Punished By Rewards: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes by Alfie Kohn (PDF)

Description

Revised for the twenty-fifth anniversary of its publication, Alfie Kohn’s landmark challenge to carrot-and-stick psychology features updated reflections and research in a major new afterword by the author. Our basic strategy for raising children, teaching students, and managing workers can be summed up in six words: Do this and you’ll get that. We dangle goodies (from candy bars to sales commissions) in front of people in the same way that we train the family pet.Since its publication in 1993, this groundbreaking book has persuaded countless parents, teachers, and managers that attempts to manipulate people with incentives may seem to work in the short run, but they ultimately fail and even do lasting harm. Drawing from hundreds of studies, Kohn demonstrates that we actually do inferior work when we are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives—and are apt to lose interest in whatever we were bribed to do. Promising goodies to children for good behavior, meanwhile, can never produce anything more than temporary obedience. Even praise can become a verbal bribe that gets kids hooked on our approval. Rewards and punishments are two sides of the same coin—and the coin doesn’t buy much. What is needed, Kohn explains, is an alternative to both ways of controlling people. Hence, he offers practical strategies for parents, teachers, and managers to replace carrots and sticks. Seasoned with humor and familiar examples, Punished by Rewards presents an argument that is unsettling to hear but impossible to dismiss.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐In Punished by Rewards, Alfie Kohn challenges many of the sacred ideas that fuel our modern culture. Despite the widespread use of both punishments and rewards, the evidence is strong that neither approach is very effective at motivating people. From the corporate world to the classroom, the tradition of behaviorism is almost ubiquitous, where gold stars, grades, prizes and even cash are dangled before people under the common perception that doing so will improve their performance. Research shows that this method is unlikely to bring about lasting change, high quality work, or true attention to the task at hand. In fact, it can do the exact opposite. Many studies show that if we reward people for behavior that they enjoy, they often cease doing it once the reward is taken away. By approaching training with threats and bribes, we interfere with the development of intrinsic motivation and replace it with a focus on external ramifications.This changes the focus from the activity at hand to the end result, which reduces creativity and saps the joy from the work. Even though we may feel better using the carrot than the stick, the reality is that neither approach is truly helpful. How can this be true, when both rewards and punishments appear to work so well? Studies show that while people can be induced to be more productive for a period of time, this is true only for quantity, not quality. The changes also rarely last, and need to be constantly reinforced with new rewards or punishments in order to induce a new round of temporary change. Rewards can have other effects too. When prizes and rewards are in limited supply, a competitive environment ensues. This can reduce cooperation, mentoring, and teamwork, and even encourage people to game the system to get the reward. These ideas have great ramifications in the workplace, the classroom, and in the home. Although it may be easier to punish a child who misbehaves, the only thing it teaches the child is the use of power over others. We may think we are making a point about a misbehavior, but the point we are really making is that we have the power, and we are willing to use it. As a result, future thought will focus on how not to get caught rather than on how the situation could have been handled differently. This is a big problem. Perhaps THE big problem. Mindfuless psychology and Buddhist tradition insist that all of our suffering is caused by not being in the moment. Flow studies demonstrate that optimal experiences are best cultivated through attention and presence. Attention is powerful medicine, and instead of learning to direct it and use it, we are trained to trade it for trinkets. I have a long way to go to recover from my own submersion in this paradigm, but I am actively engaging in my life in ways that I hope will reduce it’s impact. As a parent, I am intimidated by the work ahead of me, weaning off the easy solutions and responding to the moment rather than from habit or convenience. I feel compelled to undertake this journey with my children, however, as the benefits of developing this presence in them far outweigh any temporary relief I may get from a threat or a bribe. Habits can be hard to break, however. Luckily, Kohn ends on an encouraging note, and suggests that even small steps in this direction are better than none. We can wean off punishments, recognize the harm that bribery can do, and perhaps choose our battles more wisely so that we throw down the gauntlet less often. We can invite participation from those we are working with in order to develop better skills at solving our problems with creative cooperation and compassionate communication. Together we can help create a brighter future for us all. I would recommend this book to parents, teachers, managers and anyone working towards creating a more egalitarian world.see more of my reviews at: […]

⭐This book is mainly about the negative effects of rewards on people. Kohn feels that people, who are rewarded in the way of praises, A’s, gold stars, etc., affects their behaviors that result in a way because of the rewards. This is because of the theory of behaviorism. Kohn tries to show how rewards can be “a way out” for teachers and parents. Everyone needs reinforcements just the same no matter what way they get them. I am not against or for the book totally. Kohn states some important issues to think about, but at the same time I feel rewarding can benefit the child. Kohn’s points that rewarding affects all people no matter the age is true, but taking away or lessening the rewards I feel is not the answer. I can understand the point about people expecting more rewards for their work more and more, but going cold turkey is not the way either. I feel that if rewards were taken away from people, that they would not strive to be better. The facts and experiments Kohn presents are very convincing about rewards are not healthy to the growth of one’s behaviors, but surprising them every now and then with rewards of their good efforts are good for anyone. Kohn also stated that letter grades may not be the to way to evaluate the student’s abilities, but to use check plus or check minus does not give much leeway. I do not believe that everyone is inferior to others all the time just because they are rewarded for their good efforts on a job, but some do use that to keep going. I think this book would be good for everyone to read. This book gives people a chance to see the issues Kohn presents and how it can be negative. This approach shows how rewards affect the everyday life of people and their lives. I now realize that giving rewards can damage a child’s behavior later in life if not done correctly. This can be a way to teach others that different rewards and the effects they have on people. Parents and teachers my then realize a particular method of rewarding may not be the best route to use. In conclusion, this book would be good for anyone wanting to learn more about the affects of rewarding has on people. It also helps anyone in the teaching field to think twice about how to reward a student. Understanding the issues of rewarding can only benefit a person using them or ways of other uses. Overall the book does state good ideas, but they are not as easily used as they are stated. This book can be a valuable tool to anyone wanting to understand rewards and the theory of behaviorism.

⭐Mr. Kohn’s work on the title subject is excellent. He portrays our “traditional” education as poor, and that it comes from, among other things, laziness on the part of faculty and administration. However, he falls right into the trap of lazy thinking when he treats “corporal punishment”, neglecting to take the time to think out and realize that there is a big difference between “hitting/beating”, which are done in anger, and “spanking”, which is NOT. Spanking is a normal, instinctive parenting device, usually applied with the attitude of “I need to get your attention NOW, and stop you from trying to get at the baby aspirin”, or “I can’t let you keep screaming and bothering the people in this store”. Taking a child home and blaming him/her for there not being any groceries for the week (some people recommend this) because he/she was making him/herself a public annoyance, is placing a guilt trip on a kid which could have been entirely avoided with a sharp, quick spank. Get the message across, and it’s over and done with. And finish your shopping. My other objection is Mr. Kohn’s (or his editor’s) proclivity for trying to balance use of masculine and feminine pronouns. Have they never heard of “the gender-collective he”? Apparently, not!

⭐This book is great, one every teacher and parent should read, but pretty in-depth and dense.If you’re not going to buy it please take away this message – you *should* actively comment on how you NOTICE your child’s hard-work, efforts, abilities, strengths, eg “you’ve drawn a very colourful picture, tell me about it” “you climbed right up to the top all by yourself!” and it’s okay to let your voice and tone speak for your approval, and direct your child to how they might feel “Wow! You must feel so proud of yourself”… However, do try and try as hard as you can not to JUDGE their work with a “well done” “good job” “it’s beautiful” or other similar judgy compliment (even though it’s a “positive” judgement) – because ultimately you want your child to learn not to rely on other people’s praise, even yours, but to assess their own work and to be able to be proud of themselves even when the external praise doesn’t come. If not they will never really be satisfied until every last person approves of their work, you want them to be happy with their own approval. You also don’t want their brains to get a kick from praise because it will quickly rely on it (praise is essentially verbal/social reward) because it quickly forms a neuro-transmitter addiction – so they slowly lose the ability to feel our human natural internal reward for the things they learn and the things they do since it is overtaken for the need for more addictive external reward. Taken to the extreme you have a kid who only works/learns for money/toys/sweets or whatever, and when these things diminish the effort diminishes.Also, please take away the idea that is absolutely absolutely beneficial and even essential to tell your child you love them and you are proud of them – just try to keep these unrelated to and separated in time from the things they have just done, as it sends a similar message that you love them because of what they achieve, which gives a message of insecurity “they won’t love me if I stop achieving xyz”. Your actions, your attention and your look of pride will tell them all they need to know on these occasions – so use these occasions to direct your child’s attention to how they might feel IN THEMSELVES, how they should feel self-pride and enjoy their moment.You can see, I’ve read and annotated my book to the extent that it fell apart, this is partly because it’s a secondhand book (arrived in fine condition) but mostly that I have read the living heck out of it!

⭐Behavioural approaches are rife in schools. The problem is, children aren’t puppies and relationships matter far more than tangible rewards. If children are from ‘nice’ homes, it often works – but then these children are rarely more than silly. For insecure, deprived children, with the potential for highly disruptive behaviour, stickers and detentions just don’t work in the long term. In many schools I’ve worked in, poor behaviour is blamed on teachers not implementing the rewards/sanctions policy properly, This book suggests that the rewards/sanctions policy is to blame. Certainly my own experience suggests that building relationships with children works far better – children don’t misbehave nearly so much if they feel valued and know you enjoy spending time with them. When stickers do work, it’s not because they got a sticker, it’s because someone they respect and whose regard they want gave it to them.

⭐If you’re bribing your kids with stars to behave during your boring classes, this is a wake-up call. Make your lessons interesting and relevant so you don’t have to bribe them. Fantastic book.

⭐A book that makes sense in so many ways. It’s amazing how many teachers and bosses, think that rewards makes people work better and do not realise that they only set low level goals that give absolutely no sense of achievement.

⭐Small print and thin paper making it hard to read due to seeing print from other side.

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