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(ttyname) [WINDOWSNT]: New function.
STUDIES FIND REWARD OFTEN NO MOTIVATORCreativity and intrinsic interest diminish if task is done for gainBy Alfie KohnSpecial to the Boston Globe[reprinted with permission of the author from the Monday 19 January 1987 Boston Globe]Verbatim copying and distribution is permitted in any mediumprovided this notice is preserved.In the laboratory, rats get Rice Krispies. In the classroom the topstudents get A's, and in the factory or office the best workers getraises. It's an article of faith for most of us that rewards promotebetter performance.But a growing body of research suggests that this law is not nearly asironclad as was once thought. Psychologists have been finding thatrewards can lower performance levels, especially when the performanceinvolves creativity.A related series of studies shows that intrinsic interest in a task -the sense that something is worth doing for its own sake - typicallydeclines when someone is rewarded for doing it.If a reward - money, awards, praise, or winning a contest - comes tobe seen as the reason one is engaging in an activity, that activitywill be viewed as less enjoyable in its own right.With the exception of some behaviorists who doubt the very existenceof intrinsic motivation, these conclusions are now widely acceptedamong psychologists. Taken together, they suggest we may unwittinglybe squelching interest and discouraging innovation among workers,students and artists.The recognition that rewards can have counter-productive effects isbased on a variety of studies, which have come up with such findingsas these: Young children who are rewarded for drawing are less likelyto draw on their own that are children who draw just for the fun ofit. Teenagers offered rewards for playing word games enjoy the gamesless and do not do as well as those who play with no rewards.Employees who are praised for meeting a manager's expectations suffera drop in motivation.Much of the research on creativity and motivation has been performedby Theresa Amabile, associate professor of psychology at BrandeisUniversity. In a paper published early last year on her most recentstudy, she reported on experiments involving elementary school andcollege students. Both groups were asked to make "silly" collages.The young children were also asked to invent stories.The least-creative projects, as rated by several teachers, were doneby those students who had contracted for rewards. "It may be thatcommissioned work will, in general, be less creative than work that isdone out of pure interest," Amabile said.In 1985, Amabile asked 72 creative writers at Brandeis and at BostonUniversity to write poetry. Some students then were given a list ofextrinsic (external) reasons for writing, such as impressing teachers,making money and getting into graduate school, and were asked to thinkabout their own writing with respect to these reasons. Others weregiven a list of intrinsic reasons: the enjoyment of playing withwords, satisfaction from self-expression, and so forth. A third groupwas not given any list. All were then asked to do more writing.The results were clear. Students given the extrinsic reasons not onlywrote less creatively than the others, as judged by 12 independentpoets, but the quality of their work dropped significantly. Rewards,Amabile says, have this destructive effect primarily with creativetasks, including higher-level problem-solving. "The more complex theactivity, the more it's hurt by extrinsic reward," she said.But other research shows that artists are by no means the only onesaffected.In one study, girls in the fifth and sixth grades tutored youngerchildren much less effectively if they were promised free movietickets for teaching well. The study, by James Gabarino, nowpresident of Chicago's Erikson Institute for Advanced Studies in ChildDevelopment, showed that tutors working for the reward took longer tocommunicate ideas, got frustrated more easily, and did a poorer job inthe end than those who were not rewarded.Such findings call into question the widespread belief that money isan effective and even necessary way to motivate people. They alsochallenge the behaviorist assumption that any activity is more likelyto occur if it is rewarded. Amabile says her research "definitelyrefutes the notion that creativity can be operantly conditioned."But Kenneth McGraw, associate professor of psychology at theUniversity of Mississippi, cautions that this does not meanbehaviorism itself has been invalidated. "The basic principles ofreinforcement and rewards certainly work, but in a restricted context"- restricted, that is, to tasks that are not especially interesting.Researchers offer several explanations for their surprising findingsabout rewards and performance.First, rewards encourage people to focus narrowly on a task, to do itas quickly as possible and to take few risks. "If they feel that'this is something I have to get through to get the prize,' they'regoing to be less creative," Amabile said.Second, people come to see themselves as being controlled by thereward. They feel less autonomous, and this may interfere withperformance. "To the extent one's experience of beingself-determined is limited," said Richard Ryan, associate psychologyprofessor at the University of Rochester, "one's creativity will bereduced as well."Finally, extrinsic rewards can erode intrinsic interest. People whosee themselves as working for money, approval or competitive successfind their tasks less pleasurable, and therefore do not do them aswell.The last explanation reflects 15 years of work by Ryan's mentor at theUniversity of Rochester, Edward Deci. In 1971, Deci showed that"money may work to buy off one's intrinsic motivation for an activity"on a long-term basis. Ten years later, Deci and his colleaguesdemonstrated that trying to best others has the same effect. Studentswho competed to solve a puzzle quickly were less likely than those whowere not competing to keep working at it once the experiment was over.Control plays roleThere is general agreement, however, that not all rewards have thesame effect. Offering a flat fee for participating in an experiment -similar to an hourly wage in the workplace - usually does not reduceintrinsic motivation. It is only when the rewards are based onperforming a given task or doing a good job at it - analogous topiece-rate payment and bonuses, respectively - that the problemdevelops.The key, then, lies in how a reward is experienced. If we come toview ourselves as working to get something, we will no longer findthat activity worth doing in its own right.There is an old joke that nicely illustrates the principle. Anelderly man, harassed by the taunts of neighborhood children, finallydevises a scheme. He offered to pay each child a dollar if they wouldall return Tuesday and yell their insults again. They did so eagerlyand received the money, but he told them he could only pay 25 cents onWednesday. When they returned, insulted him again and collected theirquarters, he informed them that Thursday's rate would be just a penny."Forget it," they said - and never taunted him again.Means to and endIn a 1982 study, Stanford psychologist Mark L. Lepper showed that anytask, no matter how enjoyable it once seemed, would be devalued if itwere presented as a means rather than an end. He told a group ofpreschoolers they could not engage in one activity they liked untilthey first took part in another. Although they had enjoyed bothactivities equally, the children came to dislike the task that was aprerequisite for the other.It should not be surprising that when verbal feedback is experiencedas controlling, the effect on motivation can be similar to that ofpayment. In a study of corporate employees, Ryan found that those whowere told, "Good, you're doing as you /should/" were "significantlyless intrinsically motivated than those who received feedbackinformationally."There's a difference, Ryan says, between saying, "I'm giving you thisreward because I recognize the value of your work" and "You're gettingthis reward because you've lived up to my standards."A different but related set of problems exists in the case ofcreativity. Artists must make a living, of course, but Amabileemphasizes that "the negative impact on creativity of working forrewards can be minimized" by playing down the significance of theserewards and trying not to use them in a controlling way. Creativework, the research suggests, cannot be forced, but only allowed tohappen./Alfie Kohn, a Cambridge, MA writer, is the author of "No Contest: TheCase Against Competition," recently published by Houghton Mifflin Co.,Boston, MA. ISBN 0-395-39387-6. /