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+STUDIES FIND REWARD OFTEN NO MOTIVATOR
+
+Creativity and intrinsic interest diminish if task is done for gain
+
+By Alfie Kohn
+Special to the Boston Globe
+[reprinted with permission of the author
+ from the Monday 19 January 1987 Boston Globe]
+
+In the laboratory, rats get Rice Krispies.  In the classroom the top
+students get A's, and in the factory or office the best workers get
+raises.  It's an article of faith for most of us that rewards promote
+better performance.
+
+But a growing body of research suggests that this law is not nearly as
+ironclad as was once thought.  Psychologists have been finding that
+rewards can lower performance levels, especially when the performance
+involves creativity.
+
+A related series of studies shows that intrinsic interest in a task -
+the sense that something is worth doing for its own sake - typically
+declines when someone is rewarded for doing it.
+
+If a reward - money, awards, praise, or winning a contest - comes to
+be seen as the reason one is engaging in an activity, that activity
+will be viewed as less enjoyable in its own right.
+
+With the exception of some behaviorists who doubt the very existence
+of intrinsic motivation, these conclusions are now widely accepted
+among psychologists.  Taken together, they suggest we may unwittingly
+be squelching interest and discouraging innovation among workers,
+students and artists.
+
+The recognition that rewards can have counter-productive effects is
+based on a variety of studies, which have come up with such findings
+as these: Young children who are rewarded for drawing are less likely
+to draw on their own that are children who draw just for the fun of
+it.  Teenagers offered rewards for playing word games enjoy the games
+less and do not do as well as those who play with no rewards.
+Employees who are praised for meeting a manager's expectations suffer
+a drop in motivation.
+
+Much of the research on creativity and motivation has been performed
+by Theresa Amabile, associate professor of psychology at Brandeis
+University.  In a paper published early last year on her most recent
+study, she reported on experiments involving elementary school and
+college 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 done
+by those students who had contracted for rewards.  "It may be that
+commissioned work will, in general, be less creative than work that is
+done out of pure interest," Amabile said.
+
+In 1985, Amabile asked 72 creative writers at Brandeis and at Boston
+University to write poetry.  Some students then were given a list of
+extrinsic (external) reasons for writing, such as impressing teachers,
+making money and getting into graduate school, and were asked to think
+about their own writing with respect to these reasons.  Others were
+given a list of intrinsic reasons:  the enjoyment of playing with
+words, satisfaction from self-expression, and so forth.  A third group
+was not given any list.  All were then asked to do more writing.
+
+The results were clear.  Students given the extrinsic reasons not only
+wrote less creatively than the others, as judged by 12 independent
+poets, but the quality of their work dropped significantly.  Rewards,
+Amabile says, have this destructive effect primarily with creative
+tasks, including higher-level problem-solving.  "The more complex the
+activity, the more it's hurt by extrinsic reward," she said.
+
+But other research shows that artists are by no means the only ones
+affected.
+
+In one study, girls in the fifth and sixth grades tutored younger
+children much less effectively if they were promised free movie
+tickets for teaching well.  The study, by James Gabarino, now
+president of Chicago's Erikson Institute for Advanced Studies in Child
+Development, showed that tutors working for the reward took longer to
+communicate ideas, got frustrated more easily, and did a poorer job in
+the end than those who were not rewarded.
+
+Such findings call into question the widespread belief that money is
+an effective and even necessary way to motivate people.  They also
+challenge the behaviorist assumption that any activity is more likely
+to occur if it is rewarded.  Amabile says her research "definitely
+refutes the notion that creativity can be operantly conditioned."
+
+But Kenneth McGraw, associate professor of psychology at the
+University of Mississippi, cautions that this does not mean
+behaviorism itself has been invalidated.  "The basic principles of
+reinforcement 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 findings
+about rewards and performance.
+
+First, rewards encourage people to focus narrowly on a task, to do it
+as quickly as possible and to take few risks.  "If they feel that
+'this is something I hve to get through to get the prize,' the're
+going to be less creative," Amabile said.
+
+Second, people come to see themselves as being controlled by the
+reward.  They feel less autonomous, and this may interfere with
+performance.  "To the extent one's experience of being
+self-determined is limited," said Richard Ryan, associate psychology
+professor at the University of Rochester, "one's creativity will be
+reduced as well."
+
+Finally, extrinsic rewards can erode intrinsic interest.  People who
+see themselves as working for money, approval or competitive success
+find their tasks less pleasurable, and therefore do not do them as
+well.
+
+The last explanation reflects 15 years of work by Ryan's mentor at the
+University 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 colleagues
+demonstrated that trying to best others has the same effect.  Students
+who competed to solve a puzzle quickly were less likely than those who
+were not competing to keep working at it once the experiment was over.
+
+Control plays role
+
+There is general agreement, however, that not all rewards have the
+same effect.  Offering a flat fee for participating in an experiment -
+similar to an hourly wage in the workplace - usually does not reduce
+intrinsic motivation.  It is only when the rewards are based on
+performing a given task or doing a good job at it - analogous to
+piece-rate payment and bonuses, respectively - that the problem
+develops.
+
+The key, then, lies in how a reward is experienced.  If we come to
+view ourselves as working to get something, we will no longer find
+that activity worth doing in its own right.
+
+There is an old joke that nicely illustrates the principle.  An
+elderly man, harassed by the taunts of neighborhood children, finally
+devises a scheme.  He offered to pay each child a dollar if they would
+all return Tuesday and yell their insults again.  They did so eagerly
+and received the money, but he told them he could only pay 25 cents on
+Wednesday.  When they returned, insulted him again and collected their
+quarters, he informed them that Thursday's rate would be just a penny.
+"Forget it," they said - and never taunted him again.
+
+Means to and end
+
+In a 1982 study, Stanford psychologist Mark L. Lepper showed that any
+task, no matter how enjoyable it once seemed, would be devalued if it
+were presented as a means rather than an end.  He told a group of
+preschoolers they could not engage in one activity they liked until
+they first took part in another.  Although they had enjoyed both
+activities equally, the children came to dislike the task that was a
+prerequisite for the other.
+
+It should not be surprising that when verbal feedback is experienced
+as controlling, the effect on motivation can be similar to that of
+payment.  In a study of corporate employees, Ryan found that those who
+were told, "Good, you're doing as you /should/" were "significantly
+less intrinsically motivated than those who received feedback
+informationally."
+
+There's a difference, Ryan says, between saying, "I'm giving you this
+reward because I recognize the value of your work" and "You're getting
+this reward because you've lived up to my standards."
+
+A different but related set of problems exists in the case of
+creativity.  Artists must make a living, of course, but Amabile
+emphasizes that "the negative impact on creativity of working for
+rewards can be minimized" by playing down the significance of these
+rewards and trying not to use them in a controlling way.  Creative
+work, the research suggests, cannot be forced, but only allowed to
+happen.
+
+/Alfie Kohn, a Cambridge, MA writer, is the author of "No Contest: The
+Case Against Competition," recently published by Houghton Mifflin Co.,
+Boston, MA.  ISBN 0-395-39387-6. /