Literature Review: Conformity and Deviation (Part 2)

Continuing with Berg and Bass' Conformity and Deviation, I will now go over psychological behaviorism and the traits related to conformity.  

What are the exact phenomenal means by which conformity can be induced into groups and individuals? Rather than looking at the occurrences of group situations and viewing the factors that impact them, I will now dive into how behaviors are psychologically formed to produce conformity and the individual traits that affect it. 

Berg and Bass strive to reconcile three separate dispositional theories from various other conformity psychologists: the hypotheses of Murphy's (1947) "unity of perception and action", Asch's (1952) "isomorphism of experience and action", and Sherif's (1956) "unity of experience and action". They believe that in doing so they can reconcile theories that express past experiences, social perceptions, etc. with the theories that describe the elicitation of responses in the presence of external stimuli.  

In psychology, dispositional theories are otherwise known as traits and experimenters who measure these traits are primarily interested in how they form habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. "The conscious, perceptual experience thus referred to contains within it both central nervous system projections of the current external objects plus residues of past experience with similar objects" (p.101). With context, this means that whenever a person formulates a behavior through interacting with something they have their immediate perception of the object as well as the knowledge they have acquired about it in the past. Sensory neural inputs are filtered through the brain's association areas in which learned meanings are represented. Such awareness or perceptions are hypothesized to be isomorphic to - or corresponding with - behavior or action. 

Conformity research is typically research in composite dispositions. This means psychologists measure traits that correlate with a behavior and calculate them into composites The research is usually centered around instances of incompatible dispositional tendencies caused by individual and social modes of behavior. To clarify, I am describing conformity through the lens of behavioral psychology and how people acquire certain dispositions. "For social beings, learning by direct experience is only one of the several ways of acquiring behavioral dispositions" (p. 103). The authors articulate on six distinguishable methods or 'modes' by which people's behavior is shaped. The first two are personal while the other four are considered social modes: 

1. Learning, blind trial and error, or locomotor exploration. This means that if an experiment was done where a child was blindfolded, it could learn its way about in a room through a series of explorations, and eventually interpret its surroundings.

2. Perception. If a child is placed in a balcony overlooking the room, by which the experimental scenario is made visible, then the behavioral dispositions acquired are equivalent to trial and error. This would mean that mnemonic expectations of a scenario would coordinate with perceptual expectations and the behavior that is produced is not likely distinguishable to personal exploration. Amusingly, Berg and Bass mention an experiment that involved elevating animals before they entered a maze where this theory, to some extent, applied.

3. Perceptual observation of the outcomes of another person's trial-and-error exploration. Postulate a scenario you were to take two children, both equally unaware of the contents of a room, in which one explores by trial and error and the other watches. Logically, the observing child should acquire behavioral dispositions very similar to those acquired simultaneously by the model through trial and error. This is especially important in society since human beings are successfully equipped so as to learn and profit from the experiences of others.

4. Perceptual observation of another person's responses. If a child had learned behaviors based on the whereabouts of the room, an observing child can see the results of his responses and later mimic their pattern. This produces an overt response sequence indistinguishable from that of the model (the first child). "Miller and Dollard (1941) have called this matched dependent behavior and have demonstrated that both rats and children can learn to initiate responses independently of mode 3, in which information about the environment is obtained by observing the outcomes to another when that other explores" (p.105).

5. Linguistic instruction about the characteristic of objects. Once one child has learned the room, he can easily induce a parallel set of behavioral dispositions in a second child by saying: "The green box will give you a shock. The red box has candy in it. The other boxes are all empty".

6. Linguistic instruction about responses to be made. Finally, a knowledgeable child could tell another child "Take three steps forward and two steps to your right. Open the red box and place your hand inside. Then completely ignore the green box".

Though this sounds boring at first glance, if you were to stop and think about the ways that humans shift behaviors, in general, you would eventually come up with: "Well, they can experience something themselves, see someone else do it, see someone else's reactions, or be told how to do it".

After the authors list each mode related to behavior, they provide us with traits that are directly related to conformity associated with each mode. Here is the practical sociological stuff! Of the six modes of dispositions, giving weight to social modes (such as 3, 4, 5, or 6) is regarded as synonymous with conformity, suggestibility, persuadability, or yielding. As a result, relying on individual dispositional source or personal modes (1 or 2) will lead to decreased conformity while strengthening social sources lead to increased conformity. 

1.      Learning and competence.

a.      Learning

                                                    i.   The stronger the specific individual disposition (attitude, habit, knowledge, belief, response-tendency, expectancy, etc.)against which social-dispositional sources conflicts, the less the conformity

The more difficult the subject material, i.e., the less well learned and unfamiliar the task, the more the conformity.

                                                  ii.     The greater a person’s knowledge on a subject, the less conformant he is.

                                                iii.     The older a person is, the more established his dispositions and therefore the less conformant he is.

                                                iv.     The more certain the person is about a judgment, the less conformity he will demonstrate (These principles deal with the strength of the specific disposition when conformity pressures are involved. These subsequent principles are not specific to a single disposition).

b.     Competence

                                               i.        The more competent the person has been in learning and generating valid dispositions through individual modes the more heavily he weigh in individual modes over social modes.

                                            ii.         The more intelligent and generally competent a person is, the less he will conform. (This rationale is actually important in the survey that I am doing for my senior project).

                                          iii.         The higher a person’s status, the greater his influence on others, the less conformant,  he will be.

                                          iv.         The greater a person’s self-perceived own ability, the less his conformity. The more self-esteeming, self-assured, aggressive, impulsive, self-confident, etc. persons are less conformant.

                                             v.        The greater the general value placed upon individual achievement, the less conformity will occur.

2.      Perception.

a.      The clearer and more distinct the perceptual situation, the stronger the perceptual disposition, the less conformity is likely to occur.

b.     Judgments based upon memory are more subject to conformity influence than those based upon immediate perception.

3.      Observational Learning.

a.       Simple vicarious reinforcement. A person observing the behavior of a model will acquire the same incentives or valences which the model is acquiring, providing the conditions of observation and communication are adequate to inform the observer of the rewards and punishments being received by the model. Simply put, The more rewarded the model for the act or response, the more conformant will be the observer. The more punished the model the more the observer will tend to inhibit the punished act.

b.      Prestige generalization across behavior samples for one model. A person observing the responses of a model in a situation in which the reinforcement for the model cannot be observed will acquire positive valence and incentive for the response being made by the model to the extent that the responses of the model have been observed to be rewarding to the model in previous situations. (Translation: The more the observer sees the model be rewarded, the more conformant will be the observer).

                                                    i.     Intelligent, strong, successful, high-status persons will induce more conformity than low-status ones. Adults induce more conformity in children than peers. Older students as models induce more conformity than younger ones.

c.      Prestige generalization across models. Persons raised by the more competent, effective parents, and surrounded by the more effective adequate, teachers and peers will be more gullible and conformant to a new model. This makes sense considering that in the individuals perceive their social groups to be very reliable and therefore will be more willing to conform. Meanwhile, Persons raised by ineffectual parents and surrounded by failures, will be less conformant to a new model.

                                                    i.     The average person from a stable social background will tend to conform to new models.

d.     The more numerous the models modeling the same act, the stronger the incentive for the act. With groups of four, five, and six more conformity was found in the larger groups. It is noted that with regret that this principle has had only partially consistent conformation, or that the asymptote occurs at a very low number of others. Asch (1951) found that three other people were more persuasive than one or two, but more numerous models had no additional effect.

4.       Reinforced initiative responding 

a.       Rewarding observers for imitative responses led to increased imitation of a given model.

b.     Imitation generalizes across models. Observers reinforced for imitating a given model will tend to imitate new similar models.  

c.      The more rewarding a model has been, the more an observer will tend to imitate the model’s acts in the model’s absence.

5.      Verbal Instruction

a.      The more a communicator's own responses have been known the have been rewarding to the communicator the more his communications about the goodness and badness of descriptions and actions will lead to positive and negative incentives for those descriptions and actions.

b.     The more that similar communicators have been observed to have their own actions rewarded in the past, the more influential a new communicator will be.

c.      The more similar the communicator to past effective communicators, the more persuasive he will be. For these reasons, ceteris paribus, movie and TV presentations are more effective than radio, which is more effective than the printed page.

To summarize, the authors focused on combining dispositional theories that are borrowed from both cognitive and behavioristic psychological sources. "Social-observational modes of acquiring dispositional strength have been given particular emphasis" (p. 132). Finally, conformity research is typified as one in which individual dispositional tendencies or simply traits are compared with social sources. These traits and correlations are measured and general findings of conformity can be confirmed and published.

If you're interested in the book  (or dubious about my claims), you can pick it up from Amazon: Conformity and Deviation.

  

Literature Review: Conformity and Deviation (Part 1)

    

Conformity is one of the most notorious areas of study in the field of social psychology. Earlier we mentioned it as “the act of changing one’s behavior to match the responses of others" (Cialdini, 2004). But now we are going to investigating it through the lens of the earliest formalized studies of it and how it relates to conversion, deviation, and other significant sociological tendencies. Without further ado, I bring to you Conformity and Deviation by Berg and Bass! 

"Conformity, resistance, and conversion share basic psychological processes in common, based on the fact that an individual requires a stable framework, including salient and firm reference points, in order to orient himself and to regulate his interactions with others" (Helson, 1955; Sherif, 1936). An individual's framework provides them with the opportunity to establish themselves and, as a result, controls their behavior with regards to internal and external influences. Therefore, someone with a well-defined personal composition would be said to be capable of filtering out information that is inconsistent with themselves. 

In the absence of such a framework, the individual can seek ways to orient themselves in social contexts which may lead them to consider or accept conforming attitudes. For example, subtle influences to someone's behavior, under optimal conditions, can cause shifts in attitudes, opinions, and understandings even when the person is unaware of this. In other words, "Conversion can be produced by demonstrating the inadequacy of as a presently accepted frame of reference and then introducing another which is more satisfactory"(Berg & Bass, 2). An example of this occurs when a person comes into a social situation where his actions, judgments, or opinions different than those of others. This leads to a dilemma, in which the individual must decide to either succumb to peer influence and conform or maintain his personal position and deviate from the group. Successful influence or pressure towards conformity is called conversion and occurs when someone corresponds his behavior to match that of others. On the other hand, not deciding to change one's framework and remaining independent of the group is called resistance or deviation.

Individuals appear to be more susceptible to conformity pressures when expressing social opinions and ideological attitudes and when dealing with abstractions rather than concrete experience or well-acquainted, factual subjects. When an individual is uncertain about their own beliefs or is uninformed, they tend to be easily influenced by others.  Tendencies toward conformity and conversion are heightened when an individual is with others, at least three in member, where the others are in uniform agreement or whose opinions are only slightly off from that of the individual's beliefs. "From a personality angle, the kind of individual who is least able to resist conformity pressures, and probably interrogation pressures as well, is submissive, lacking in self-confidence, less intelligent, lacking in originality, authoritarian-minded, lacking in achievement motivation, conventional, and searching for social approval"(p.28).       

Berg and Bass cite hundreds of conformity studies explaining how they were implemented to try to find factors leading to conformity. They view conformity as being conceived as the reflection of successful influence. Going from that definition, the authors applied a general theory of interpersonal behavior to create multiple theorems and hypothesizes that affected conformity and deviation. They are as follows:

           1. The importance of the group, the situation, and the individual members are relative
matters. We can increase or decrease the significance of each at will (p.17).

2. Group goals modify subsequent behavior to the extent that they are relevant to the members of the group (p.51)

3. Immediate rather than ultimate effectiveness is more significant for understanding interaction among individuals (p.54).

4. Members will tend to behave in ways to maintain or increase a group's effectiveness to the extent the group rewards its members  (p.75). Assuming that absence of conflict in interactions is rewarding, members will conform to each to each other rather than disagree in the expectation of maintaining secure, harmonious, and satisfying relationships.  

5. Conformity is greater in more attractive groups (p.244).

6. If the group’s source of attraction to members is its control of what is wanted by the members, the group has the power to coerce motivated members, resulting in increase in public but not necessarily private conformity with increases in attraction. The greater the group’s control, the more conformity is likely to occur. (p.241).  

7. If the group’s source of attraction is its perceived greater ability to cope with problems than can be done alone, members can be persuaded by the group’s decisions - resulting in increases in both public and private conformity with increases in the group’s attractiveness (p.240).  

8. The clearer the group’s rewards and goals, the more attractive will be the group (p.65); hence the clearer its goals, the more members will conform to the group.

9. The more members share the same goals obtainable through cooperation, the more likely they will be attracted to each other (p.69); hence the more members will share the same goals obtainable through cooperation, the more likely they are to conform to each other in their behavior.

10. A group is more attractive, the greater the rewards which may be earned by membership and the greater the expectation of earning them (p.60); hence the greater rewards and expectancies of reward for membership, more likely the conformity to group demands.   

11. Current effectiveness promotes subsequent attractiveness (p.79); hence conformity currently is likely to be greater in a group that experienced effectiveness earlier; more dissension and deviation is likely to occur in a group with a preceding history of failure.  

12. Members of groups are motivated by consideration or lack of it: promises of reward, support, affection, or threats of punishment, burdensome demands and deflation of self-esteem (p.99). Since conformity is defined as a reflection of influence,

13. Leadership is accomplished by initiating structure - making others more able to overcome the obstacles thwarting goal attainment (p.101). Assuming conformity is the obverse of leadership, it follows that conformity of an individual will depend on the extent others in his group instruct, supervise, inform, or decide for him.  

14. Influence occurs sooner, to a greater extent and brings more reinforcement as a consequence of interaction (p.129). Assuming that conformity reflects leadership, a function of interaction, conformity to the demands of others is more likely to occur faster when interaction is possible.  

15. As problems facing the group become more difficult or as the members become less able to cope with their problems, more leadership becomes possible (p.134). Since conformity is a reflection of leadership, as problems of the group become more difficult or as the members become less able, conformity is likely to increase in that group.

16. If the difficulties facing a group are too great, members’ expectations of failure may make the groups sufficiently unattractive to cause the members to withdraw rather than attempt to solve the problems or attempt to succeed as leaders (p.137). Assuming that conformity is the observe of leadership, if the group's difficulties are too great, members may deviate further from the norms of the group rather than increase in conformity.  

17.  The task-oriented leader will attempt leadership most often when the group is

attractive to him because of its tasks and the rewards for task success (p. 155). Considering conformity as the obverse of leadership, the task orientated member will attempt to conform to his group to the extent it is attractive to him because of its tasks and rewards for task effectiveness, and when he sees such conformity enables him to achieve task success.    

18. The interaction-orientated member will avoid attempting leadership likely to disrupt current patterns of interaction or likely to involve risks of making mistakes while interacting with others (p. 156). Considering conformity as the obverse of leadership, the interaction-orientated member will attempt to conform to avoid disrupting current patterns of interaction or to avoid making mistakes while interacting with others.   

19. The self-orientated member is more concerned with his success rather than effectiveness as a leader (p.153). Considering conformity as the observe of leadership, it follows that the self-oriented member conforms to the extent that doing so meets his personal needs irrespective of whether it is conducive to the task or interaction effectiveness of the group.   

20. One member can persuade another if he has demonstrated his ability to solve the other member’s problems (p.162). Considering conformity as the obverse of leadership, it follows that one member will conform to the suggestion of another if the other has demonstrated his ability to solve the first member’s problems.

21. In a wide variety of situations, the more fluent, intelligent, original, and adaptable member is more likely to succeed as the leader (p.166). Considering conformity as the obverse of leadership, it follows that in a wide variety of situations, the less fluent, the less intelligent, less original, and less adaptable member is more likely to conform to the suggestions of others.   

22. The would-be leader cannot be too much more able than those he leads to succeed maximally as a leader (p.177). Considering conformity as the obverse of leadership, it follows that a member may be unable rather than unwilling to conform to the norms of his group, because of his very great lack of ability of others in his group.   

23. The ability of the leader must be relevant to solving the problems of the groups he expects to lead (p. 174). Considering conformity as the obverse of leadership, conformity of the less able person will depend on his inadequacies in solving the particular problems of the group in which he is a member.  

24. If he has been successful and effective earlier, a leader will succeed and be effective to a maximum in any situation the more it actually resembles the earlier one (p.183); assuming that conformity is a reflection of leadership, conformity to others will be maximum in a new situation the more the new situation resembles an earlier one in which conformity occurred in the same way for the same reasons.

25. Successful leaders are more likely to have been the youngest child in their family; had  facilitating, stimulating, approving, accepting parents; and come from harmonious, friendly, tolerant, family atmospheres (pp.195-198). Assuming conformity is the obverse of leadership, it follows that, conformists are more likely to have been the oldest child in their family; had domineering, inconsistent, rejecting, parents; and come from discordant, unfriendly, intolerant family atmospheres.     

26.  Conformity to group standards and decisions is greater among more influential members and those closer initially to the majority or group decision (p. 247).   

27. The higher one’s status, the more likely he is to succeed as a leader among those of lower status (p. 269). Assuming conformity is the obverse of leadership, it follows that the lower one’s status the more likely he is to conform to those of higher status.   

28. Conformity to the person with status but without power will continue until it became apparent that the figurehead has only the symbols of status. Even then, others may conform ritualistically to the powerless bearer of status symbols because the ritual is habitual and satisfying in its own right, or is a custom approved by the group whose violation would bring social disapproval (p. 267).  

29. The higher one’s esteem, the more likely he is to succeed as a leader among those of lower esteem (p.289). Assuming conformity is the obverse of leadership, it follows that the less esteem a member has, the more likely he is to conform to the suggestions of others.

30. The more esteemed member can be more persuasive if his esteem depends on being perceived as being able to solve the group’s problems; he can be more coercive if his esteem depends on his personal control of what is desired by others in the group (p.289) Assuming conformity is the obverse of leadership, it follows that (a) a member is more likely to be persuaded, conforming both publically and privately, if his lack of esteem is due to lack of ability and (b) he is more likely to be coerced, conforming both but not privately, if his lack of esteem is due to his lack of personal power.   

31. Conformity to group decisions, modal opinion, or norms of behavior, should be greater among groups where mutual esteem is high.   

32. The person with high self-esteem appears more likely to change others, to lead others, rather than be changed by others to conform readily.

33. Increases in self-accorded status reduce the tendency to conform.

34. Events preceding the conformity behavior or taking place concurrently may result in the failure of what would have been conforming behavior.

35. Conformity is likely to be greater in situations of crisis or emergency.

Hey, nobody said sociology was particularly fun (but understanding others is quite fascinating). To summarize, the authors spend a significant part of the first quarter of the text to enumerate numerous conditions and factors that affect rates of conformity and deviation. They interpret conforming behavior as an aspect of the general phenomenon of interaction. In this sense, they were able to form generalizations about conformity through a wide collection of facts which have been well established.      

If you're interested in the book  (or dubious about my claims), you can pick it up from Amazon: Conformity and Deviation.

Question #2 - Beliefs

To what extent are the beliefs you hold originally your own or adopted from others such as peers, parents, and education? 

Quote #2 - Friedrich Nietzsche

The surest way to corrupt the youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.  

-Friedrich Nietzsche 

Literature Review: Punished By Rewards (Part One)

     As part of my duties in conducting a Senior Research Project, I will read course texts and articles related my to project on achievement motivation and conformity. So to begin, this week I will read part of Alfie Kohn's Punished By Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes.  This blog will discuss the main concepts of the book so far, with some relevant examples. (This will a lengthy post since the book best explains motivation through an exposition of society and its tendencies to reward others compared to approaching the topic of motivation from a definitive angle.)  

     In society, the method of choice of getting anyone to do something is to provide a reward to people when they act the way we want them to. According to Kohn, "Scholars have debated this phenomenon and traced its development to the intellectual tradition known as behaviorism. The core of pop behaviorism lies in the simple eloquence of "Do this and you'll get that". We take for granted that this is the logical way to raise children, teach students, and manage employees" (p. 3).

    However, Kohn takes the ambitious aim to argue that there is something profoundly wrong with this doctrine - that its assumptions are misleading and that the practices it generates are both "intrinsically objectionable and counterproductive". He states that, "To offer this indictment is not to suggest that there is anything wrong with most of the things used as rewards; the problem doesn't rest in bubble gum nor in money, love, or attention. But what's concerning is the practice of using these things as rewards. The real trouble lies when we take what people want or need and offer it on a contingent basis in order to control how they act" (p. 4). Kohn's premise is that "rewarding people for compliance is not the "the way the world works" as many insist. It is not a fundamental law of human nature. It is but one way of thinking and speaking, of organizing our experience and dealing with others. ... It actually reflects a particular ideology that can be questioned. The steep price we pay for the uncritical allegiance to the use of rewards is what makes this story not only intriguing but also deeply disconcerting" (p. 4)

     Survivors of introductory psychology courses will recall that there are two major varieties of learning theory: classical conditioning (Pavlov's dogs) and operant or instrumental conditioning (Skinner's rats). Classical conditioning begins with the observation that some things produce natural responses while Operant conditioning, by contrast, is concerned with how an action is controlled. Skinner, who preferred the term reinforcement to reward, demonstrated that when a reinforcement follows a behavior, that behavior is likely to be repeated. In the end, Skinnerian theory formalizes the idea of rewards; that "Do this and you'll get that" will lead an organism to do "this " again. 

     Behaviorists tend to see the psychological word as scientists would see it. As a behaviorist sees humanity, humans are different than other animals only in the degree of their sophistication. To quote Watson's words on the very first page of Behaviorism, "Man is an animal different from other animals only in the types of behavior he displays". Most people like to think that the existence of uniquely human capacities would raise serious questions about reducing humans to sets of behavior. But Burrhus Fredric Skinner insisted that "organisms (including us) are nothing more than "repertoires for behaviors", and these behaviors can be fully explained by outside forces he called environmental contingencies. A person is not an originating agent; he is a locus, a point at which many genetic and environmental conditions come together in a joint effect" (p. 5-6). 

     Kohn argues that there are terrible consequences of patterning psychology after the natural sciences. "Psychology's subject matter is reduced to the status of the subject matter of physics and chemistry. When we try to explain things, we appeal to causes" (p. 9). Kohn believes that very notion is against how we think of humanity in our daily lives. "When most of us try to account for human behavior, though, we talk about reasons; a conscious decision rather than an automatic response to some outside force, usually plays a role" (p. 9). However, for behaviorists like Skinner, human actions are completely accounted for by external causes. Would this mean values, emotions, and ideals are mere illusions?

     American thinking is largely based upon these scientific ideals. Kohn gives an anecdote from an American businessman, who said, "All that matters is the measurable outcome, and if that is judged a failure, the effort by definition was not good enough." Kohn goes on to say that, in the American mind, if something "can't be quantified, it's not real" (p. 9). He says that this thinking typifies the American mindset. "It is no accident that behaviorism is this country's major contribution to the field of psychology, or that the only philosophical movement native to the United States is pragmatism. We are a nation that prefers acting to thinking, and practice to theory; we are suspicious of intellectuals, worshipful of technology and fixated on the bottom line. We define ourselves by numbers - take-home pay and cholesterol counts, percentiles and standardized tests. By contrast, we are uneasy with intangibles and unscientific abstractions such as a sense of well-being and intrinsic motivation to learn" (p. 10)

A thorough criticism of scientism would take us too far afield. But it is important to understand that practice does rest on theory, whether or not that theory has been explicitly identified. Behind the practice of presenting a colorful dinosaur sticker to a first grader who stays silent on command is a theory that embodies distinct assumptions about the nature of knowledge, the possibility of choice, and what it means to be a human being. 

     Some social critics have a habit of overstating the popularity of whatever belief or practice they are keen to criticize, perhaps for dramatic effect. There is little danger of doing that here because it is hard to imagine how one could exaggerate the extent of our saturation in pop behaviorism. Regardless of political persuasion or social class, whether it be a Fortune 500 CEO or a preschool teacher, we are immersed in this doctrine; it is as American as rewarding someone with apple pie. To induce students to learn we present stickers, stars, certificates, awards, trophies, membership in elite societies, and above all grades. If the grades are good enough, some parents then hand out bicycles or cars or cash thereby offering what are, in effect, rewards for rewards. Educators are remarkably imaginative in inventing new, improved versions of the same basic idea. At one high school, for example, students were given gold ID cards if they had an A average, silver cards for a B average, and plain white cards if they didn't measure up - until objections were raised to what was widely viewed as a caste system.  A full century earlier, a system developed in England for managing the behavior of school children assigned some students to monitor others and distributed tickers (redeemable for toys) to those who did what they were supposed to do. This plan, similar to what would later be called a "token economy" program of behavior modification, was adopted by the first public school in New York City in the early years of the nineteenth century. It was eventually abandoned because, in view of the school's trustees, the use of rewards "fostered a mercenary spirit" and "engendered strife and jealousies".  A few years ago, some executive at the Pizza Hut restaurant chain decided - let us assume for entirely altruistic reasons - that the company should sponsor a program to encourage children to read more. The strategy for reaching this goal: bribery. For every so many books that a child reads in the "Book It!" program, the teacher provides a certificate redeemable for free pizza. But why stop with edible rewards? One representative congratulated West Georgia College for paying third graders two dollars for each book they read. "Adults are motivated by money - why not kids?" he remarked, managing to overcome the purported aversion to throwing money at problems. Politicians may quibble over how much money to spend, or whether to allow public funds to follow students to private schools, but virtually no one challenges the fundamental carrot-and-stick approach to motivation: promise educators pay raises for success or threaten their job security for failure - typically on the basis of their student's standardized test scores- and it is assumed that educational excellence will follow. 

    

     To induce children to "behave" (that is, do what we want), we rely on precisely the same theory of motivation - the only one we know - by hauling our another bag of goodies. These examples can be multiplied by the thousands, and they are not restricted to children. Any time we wish to encourage or discourage certain behaviors  - getting people to lose weight or quit smoking, for instance - the method of choice is behavioral manipulation. But don't the widespread use of rewards suggest that they work? Why would a failed strategy be preferred? The answer to this will become clearer later on as its explained how and why they fail to work. For now, it will be enough to answer in temporal terms: the negative effects appear over a longer period of time, and by then their connection to the rewards may not be at all obvious. The result is that rewards keep getting used. Whacking my computer when I first turn it on may somehow help the operating system to engage, but if I had to do that every morning, I will eventually get the idea that I am not addressing the real problem. If I have to whack it harder and harder, I might even start to suspect that my quick fix is making the problem worse. Rewards don't bring about the changes we are hoping for, but the point here is also that something else is going on: The more rewards are used, the more they seem to be needed. The more often I promise you a goody to do what I want, the more I will cause you to respond to, and even to require, these goodies. More substantive reasons for you to do your best tend to evaporate, leaving you with no reason to try except for obtaining a goody. In short, the current use of rewards is due less to some fact about human nature than to the earlier us of rewards. Whether or not we are conscious that this cycle exists, it may help to explain why we have spun ourselves ever deeper in the mire of behaviorism. But aside from some troubling questions about the theory of behaviorism, what reasons do we have for disavowing this strategy? That is the question to which we now turn. 

     The belief that rewards will be distributed fairly, even if it takes until the next lifetime to settle accounts, is one component of what is sometimes referred to as the just "world view". The doctrine has special appeal for those who are doing well, first because it allows them to think their blessings are well-deserved, and second because it spares them from having to feel too guilty about (or take responsibility for) those who have much less. The basic idea is that people should get what they deserve, what social scientists refer to as the equity principle, seems unremarkable and, indeed, so intuitively plausible as to serve for many people virtually as a definition of fairness. Rarely do we even think to question the idea that what you put in should determine what you take out. But the value of the equity principle is not nearly as self-evident as it may seem. Once we stop to examine it, questions immediately arise as to what constitutes deservingness. Do we reward on the basis of how much effort is expended (work hard, get more goodies)? What if the result of hard work is failure? Does it make more sense then, to reward on the basis of success (do well, get more goodies)? But "do well" by whose standard? And who is responsible for the success. Excellence is often the product of cooperation and even individual achievement typically is built on the work of other people's earlier efforts. These questions lead us gradually to the recognition that equity is only one of several ways to distributed resources. Different circumstances call for different criteria. Few school principles hand out more supplies to the teachers who stayed longer the night before to finish a lesson plan; rather, they look at the size and requirements of each class. Few parents decide how much dinner to serve to each of their children on the basis of who did more for the household that day. In short, the equity model applies to only a limited range of the social encounters that are affected by the desire for justice. To assume that fairness always requires that people should get what they "earn" - that the law of the marketplace is the same things as justice - is a very dubious proposition indeed. The assumption that people should be rewarded on the basis of what they have is not as much a psychological law about human nature as it is a psychological outcome of a culture's socialization practices. 

    Not long ago, Kohn mentions a teacher in Missouri justify the practice of handing stickers to her young students on the grounds that the children have "earned" them. This claim struck me as an attempt to deflect attention away from - perhaps to escape responsibility for - the decision she had made to frame learning as something one does in exchange for a prize rather than intrinsically valuable. But how any stickers does a flawless spelling assignment merit? One? Ten? Why not a dollar? After the fact, one could claim that any rewards "earned" by the performance, but since these are not needed goods that must be handed out according to one one principle or another, we must eventually recognize that not only that the size of the reward is arbitrarily determined by the teacher but that the decision to give any reward reflects a theory of learning more than a theory of justice. When we repeatably promise rewards to children for acting responsibly, or to students for making an effort to learn something, or to employees for doing quality work, we are assuming that they could not or would not choose to act this way on their own. If the capacity for responsible action, the natural love of learning, and the desire to do good work are already part of who we are, then the tacit assumption to the contrary can fairly be described as dehumanizing. Now there are circumstances, especially where children are involved, in which it is difficult to imagine eliminating all vestiges of control. But anyone who is troubled by a model of human relationship founded principally on the idea of one person controlling another must ponder whether rewards are as innocuous as they are sometimes made out to be. 

     Clearly, punishments are harsher and more overt; there is no getting around to control in "Do this or else here's what will happen to you." But rewards simply "control through seduction rather than force." The point to be emphasized is that all rewards, by virtue of being rewards, are not attempts to influence or persuade or solve problems together but simply to control. In fact, if a task is undertaken in response to the contingency set up by the rewarder, the person's initial action in choosing the task is constrained. This feature of rewards is much easier to understand when we are being controlled than when we are doing the controlling. This is why it is so important to imagine ourselves in the other position, to take the perspective of the person whose behavior we are manipulating. It is easy for a teacher to object to a program of merit pay - to say how patronizing it is to be bribed with extra money for doing what some administrator decides is a good job. It takes much more effort for the teacher to see how the very same is true of grades or offers of extra recess when she becomes the controller. By definition, it would seem, if one person controls another, the two individuals have unequal status. The use of rewards (or punishments) is facilitated by the lack of symmetry but also acts to perpetuate it. If you doubt that rewarding someone emphasizes the rewarder's position of greater power, imagine that you have given your next-door neighbor a ride downtown, or some help moving a piece of furniture, and that he then offers you a five dollars for your trouble. If you feel insulted by that gesture, consider why this should be, what the payment implies. If rewards not only reflects differences in power but also contributes to them, it should be surprising that their use may benefit the more powerful party, the rewarder. This point would seem almost too obvious to bother mentioning except for the fact that, in practice, rewards are typically justified as being in the interests of the individual receiving them. Who benefits? - is always a useful question to ask about a deeply entrenched and widely accepted practice. In this case, it is not merely the individual rewarder who comes out ahead; it is the institution, the social practice, the status quo that is preserved by the control of people's behavior. If rewards bolster the traditional order of things, then to de-emphasize conventional rewards threatens the existing power structure.                

     To conclude, it is ironic that a semi-starved rat in a box, with virtually nothing to do but press on a lever for food, captures the essence of all human behavior. Also, while it may seem that reward-and-punishment strategies are inherently neutral, this is not completely true. If it were, the fact that these strategies are invariably used to promote order and obedience would have to be explained as a remarkable coincidence. Giving people rewards is not an obviously fair or appropriate practice across all situations; to the contrary, it is an inherently objectionable way of reaching our goals by virtue of its status as a means of controlling others.   

     If you're interested in the book, you can pick it up from Amazon: Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes.

(More exposition and analysis in subsequent posts!)