Are Rewards Really a Good Thing? How to Motivate Children to do Well in an Academic Setting
Last semester I took the course “PSYC 471 Human Motivation”, which gave me significant insight into concept of motivation. The course went over many different studies and psychological tests performed on individuals to determine how exactly humans are motivated, and various other factors to do with the process.
One of the most interesting topics of the course dealt with motivating children in school. Contrary to what numerous elementary teachers believe, giving children rewards in attempts to motivate them to continue doing well in an activity is actually detrimental on the performance at hand. Giving the students incentive for an activity actually causes a shift in motivation; from general personal interest for the activity, to a performance as a means to an end. For instance, to encourage reading, many teachers will often reward children for a certain number of books they can read by the end of the term. Instead of motivating the children to enjoy reading, they are actually switching the children from any form of intrinsic motivation (one’s natural propensity to engage in the activity), to an extrinsic motivation (shift of interest towards receiving something external). As a result, those children who were initially intrinsically motivated in reading will no longer enjoy reading for the sake of the activity itself, but rather will perform in the interest of receiving compensation. Studies and research have shown that as a result of this motivation shift, the quality of performance drops as well.
To further explain, a study carried out by Lepper et al. (1973) looked at the impact of rewards on intrinsic motivation in children. Researchers collected subjects, and determined what activities they were naturally intrinsically motivated in, which turned out to be art in most cases. Via random assignment, kids were placed into one of three conditions:
Control condition: asked to draw a picture (do the activity for its own sake)
Experimental condition 1: told if they drew a good picture, they will get a reward
Experimental condition 2: they unexpectedly got a reward after they drew the picture
After many trials, Lepper et al. came to the conclusion that introducing a reward severely undermined intrinsic motivation, and the quality of performance. Children in the experimental reward condition made significantly more pictures, but of much lesser quality, whereas children in the control condition made less pictures of significantly greater quality. Furthermore, using a free choice paradigm, Lepper et al. discovered that children who received a reward in the past for drawing were significantly less interested in the drawing materials, as opposed to the children who received no award.
I strongly believe research on motivating students is truly important, for schools are institutions that inherently extrinsically motivate students, whether that be with actual rewards, or grades. In order to optimally motivate students, further psychological testing needs to be done on people to acquire an even better understanding of the neural mechanisms of motivation and ultimately, how to maintain and enhance intrinsic motivation in the academic world.
References:
Greene, D., & Lepper, M. R.. (1974). Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Children’s Subsequent Intrinsic Interest. Child Development, 45(4), 1141–1145. http://doi.org/10.2307/1128110
