How Rewards Can Backfire and Reduce Motivation. *Summary

This was probably one of the most interesting articles that I have read on Psyblog so far!

In this article a group of psychologists got a group of 51 preschool children who liked draw and did the "reward experiment" on them. In this experiment the children were divided into three groups: Group1: the children were told about a reward beforehand and then told to draw a picture. Group 2: the children were not told about a reward beforehand but were given a "surprise" reward after they were done drawing. Group 3: the children were not told about a reward or given a reward after they were done drawing.

The results of this experiment ended up turning in to the children who were told about a reward beforehand now always expected a reward, and found less fun in just drawing just to draw. The children who received a surprise reward were somewhat less likely to continue drawing (now hoping for a reward), and the children who had not been told/ given a reward continued drawing about the same amount.

This may seem confusing, but it actually makes a lot of sense. What happens is once someone is subjected to getting a reward for something, they find the action to be less fulfilling. This can be related to things that children may not like doing such as getting a reward for finishing all of their vegetables, doing all of their homework, cleaning their room, ect. This is when getting a reward comes in to play when you are doing something that you may not want to do, but you have to do anyways.
This concept also affects adults: Just like going to work to make money (the reward) but the job becomes tedious and tiresome. If you liked to paint just for fun and were discovered and then paid for your talent, the fun turns into work aka: something you HAVE to do rather than want to do.

To me this concept makes a lot of sense. This is something that I never really thought about before, but once you realize it.. It's kind of like a Eureka! moment... At least that's how it was for me! I hope you can see the sense in this too!