How Not To Talk To Your Kids - Part 2

From Po & Ash:

When researching praise for our New York article, one of the first things that we needed to understand was the concept of what exactly was praise, and what was it supposed to do accomplish. Essentially, praise is a communication of a warm, enthusiastic response.

But here's where it gets tricky. Is praise a reward? Is saying "Good job, Honey" for an "A" on an exam the same as handing a kid an iTunes gift-card? There are both physiological and psychological factors that need to be taken into account to answer that question.

Each of us, when we are growing up, develops our own motivation personality. Just as you never forget how to ride a bike, parts of your brain never forget what is was like to learn to ride a bike. In our brains is the reward center, the nucleus accumbens. When we learn to do hard things, (ride a bike, earn an A grade, learn to read) this nucleus accumbens gets lit up with dopa. Our brain records what kind of rewards were present at the time - how did I get that dopa? And we kinda wire our brains to expect those same mix of rewards in the future - how will I get more dopa?

Lead by University of Rochester's Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, there is an influential school of scholarship on motivation. Deci and Ryan have argued that motivation can be divided into two types – intrinsic and extrinsic.

Intrinsic motivation is when you do something just because you love it – for the sheer joy and satisfaction of the experience. Extrinsic motivation is when you do something for a reward that comes from someone or something else than yourself.

And while we wouldn't necessarily think of praise as an external reward, if brain chemistry's any indication, it's perceived as being closer to a tangible reward than we might initially consider. Praise then walks a fine-line, then with rewards and their positive and negative consequences on motivation. Research has shown that praise may increase adults' intrinsic motivation, but only if the praise is infrequent and genuine. Praise that is controlling or too frequent seems to become an external reward. And the problem with that is that external rewards are so emphemral, and inherently out of one's control, that those motivated by external rewards become more competitive and more image-driven.

For children, there seems to be some consensus that tangible rewards are destructive for children's intrinsic motivation. (All those read-a-book, get-a-pizza-party programs may be killing a generation's love of reading for pleasure.) But the effects of praise on intrinsic motivation seem less clear. Some of that has to do with the fact that so much of children's behavior is directed by parents and teachers – it's harder to parse out what actually a child wants to do and what he's doing because he's told to do so. Or that he was told to do something so frequently, that he's still echoing that earlier instruction.

But there are some studies that give clues as to the way recognition affects children's motivations. For example, in one study, the findings were actually an accident. Under the supervision of a researcher, children were given activities to do. The kids were having a good time playing, but then the researcher had to leave the room. When he returned, he discovered that the kids had stopped everything: they had just waited for his return. So the researcher left the room again. Again, the kids stopped everything – just waiting for him to come back. It wasn't a fluke. They changed the study, kept leaving the room, and realized the kids weren't playing because they enjoyed themselves – they were playing because they were getting attention.

Even those who haven't yet found praise to affect children's intrinsic motivation still look at the effect of praise on adults – the damage to motivation that can stem from too-frequent or praise as a means of control – and use this for a note of caution. They warn that recommendations calling for increased praise in educational settings are misguided and need to be reconsidered.