The Impact of Rewards on Children's Motivation

A couple of months ago, an article by journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer – whose work I normally greatly respect – started making the rounds on Facebook. Then (knowing my approach to parenting) a couple of readers emailed it to me and asked me what I thought of it. The article was called Go Ahead: Heap Rewards On Your Kid, with the subtitle: Parents are told stickers and trinkets for good behavior will ruin their children—but the research is wildly misunderstood.   Moyer’s main point is that while a large number of sources state that rewards are detrimental to children’s development (largely to their intrinsic motivation), “the literature on the potential dangers of rewards has been misinterpreted while the findings on its benefits have been largely overlooked.” I had already done an episode on the negative impact of rewards on children’s development. I was prepared to wholeheartedly disagree with Moyer’s article. But I came out of it sort of half-convinced that she might be right. So I came up with a two-pronged approach to the research for this episode. Firstly, I would dig into all the research that she read (and some more besides) to fully understand the evidence she consults, with one guiding premise: Is it possible that Moyer is right? Is it possible that rewards have some benefit for children and for families? And secondly, I wanted to ask Alfie Kohn – the author of Punished by Rewards – to address these issues in-person. Spoiler alert: heaping rewards on your kid is great for gaining compliance. If compliance is what you want in your child.  

Get a free guide called How to Stop Using Rewards To Gain Your Child’s Compliance (And what to do instead)

To tie in to this week’s episode, I have a FREE guide called How to Stop Using Rewards To Gain Your Child’s Compliance (And what to do instead) available as a preview of the membership group content. Each month you’ll get a guide just like this, walking you through a different aspect of parenting and helping you to make the changes needed to make sure your day-to-day-parenting is in line with your goals for the kind of child you want to raise. Because it turns out that the desire to raise an independent, thoughtful adult with strong critical reasoning skills isn’t so well aligned with rewarding a child for complying with your wishes.  

Mr. Alfie Kohn's Book

Punished by rewards: Twenty-fifth anniversary edition: The trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, As, praise, and other bribes - Affiliate link  

Parenting Membership 

If parenting feels really hard, and it seems like you’ve read all the books and you’ve asked for advice in free communities and you’re tired of having to weed through all the stuff that isn’t aligned with your values to get to the few good nuggets, then the Parenting Membership will help you out.   Join the waitlist and we'll let you know when enrollment reopens in May 2026. Click the banner to learn more.   References Barkley, R.A., & Benton, C.M. (2013). Your defiant child: 8 steps to better behavior. New York, NY: Guilford.

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Cameron, J., Banko, K.M., & Pierce, W.D. (2001). Pervasive negative effects of extrinsic motivation: The myth continues. The Behavior Analyst 24(1), 1-44.

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Deci, E.L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, E.M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin 125, 627-688.

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Flora, S.R., & Flora, D.B. (1999). Effects of intrinsic reinforcement for reading during childhood on reported reading habits of college students. The Psychological Record 49, 3-14.

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Hidi, S. (2016). Revisiting the role of rewards in motivation and learning: Implications of neuroscientific research. Educational Psychology Review 28, 61-93.

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Kazdin, A.E. (2008). The Kazdin method for parenting the defiant child. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.

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Kohn, A. (1999). Punished by rewards: The trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, As, praise, and other bribes. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.

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Kohn, A. (2016). The myth of the spoiled child: Coddled kids, helicopter parents, and other phony crises. Boston, MA: Beacon.

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Legault, L., Green-Demers, I., Grant, P., & Chung, J. (2007). On the self-regulation of implicit and explicit prejudice: A self-determination theory perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 33(5), 742-749.

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Legault, L. (2016). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. In V. Zeigler-Hill & T.K. Shackelford (Eds.)., Encyclopedia of personality and individual differences. New York, NY: Springer.

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MacIntyre, A. (1981). After Virtue. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

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Moyer, M.W. (2017, August 22). Go ahead, heap rewards on your child. Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_kids/2017/08/rewards_systems_for_kids_are_effective_if_you_use_them_correctly.html?via=gdpr-consent

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Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of Management Review, 26, 179-201