The last explanation reflects 15 years of work by Ryan's mentor at the |
| 118 | University of Rochester, Edward Deci. In 1971, Deci showed that |
| 119 | "money may work to buy off one's intrinsic motivation for an activity" |
| 120 | on a long-term basis. Ten years later, Deci and his colleagues |
| 121 | demonstrated that trying to best others has the same effect. Students |
| 122 | who competed to solve a puzzle quickly were less likely than those who |
| 123 | were not competing to keep working at it once the experiment was over. |
| 124 | |
| 125 | Control plays role |
| 126 | |
| 127 | There is general agreement, however, that not all rewards have the |
| 128 | same effect. Offering a flat fee for participating in an experiment - |
| 129 | similar to an hourly wage in the workplace - usually does not reduce |
| 130 | intrinsic motivation. It is only when the rewards are based on |
| 131 | performing a given task or doing a good job at it - analogous to |
| 132 | piece-rate payment and bonuses, respectively - that the problem |
| 133 | develops. |
| 134 | |
| 135 | The key, then, lies in how a reward is experienced. If we come to |
| 136 | view ourselves as working to get something, we will no longer find |
| 137 | that activity worth doing in its own right. |
| 138 | |
| 139 | There is an old joke that nicely illustrates the principle. An |
| 140 | elderly man, harassed by the taunts of neighborhood children, finally |
| 141 | devises a scheme. He offered to pay each child a dollar if they would |
| 142 | all return Tuesday and yell their insults again. They did so eagerly |
| 143 | and received the money, but he told them he could only pay 25 cents on |
| 144 | Wednesday. When they returned, insulted him again and collected their |
| 145 | quarters, he informed them that Thursday's rate would be just a penny. |
| 146 | "Forget it," they said - and never taunted him again. |
| 147 | |
| 148 | Means to and end |
| 149 | |
| 150 | In a 1982 study, Stanford psychologist Mark L. Lepper showed that any |
| 151 | task, no matter how enjoyable it once seemed, would be devalued if it |
| 152 | were presented as a means rather than an end. He told a group of |
| 153 | preschoolers they could not engage in one activity they liked until |
| 154 | they first took part in another. Although they had enjoyed both |
| 155 | activities equally, the children came to dislike the task that was a |
| 156 | prerequisite for the other. |
| 157 | |
| 158 | It should not be surprising that when verbal feedback is experienced |
| 159 | as controlling, the effect on motivation can be similar to that of |
| 160 | payment. In a study of corporate employees, Ryan found that those who |
| 161 | were told, "Good, you're doing as you /should/" were "significantly |
| 162 | less intrinsically motivated than those who received feedback |
| 163 | informationally." |
| 164 | |
| 165 | There's a difference, Ryan says, between saying, "I'm giving you this |
| 166 | reward because I recognize the value of your work" and "You're getting |
| 167 | this reward because you've lived up to my standards." |
| 168 | |
| 169 | A different but related set of problems exists in the case of |
| 170 | creativity. Artists must make a living, of course, but Amabile |
| 171 | emphasizes that "the negative impact on creativity of working for |
| 172 | rewards can be minimized" by playing down the significance of these |
| 173 | rewards and trying not to use them in a controlling way. Creative |
| 174 | work, the research suggests, cannot be forced, but only allowed to |
| 175 | happen. |
| 176 | |
| 177 | /Alfie Kohn, a Cambridge, MA writer, is the author of "No Contest: The |
| 178 | Case Against Competition," recently published by Houghton Mifflin Co., |
| 179 | Boston, MA. ISBN 0-395-39387-6. / |