Do incentives really work? We’ve seen a spate of behavioral economists arguing incentives do, and encouraging companies and government to offer incentives, or ‘nudges,’ to promote behaviors.
A reader, Peter A. Hunter, sends this review of “Punished by Rewards,” Alfie Kohn’s 1999 book arguing that incentives often fail. He notes:
Alfie tells us one story about a scheme sponsored by Pizza Hut in North America to encourage children to read.
He tells us that in order to encourage literacy, children were promised a pizza for every book that they read.
On the surface it sounds perfectly laudable until you examine the detail of what actually happened.
These children instead of being encouraged to read, now saw books as obstacles between themselves and a pizza, and that the obstacle had to be surmounted as quickly and with as little effort as possible.
Thus instead of finding joy in the act of reading, the books these children read were selected by them on the basis of how thin they were and the size of the typeface so that they could qualify for their free pizzas as quickly as possible.As Alfie notes, instead of encouraging children to develop an interest in books, this programme produced “fat kids who couldn’t read.”
The reviewer acknowledges that it’s difficult to get the argument without reading the book. But, it does fit in with at least some recent research.
For instance, the work of Carol Dweck, outlined nicely in this piece, How Not to Talk to Your Kids.
She’s found that telling kids they’re smart can actually prevent them from reaching their potential. They think that smart means everything should be easy, and they struggle when things aren’t.
I’m not exactly sure how Kohn’s treatment of incentives compare to the idea of a nudge, which is a less direct incentive. I haven’t read the book. But the reviewer warns “be prepared to discover that almost all of the things that you ever considered to be good management practice, are not.”
Tell me what you think.
