Page 235 - The Social Animal

Self-Justification 217

but after they have decided whether to contribute, the desire to avoid
appearing stingy affects their decision of how much to give. Once peo-
ple reach into their pockets, emerging with a mere penny is self-de-
meaning; a larger donation is consistent with their self-perception of
being reasonably kind and generous.

Inadequate Rewards as Applied to Education A great
deal of research has shown that the insufficient-reward phenomenon
applies to all forms of behavior—not simply the making of counter-
attitudinal statements. Remember, it has been shown that if people
actually perform a dull task for very little external justification, they
rate the task as more enjoyable than if they have a great deal of ex-
40
ternal justification for performing it. This does not mean people
would rather receive low pay than high pay for doing a job. People
prefer to receive high pay—and they often work harder for high pay.
But if they are offered low pay for doing a job and still agree to do
it, there is dissonance between the dullness of the task and the low
pay.To reduce the dissonance, they attribute good qualities to the job
and, hence, come to enjoy the mechanics of the job more if the salary
is low than if it is high. This phenomenon may have far-reaching
consequences. For example, let’s look at the elementary-school class-
room. If you want Johnny to recite multiplication tables, then you
should reward him; gold stars, praise, high grades, presents, and the
like are good external justifications. Will Johnny recite the tables just
for the fun of it, long after the rewards are no longer forthcoming?
In other words, will the high rewards make him enjoy the task? I
doubt it. But if the external rewards are not too high, Johnny will add
his own justification for performing the math drill; he may even
make a game of it. In short, he is more likely to continue to memo-
rize the multiplication tables long after school is out and the rewards
have been withdrawn.
For certain rote tasks, educators probably do not care whether
Johnny enjoys them or not, as long as he masters them. On the other
hand, if Johnny can learn to enjoy them, he will perform them out-
side of the educational situation. Consequently, with such increased
practice, he may come to gain greater mastery over the procedure and
he may retain it indefinitely. Thus, it may be a mistake to dole out
extensive rewards as an educational device. If students are provided
with just barely enough incentive to perform the task, teachers may