How Rewards Can Backfire

This article i found on the psyblog page. It was one of the top stories, so i figured it must be good and worthwile to read.

They say that the best was to get motivation is to dangle a reward in your face. So some psycologists were studying this, and figured out that rewards is the wrong way to go when you want to get something done. They say that they are "Overrated"

They did this test on children: They had all these kids and gave some of them a reward for drawing without them knowing about it ahead of time, some of them were just given the reward when they were done with it; it was called a surprise reward. And others didn't get a reward at all. So they tested these children, and figured out how motivation and bribing them with a reward would motivate them more or less then if they were not going to get a reward or wern't told about it. For a picture on this blog, i showed the little table that they included in the article showing the results of the experiment.

Other information that they told you about the reward was that: When people have a reward, they are not nearly as creative as they would be if they were not told about the reward. And that knowing about the reward gives the children, or anybody, really bad problem solving skills.

So i guess what this article is telling us is: When people are told they are going to get a reward for something before they are to do the experiment, they rush through things, don't think it out, and don't have good problem thinking skills.

Oh and nevermind about the picture. I couldn't get it to work! :(