Is External Reward Useful?
Note from 2021:
Educators often use external rewards to encourage children to do the ‘right’ thing. One prominent case study I read about recently is YuanFuDao’s award system. YuanFuDao is China’s largest edtech company and their award system perpetuates through every segment of their online tuition center.
# YuanFuDao’s gamified system:
# Currency system
- Coins given for good behavior, participation in class, answering questions correctly etc.
- Coins can be exchange for more tutoring lessons or tuition center’s merchandise.
- Teachers emphasis importance of collecting coins & promote store items (Using phrases like “you don’t want to miss this”)
# Title system
- Students given title based on ability to answer questions in class. Title seems to reset for every class.
- Student’s title tagged to class’ online chat.
- Leaderboard shown at the end of the class
There seems to be 2 opposing schools of thoughts on external rewards. People arguing against external rewards generally believe that the presence of such rewards diminishes one’s internal motivation. Hence children are unlikely to behave accordingly in the absence of external rewards, which opposes our goal of helping children cultivate life-long habits.
It is not immediately obvious to me wether external reward is effective / detrimental to children’s long term growth. So I looked into some major theories behind this topic. Here’s my notes:
Distinguishing between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation:
Exam score on its own is not a form of external reward. Assuming exam scores are indicative of one’s ability, a student who is working towards a higher score for the pursuit of excellence / mastery of skills is internally motivated, while a student who is trying to score higher for praises and validations from those around him is externally motivated.
# 1. Cognitive evaluation theory:
# In intrinsically motivating events:
Changes in basic psychological needs in Self-Determination Theory–> changes in Intrinsic motivation
External rewards —> detrimental effect on the persistence of free choice (Autonomy) —> decrease in intrinsic motivation
Unexpected external rewards & non-controlling rewards –> Increase in competence (Competence)–> Increase in Intrinsic motivation
# In events that are not intrinsically motivating:
- Rewards does not decrease internal motivation
# 2. Overjustification effect
- Expected external inventive decreases person’s intrinsic motivation to perform task
- Human credits motivation to rewards, undermining pre-existing intrinsic motivation
- Study at South Methodist University –> Intrinsic motivation dependent on perceived competence
3. General Interest theory
Effect of intrinsic motivation extends beyond effect on autonomy and competence
“The content of tasks, and the context in which they are presented, including reward, increase intrinsic motivation when they convey that task performance helps satisfy needs, wants, or desires.”
Reward influence intrinsic motivation by symbolic function
Type/Context/Nature of reward conveys importance of being competent, perception of competence, identification with the task giver’s judgement of the task as important
People tend to evaluate their competence based on relative performance with their peers (#Questions Is this innate?). Rewards that reflect relative performance tend to lead to large increase in intrinsic motivation
# Thoughts:
So it seems like the theory of intrinsic motivation vs external reward is a lot more nuanced than the more broad generalization I have heard amongst the education community.
The long term effectiveness of external reward is highly dependent on its context. External rewards should be implemented such that it doesn’t hinder a child’s perceived autonomy and it should build up the child’s perceived competence.
- It seems to me that designing a reward system that builds up a child’s perceived competence for a particular skill is tricky especially if the system is broad based to the entire classroom. Oftentimes, building up one child’s confidence would indirectly negatively impact another’s. Tailored reward system seems to be the way to go but this certainly requires an educator that really cares about every child and has the bandwidth to track their progress individually (I wonder how ML can help in this).
One interesting point brought up by the general interest theory is the internalization of external motivations. Rewards from authority for a certain action coveys desirability of the action. Somethings (ie. eating healthy) are certainly desirable but not intuitively obvious to kids or we are not internally motivated to do so. In these cases, reward systems can be employed to convey such desirability, however, it must be designed to be weaned off eventually.
In cases, where children are not intrinsically motivated to act a certain way and where there is no long term consequence of the lack of such intrinsic motivation, external rewards can be an efficient and fun way to give adults a peace of mind.
# Questions:
- Are children intrinsically motivated to act kindly? If we were to do design a reward system around kindness, how should it look it?