Studies show that rewards for things like grades or other achievements can lower performance, crush creativity, and lead to bad behavior, like a willingness to cheat on a test or take performance-enhancing drugs.1 Significantly, these external motivators can reinforce the idea that someone other than the child is responsible for his life. Rewards can erode self-generated interest and lead to interest only in the reward itself. What’s more, our clever brains see through external motivators; we’ve evolved in such a way as to detect them and to resist attempts to be coerced. We’ll devise ways to
...more
