The Case Against Gold Stars

Call it the "gold-star syndrome." Sometimes we paste stars on a chart. At other times we offer toys or extra TV, candy or cash, pizza or special privileges. We reward kids for doing what we want instead of punishing them for disobeying.

Pull out a child-care book at random -- or just watch a typical parent at home -- and you'll notice that the emphasis is on "positive reinforcement." It is so pervasive that few of us pause to question its effects.

The bad news, according to a growing body of research, is that bribery -- which is what rewards amount to -- is not much of an improvement over punishing children. In fact, I strongly believe that rewards and punishments really aren't opposites at all. They are two sides of the same coin, and the coin doesn't buy very much.

"Rewards work!" many parents insist. But work to do what? And at what cost? The answer to the first question is that rewards, like punishments, are extremely effective at getting us one thing and one thing only: temporary obedience. What they can never do, however, is help children become responsible, ethical, decent people.

Studies conclude that rewards are ineffective. In the process of writing a book on the subject, I've found hundreds of studies showing that rewards are strikingly ineffective at producing lasting change in attitudes or behaviors. Once the rewards run out, people go right back to acting the way they did. And no wonder. Rewards don't create an enduring commitment to any value or action; they merely change what we do.

Consider the questions that children may ask themselves. Threaten a punishment and a child will come to ask, "What am I supposed to do, and what will happen to me if I don't do it?" Bribe him by dangling a reward and he'll wonder, "What am I supposed to do, and what will I get for doing it?" Notice how similar these two questions are, and how different from what we want children to ask: "What kind of person do I want to be?" Good values have to be grown from the inside out; bribes and threats at best change children's behavior only for a while.

But isn't temporary compliance sometimes good enough? Clearly it is tempting to use any means at our disposal to stop a four-year old from making a fuss at the store, to get an eight year-old out the door on time, or to get a ten-year-old to settle down and finish her homework. In the short term, a sufficiently appealing carrot will usually work. But the long-term costs are considerable.

Rewards simply control through seduction rather than force, according to University of Rochester psychologists Edward Deci, Ph.D., and Richard Ryan, Ph.D., and all techniques that rely on control ultimately undermine what children need in order to make good decisions and take responsibility for their actions. At least two studies have shown, for example, that kids whose parents reward them frequently are less generous than their peers.