Page 236 - The Social Animal

218 The Social Animal

succeed in allowing them to maximize their enjoyment of the task.
This may serve to improve long-range retention and performance. I
am not suggesting that inadequate rewards are the only way people
can be taught to enjoy material that lacks inherent attractiveness.
What I am saying is that piling on excessive external justification in-
hibits one of the processes that can help set the stage for increased
enjoyment.
Several experiments by Edward Deci and his colleagues make
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this point very nicely. Indeed, Deci carries this analysis one step fur-
ther by demonstrating that offering rewards to people for perform-
ing a pleasant activity actually decreases the intrinsic attractiveness
of that activity. In one experiment, for example, college students
worked individually on an interesting puzzle for an hour. The next
day, the students in the experimental condition were paid $1 for
each piece of the puzzle they completed. The students in the con-
trol group worked on the puzzle as before, without pay. During the
third session, neither group was paid. The question is: How much
liking did each group have for the puzzle? Deci measured this dur-
ing the third session by noting whether each student worked on the
puzzle during a free break when they could do whatever they
pleased. The unrewarded group spent more free time on the task
than the rewarded group—whose interest waned when no rewards
were forthcoming. Mark Lepper and his colleagues found the same
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kind of relationship with preschool children. The researchers in-
structed half the kids to work on a set of plastic jigsaw puzzles and
promised them a more rewarding activity later. They instructed the
remaining kids to play with the puzzles without promising them
anything in return. After playing with the puzzles, all of the chil-
dren were allowed to engage in the “more rewarding” activity (but
recall that only half of them were led to believe this was a reward
for having worked on the puzzles). A few weeks later, they turned
all the youngsters loose on the puzzles. Those who had worked on
the puzzles to earn the chance to engage in the more rewarding ac-
tivity spent less of their free time playing with the puzzles. In short,
by offering the children a reward for playing, the experimenters suc-
ceeded in turning play into work.
What happens if, instead of offering prizes or payments, we re-
ward people by praising them? Most parents and teachers believe
that praising a child’s good performance is always a useful thing to