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:
via spring.org.uk
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.
Posted via web from Where Stuhff Happens