Where Stuhff Happens

Where Stuhff Happens

Matt Stuhff  //  I love to see how technology can or can't impact our daily lives and our future as individuals, a society, and a world. I also enjoy long words (sesquipedalian) and great food (who doesn't?).

Oct 14 / 10:31am

Rewards can backfire

Each child was invited into a separate room to draw for 6 minutes then afterwards either given their reward or not depending on the condition. Then, over the next few days, the children were watched through one-way mirrors to see how much they would continue drawing of their own accord. The graph below shows the percentage of time they spent drawing by experimental condition:

time_spent_drawing2

This is an interesting article talking about some recent research having to do with intrinsic and extrinsic motivators.

I would have expected the "Surprise Reward" group to do better than the "No Reward" group, but according to the article (and the graph above) there was no statistically significant difference.

Loading mentions Retweet

0 comments

Leave a comment...

 
To leave a comment on this posterous, please login by clicking one of the following.
Posterous-login     Connect     twitter