Alfie Kohn's "Punished by Rewards" has been influential, but its conclusions may not hold up.
Short-term rewards don’t sap long-term motivationOLEG URMINSKY
University of Chicago School of Business
MAY 16, 2018
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Goswami, who wrote this up for his PhD dissertation, reviewed 18 field studies across a variety of domains, including completing an education, stopping smoking, losing weight, going to the gym, sticking to a medical routine, and working productively. All 18 of the studies measured people’s total behavior in a period after the incentive had ended, and they find either no long-term effect or a modest positive effect. Not a single study suggests that study participants, compared with those who didn’t receive any incentive, had worse outcomes when an incentive was offered and then ended. Where was the long-term harm?
It was found that the effect of reduced motivation caused by taking away a reward soon wore off. So you can pay your child a dollar for each book he or she reads this summer without worrying about long-term disincentive effects.
