Good Player Award - FAIL
When extrinsic rewards are used to motivate children, like gold stars, stickers, prizes and events, the intrinsic desire and excitement for that act diminishes. Extrinsic rewards, while temporarily increasing enthusiasm for a task, actually do the opposite - they are extremely detrimental to the child’s allowing him/herself to develop a natural intrinsic taste for the action, task, or lesson.
The following is a study conducted by Mark Lepper with preschool children, aged 3 to 5 years old who loved using markers to draw.
“Heavy marker users were then brought, one at a time, to a testing room, and a third of them were immediately shown a “Good Player Award”—a fancy note card with a big gold star and a red ribbon. They were asked if they would like to receive a Good Player Award, and all the children assented. They were told that all they had to do to win the award was draw with the markers. After each child had drawn for six minutes, a Good Player Award was placed with great fanfare on an “Honor Roll Board.” For the other two conditions, children were simply allowed to draw with the markers for 6 minutes and then were unexpectedly given a Good Player Award, or they drew for 6 minutes and no award was ever mentioned. A panel of judges who were blind to what condition the children had been in rated the drawings’ creativity. There were two important findings. First, drawings done by children who expected rewards were judged as significantly lower in quality than drawings done in the other two conditions. Second, a few weeks later, when the classroom was observed for marker use, children who had expected a reward used the markers much less than they had previously, and half as much as the other children. Engaging in a well-liked activity with the expectation of a reward led to reduced creativity during that activity and to decreased voluntary participation in that activity later. ”
Basically, the kids who were shown a reward for using markers ended up NOT WANTING TO USE THE MARKERS ANYMORE (even though they originally loved coloring with markers)! If you want to suck the joy right out of learning, add a reward to the task.
This well-known study can be shocking to conventional teachers and parents accustomed to using simple rewards to motivate children. Star charts for getting potty training our kids, Target’s $1 prize bins, treasure boxes, candy, trophies, money for chores or good grades, paper certificates - all of these come hand in hand with ‘motivation’ that the mainstream parent or teacher may be at serious odds with how to rectify and reverse it. Even children themselves now may be accustomed to accepting these rewards and may struggle to do their work without it. Don’t worry. I will also share tips on how to reverse this.
