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The Secrets to Raising a Smarter Child Recommended |
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Rewards and Praise: The Poisoned Carrot - Part IBy Robin Grille We give our children ice-cream if they're "good", chocolate if they're quiet, little gold stars if they eat their greens, maybe even money if they get good marks at school. We praise them with a "good boy!" or "good girl!" if they do something that pleases us. For the modern and discerning parent, the hitting-and-shaming method of "discipline" is passé. Punishment is out, and rewards are in. Why use the stick, when we can better teach a child by using a carrot? The New Age hype about praising and rewarding children for what we call "good" behavior has gained massive popularity. "Find something good your child has done, and praise them for it!" say the nouveau "how-to" books and seminars. Psychologists all over recommend the "star-chart" treatment to modify your child's behavior. This trend is the offspring of a particular school of psychology - the "behaviorists" - whose thinking currently dominates much of mainstream psychological and educational theory. In fact, these days praising or rewarding your kids' "good" behavior is so customary that almost nobody - until recently - has thought to question its validity. Praising or rewarding kids is just plain common sense, and good parenting - isn't it?. Who would doubt that it's good to give children praise, or prizes when they perform to our liking? The praise-and-reward method is definitely hunky-dory, since it is backed by a ton of evidence from the most methodical and ingenious research that money can buy. Actually, it springs from the work of psychologists who painstakingly discovered that they could train rats to run mazes, pigeons to peck at colored buttons, and dogs to salivate at the sound of the dinner bell - by giving them a controlled schedule of rewards. Psychologists soon became titillated about the idea of controlling human beings, by applying to us the same principles that worked on animals. Imagine their excitement when they realized that rewards work exactly the same on humans as on rats, pigeons and dogs. Modern psychological know-how has enabled us to manipulate children's behavior, thoughts and emotions in the same way as we can teach a seal, with a few sardines and a little flattery, to balance a ball on its nose. One problem, though. We don't particularly care about the quality of relationship we develop with a lab-rat. We are not concerned with rodents' developing self-esteem, their sense of autonomy or independence, nor do we give a hoot whether the rat will get interested in trying bigger and better mazes of it's own accord, long after we stop rewarding it with little food pellets. And that, as most of our experts have failed to tell us, is where the whole fancy technology of "reward, praise and reinforce" falls to pieces. Over and over we have been taught that we should praise and reward our children a lot more. What could be wrong with that? On the surface, praise looks marvelous - the key to successful children! Scratch this surface, however, and the results look very different. But, rewards improve children's behavior and performance, don't they? Or so we thought. However, when the little gold stars or jelly-beans stop coming, the behavior we were trying to reinforce tends to peter out. Children that have grown used to expecting praise, can feel crushed when it doesn't come. This dampens their perseverance. There is plenty of evidence that in the long term, reward systems are ineffective. Contrary to popular myth, there are many studies showing that when children expect or anticipate rewards, they perform more poorly. One study found that students' performance was undermined when offered money for better marks. A number of American and Israeli studies show that reward systems suppress students' creativity, and generally impoverish the quality of their work. Rewards can kill creativity, because they discourage risk-taking. When children are hooked on getting a reward, they tend to avoid challenges, to "play it safe". They prefer to do the minimum required to get that prize. Here is a good illustration of why we made the mistake of believing in rewards, based on benefits that appear on the surface. When an American fast-food company offered food prizes to children for every book they read, reading rates soared. This certainly looked encouraging - at first glance. On closer inspection, however, it was demonstrated that the children were selecting shorter books, and that their comprehension test-scores plummeted. They were reading for junk-food, rather than for the intrinsic enjoyment of reading. Meanwhile, reading outside school (the unrewarded situation) dropped off. There are many more studies showing that, while rewards may well increase activity, they smother enthusiasm and kill passion. Individuals anticipating rewards lose interest in activities that were otherwise attractive. It seems that the more we want the reward, the more we come to dislike what we have to do to get it. The activity required of us stands in the way of our coveted prize. It would have been smarter to just give the kids more interesting books, as there is plenty of evidence that intrinsically enjoyable activity is the best motivator and performance enhancer. Can rewards and praise harm our relationship with our children? You wouldn't think that the positive things you say to your child about himself or herself can be as destructive as negative labels. But there are times when this is true. Thanks to modern advances in behavioral science, our ability to seduce or manipulate children (and animals! and grown-ups!) to do what we want them to has become increasingly sophisticated. But the cost of manipulating through rewards has been great. Below are ten ways in which praise and rewards can damage our relationship with our children.
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