I was just reading about extrinsic motivators today in the book, What the Best College Teachers Do. The research cited there dates back to the 1970s and the work of Edward L. Deci. Apparently what he and his colleagues found is that most extrinsic motivators (money, prizes, grades) actually do work as long as they continue to be applied, but their effect on motivation or engagement is lost once the extrinsic motivator is removed; and, in fact, application of an extrinsic motivator appears to weaken any intrinsic motivation that existed before the extrinsic motivator was applied.

This theory has ramifications not only for paying students to go to school, or for good performance, but also whether grades are ultimately harmful to long-term student learning and comprehension. The research suggests that students who perceive getting good grades as a reward for studying tend to view learning as a performance or competition, not as a quest for mastery or self-fulfillment. When they graduate into the real world and are no longer rewarded with grades, they tend to stop learning, because the extrinsic motivator (grades) is removed. They also tend to "study for the test" and forget the lessons soon after, as the goal is always to perform well on the next exam, not to retain knowledge.

Not all extrinsic motivators appear to be damaging to intrinsic motivation. For example, the researchers (and those who have continued Deci's work) found that encouragement and praise were extrinsic motivators that often reinforce, or at least sustain, intrinsic motivation. The theory is that people (especially children) lose intrinsic motivation if they think they're being manipulated by the external reward: verbal encouragement and social acceptance are supposedly less transparent means of motivation than, say, money or grades.

Before reading this part of the book, I had thought that perhaps paying students for good academic performance was a good idea. Now I wonder if perhaps paying parents for their child's good performance is the right way to go, accompanied by a short course on developmental psychology for the parents.

Does he study children? The parenting schedule I have heard before is

(1) Young children are compelled to act by rewards/punishments. (2) Older children are compelled to act because they respect their parents' directions, even if they don't understand or agree with the directions. (3) Young adults choose to follows their parents because they understand and agree with the directions.

The point is that young children are just not cognitively able to appreciate adult reasoning. Yes, it's great if we can get 2nd graders excited about multiplication tables, but that's usually not possible.

And yet, the results in this article show extrinsic motivators to be beneficial to performance on some cognitive activities. Seems like it's an area that merits more research.

On a slightly more meta level, it seems like TED and Gladwell are making more topics bikesheddable.

Re: Meta - Perhaps, although the talk on Daniel Pink was something that was first shown to me in a class. After seeing it, I decided to read his book on my own time.

Also, for anyone who is interested in the book, I recommend just watching the video as it sums EVERYTHING up. The book just provides slightly more evidence and explanation.

I'm not sure that these kinds of experiments on adults can be applied to kids. We need to run a separate set of experiments on kids, the motivations are too different.