Alfie Kohn

Replacing intrinsic motivation with extrinsic rewards cheapens the activity and makes it less enjoyable. Awarding me badges for brushing my teeth and taking out the trash is a great way to help me do boring tasks. Awarding me badges for having deep, meaningful conversations with my partner . . . not so helpful. Alfie Kohn has collected decades of studies and written about that in his book Punished by Rewards. It's one of the books I try to give away to friends and coworkers who are interested in the subject. The pro-gamification folks seem to want to pretend that they're doing something totally different this time and they can ignore all the previous data. https://www.alfiekohn.org/topics/motivation-inside/

Interestingly, a lot of those techniques are extrinsic motivators, which studies have found to actually reduce self-motivation. (A classic book on the subject is Alfie Kohn's "Punished by Rewards."[1] Dan Pink's TED talk[2] is a entertaining overview of the same concepts.) That's not to say that I have any answers. But when I tackle the problem, I'll probably focus on intrinsic motivators (love of the material, sense of challenge, joy of solving problems, sense of mastery, etc.) rather than extrinsic motivators (badges, prizes, employer threats). [1] http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm [2] http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

That's an excellent point, one that is illustrated in the book, "Punished By Rewards." http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm

Most people who go through school don't learn to become competent writers. This is shows that school does not teach people to be competent writers. So competent writers generally did not learn that skill in school. At best they learned some foundational skills. But the competent writers that I've known, often think that there were betters ways in which they could have learned those skills. I have sometimes been accused of writing competently. And so it should be no surprise that I agree with them. School was a terrible way for me to learn. And I credit most of my skills to things that I did outside of school. This goes doubly for homework assignments. As https://www.alfiekohn.org/homework-myth/ explains, research shows that homework is useless overall. It can help, or it can hurt. And on average it balances out to no net benefit. I have ADHD. This reduces the odds that homework helps and increases the odds that it hurts. Growing up, homework was a constant burden on my life. I would have been far better off if I'd been given less homework. Particularly homework which looks like a practice drill.

It is true that helping a child learn about resiliency is important. As Carol Dweck says, the brain is like a muscle and effort can eventually be rewarded with skill. So it is good to praise effort and persistence. And failure is part of life and needs to be dealt with. That said, consider Alfie Kohn's writing, such as "No Contest: The Case Against Competition": https://www.alfiekohn.org/contest/ "No Contest, which has been stirring up controversy since its publication in 1986, stands as the definitive critique of competition. Drawing from hundreds of studies, Alfie Kohn eloquently argues that our struggle to defeat each other -- at work, at school, at play, and at home -- turns all of us into losers. ... No Contest makes a powerful case that "healthy competition" is a contradiction in terms. Because any win/lose arrangement is undesirable, we will have to restructure our institutions for the benefit of ourselves, our children, and our society. For this [1992] revised edition, Kohn adds a comprehensive account of how students can learn more effectively by working cooperatively in the classroom instead of struggling to be Number One. He also offers a pointed and personal afterword, assessing shifts in American thinking on competition and describing reactions to his provocative message." From the book: "If competitiveness is inherently compensatory, if it is an effort to prove oneself and stave off feelings of worthlessness, it follows that the healthier the…

That comment sums up what I learned from http://www.alfiekohn.org/homework-myth/. Every so often I run across more recent research on the same topic. It always comes to the same conclusion. But parents generally feel better about their kids having poor results if they see evidence that their kids are at least putting out lots of effort. Homework serves as evidence, so it is hard to get rid of it. In the meantime I'm lucky that 3/4 of my children get to go to https://www.vandammeacademy.com/ which believes in doing what is proven to work. Therefore they have a no homework policy, adopt proven methods like Singapore math, and so on. Which is why 3/4 of my children are getting a truly superior education with far, far less work. Just to give a relevant anecdote about how strongly parents can feel about it, I know a fellow parent there who turned down a $400k/year job at Google because it would have meant that he had to move to Silicon Valley. He is convinced that he has found the best K-8 school in the country and won't take that away from his children. He's far from the only parent at the school who feels that way.

https://www.alfiekohn.org/punished-rewards/ "In this groundbreaking book, Alfie Kohn shows that while manipulating people with incentives seems to work in the short run, it is a strategy that ultimately fails and even does lasting harm. Our workplaces and classrooms will continue to decline, he argues, until we begin to question our reliance on a theory of motivation derived from laboratory animals." That was 1993. The people at Microsoft, as well as the author of this substack, would do well to have a think about Kohn's arguments.

There's a lot to unpack in your short utterance I just would like to comment on eliminating SAT scores. > Noninstructional factors explain most of the variance among test scores when schools or districts are compared. A study of math results on the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress found that the combination of four such variables (number of parents living at home, parents' educational background, type of community, and poverty rate) accounted for a whopping 89 percent of the differences in state scores from https://alfiekohn.org/teaching/pdf/Standardized%20Testing%20and%20Its%… if you really want I can dig up the old study.

> son needs more discipline This does not seem like the right conclusion. More like "needs running around time and free play". Cf. e.g. https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/discipline-problem-solution/ https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/beyond-discipline-article/

Even if preparing people to just put up with something miserable were a valid goal, it's exceedingly unlikely that just subjecting them to it for years on end is the most effective or the most efficient way to prepare them for it. An entire essay on the subject: https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/getting-hit-head-lessons/

I've been more skeptical of Grit after reading this: A Skeptical Look at the Latest Educational Fad By Alfie Kohn https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/grit/ The gist of the argument is that grit may not be what we ought to aspire to sometimes. The justification for grit is circular. Why focus on just 1 thing as oppose to have several interests and activities? The author approaches the topic from perspective of raising children / education. It looks like grit is about forcing compliance with shitty curriculum in schools. Lots more good stuff in the article I linked to.

"Progress" is a rhetorical device used to paint whatever actually happened in a positive light. But coincident with the positive elements of the rise of western society, is a whole lot of tragedy. Wars with unprecedented brutality and scale, genocide, factory farming, mass extinctions and the systematic destruction of the planet, selfishness as a defining cultural trait. Replacing competition with cooperation may have accelerated the positive aspects of progress (e.g. science), and maybe slowed or prevented many of the negative ones. Here's a treatise on the topic, if you're interested in this counterpoint: https://www.alfiekohn.org/contest/

The Truth About Homework Needless Assignments Persist Because of Widespread Misconceptions About Learning By Alfie Kohn https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/truth-homework/ Research-Based Guidelines for Homework https://effectiveforall.blogspot.com/2019/06/4-research-based-guidelin…

Alfie Kohn has some good commentary on the topic of 'grit' as an educational philosophy: http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/downside-grit/ It's not just overrated, it can be actively harmful. He goes further on this and other topics in the book "The Myth of the Spoiled Child"

A few years ago, I found The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing an interesting read. It shaped my views on homework [context: US public schools]. http://www.alfiekohn.org/homework-myth/

What do you mean by "reward"? If we believe what Alfie Kohn tells us about rewards and their effect on intrinsic motivation, we might argue that the job simply has to compensate sufficiently to remove certain life stresses (i.e. the $75k per household minimum), while allowing the worker to make meaningful choices, create impact and increase skills (ideally in the Flow state of learning.) http://www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/evidence-incentives-fail/

Why not link to the html version? http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/mindset/

Good idea. Changed from http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/mindset/?print=pdf.

Incentivizing any behavior is likely to end in ruin: http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm

I don't like reward driven systems. Did you read Punished By Rewards from Alfie Kohn[1]? I discovered this book from this Aaron Swartz post on productivity[2]. [1] http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm [2] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/productivity

Extrinsic motivation takes the form of external incentives to do something, such as the promise of money. In actuality, though, it seems that these incentives actually demotivate people from performing the task, because it kills their intrinsic motivation, their innate desire to do that task (such as a true interest in the work). So, instead of an innate desire to take on the task, the person now has an artificially incentivized desire, which results in lower motivation, since the motivation doesn't come from their own innate desire to do the work, but rather from the money. "At least 70 studies have found that rewards tend to undermine interest in the task (or behavior) itself; this is one of the most thoroughly replicated findings in the field of social psychology." http://www.alfiekohn.org/managing/cbdmamam.htm — and see also Alfie Kohn's book Punished By Rewards.

There's also the thing that bonuses don't work as a motivation tool for the kind of work we do. http://www.alfiekohn.org/managing/fbrftb.htm

Here's a good starting place: http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/meritpay.htm Also note that Kohn's ideas on extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation are hardly original. Most people who work at startups should find them collegial, since they're one of the key ideas in books like _Peopleware_.

You might be interested in the book "Punished by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn. It goes into detail about why praise can be detrimental, and what to substitute for it. From the description on his site <http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm>, it "[draws] from hundreds of studies, [and] demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives." The biggest revelation for me was that 'other incentives' includes both praise and punishment.

It seems I have to qualify "recent", this was already studied in the 70's [1]. But recent material is available as well [2],[3],[4],[6]. [3] provides a view from an economists perspective (incentives), [6] looks at motivation of employees and compares to performance and well-being outcomes. The psychological question is about intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, and has been studied for a long time now, for an overview, see [5] or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation 1. "The Effects of Contingent and Noncontingent Rewards and Controls on Intrinsic Motivation", 1972, Edward L.Deci, [Available online] http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/1972_Deci_OBHP.pdf 2. Punished by Rewards, Alfie Kohn, 1999, https://www.alfiekohn.org/punished-rewards/ 3. "Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation ", Roland Bénabou & Jean Tirole, 2003, https://academic.oup.com/restud/article-abstract/70/3/489/1571401 4. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation - The Search for Optimal Motivation and Performance, Carol Sansone & Judith Harackiewicz, 2000 https://www.amazon.com/Intrinsic-Extrinsic-Motivation-Performance-Educ… 5. "Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation", Lisa Legault, 2016, [Available online] http://www.lcwu.edu.pk/ocd/cfiles/Professional%20Studies/FC/%20B.Ed.-%… 6. "Do intrinsic and extrinsic motivation relate differently to employee outcomes?", Kuvaas et al., 2017, [Available online]…