Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, a's, Praise, and Other Bribes - Hardcover

Kohn, Alfie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395650283 ISBN 13: 9780395650288

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Trade), 1993

Synopsis

Our basic strategy for raising children, teaching students, and managing workers can be summed up in six words: Do this, and you'll get that. We dangle goodies (from candy bars to sales commissions) in front of people in the same way that we train the family pet. Unfortunately, attempts to manipulate people with incentives ultimately fail and even do lasting harm. Drawing from hundreds of studies, Kohn demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other rewards. What's more, they tend to lose interest in whatever they have been manipulated with rewards to do. Over the years, this groundbreaking book has persuaded countless parents, teachers, and managers that rewards and punishments are actually two sides of the same coin, and it's a coin that doesn't buy very much. Kohn explains what it means to work with people instead of doing things to them-at home, at school, and at work. Seasoned with humor-and containing new studies and stories in an Afterword written for the book's revised edition-Punished by Rewards presents an argument unsettling to hear but impossible to dismiss.

About this title

Synopsis:

Criticizes the system of motivating through reward, offering arguments for motivating people by working with them instead of doing things to them.

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (Trade)
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0395650283
• ISBN 13: 9780395650288
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 412