Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes Audiobook (Free)

Our basic technique for bringing up children, teaching students, and managing employees can be summed up in six phrases: Do this, and you will get that. We dangle goodies (from chocolate bars to sales commissions) in front of people just as that we teach the family pet.

Unfortunately, attempts to control people with bonuses ultimately fail and even do lasting damage. Drawing from hundreds of studies, Kohn demonstrates that folks actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, levels, about Punished by Rewards: THE DIFFICULTY with Gold Celebrities, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes or additional rewards. What’s more, they have a tendency to lose interest in whatever they have already been manipulated with benefits to do.

Over time, this groundbreaking reserve has persuaded countless parents, teachers, and managers that benefits and punishments are actually two sides of the same coin, and it’s really a coin it doesn’t buy quite definitely. Kohn explains what it means to work with people instead of doing what to them-at home, at school, and at work. Seasoned with humor-and filled with new studies and stories within an Afterword written for the book’s revised edition-Punished by Rewards presents a disagreement unsettling to listen to but difficult to dismiss.