Fresh Take: Dr. Özgür Bolat on the Real Science of Motivating Kids

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0:31Heidi Grant:Hello, everyone, and welcome to What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. Our fresh take this week is with Dr. Osgar Bolat. He is a distinguished education scientist, researcher, associate professor, and author. His new book, The Reward Trap, Why Rewards Backfire, and The Real Science for Motivating Kids, which we'll be discussing today, is out now wherever books are sold. Welcome, Dr. Bolet. Thank you, Margaret. Let's start, I found this fascinating, with the study that you cite in chapter one, and you kind of have people predict, or the study asks people to predict, which is going to pay off.

1:18Heidi Grant:So tell us about that study. Okay, we can do the study right now. I will ask you, there are two groups of people, they will do puzzles. One group will be paid for each puzzle,$2. The other group will not be paid. Then when they stop paying, will they still continue to do the puzzle, even if there's no reward? The first session of the experiment, the first group is paid, the second is not. Right. In the second phase, no one is paid. Will they still continue to play? So what they are testing thing is when you offer a reward, it motivates, but what happens if you stop giving it? This is what they are testing in this experiment.

1:58Like 700 % predicted that they will still do it, even if they are not paid. The rewarded group will still continue to do it. And they did the actual experiment and they found the rewarded group stopped playing the puzzle once the researchers stopped paying them. So the conclusion is clear. Oh, the other thing is very interesting. And they asked, how certain are you in your prediction? And those who got it wrong were more confident in their predictions. Those who got it right were less confident. They are adamant in their wrong thoughts about rewards. So we have to correct this misconception. Right.

2:41Heidi Grant:That rewards are the way to motivate. I mean, in our case, we're mostly talking about children, but I think this is so interesting overall. And the way that rewards their intent and their outcome are completely separate often. and I was reading this book and I had just recently had a group of kids, just the cousins and my own kids in the house. And last year when we get firewood delivered, I was like, you guys go bring, you have to move the firewood from one part of the yard to the other. And I said, I'll pay you, you know, to do this job because it was heavy lifting and they hadn't really signed up for it.

3:22Heidi Grant:They were just coming over. And I can't remember what I paid them. It wasn't maybe 10 bucks to move wood for an hour. and now I find when I have that group of kids together, whenever I ask them to do anything from like put your plate in the dishwasher to, you know, clean up the spill that you spilt, what is the first question that they ask me? How much will you pay me? How much will you pay me? I read this book and I thought I should have read this book before I had to move the logs. But there is a misconception. Rewards motivate. No problem. But then I ask this, what do you mean by motivation?

4:02Motivation is not about compliance. You can make someone to do something by paying them.

4:09Heidi Grant:Yes. And they will do it. And you think, see, he's doing it. You think you're motivated and no, you're both compliance. So motivation is not about doing the things, not about compliance. What we want is ownership, commitment, and engagement. So you can make anyone do anything with rewards, but you cannot create intrinsic motivation, ownership, or commitment. So how do we test this? If you stop paying, if the kid doesn't stop, then okay, you created motivation. But most of the time, when rewards stop, behavior stops as well. It's helpful to define the idea of motivation. And then let's also define reward as you do in the book.

4:53Heidi Grant:In this case of the reward trap, what do you define as a reward? Reward is anything desirable offered on a condition. If I give you a present, it's not a reward. If I pay you for your service, it's not a reward. But if I offer it as a condition, then it's a reward. For instance, the kids like, I don't want to do the homework. If you do the homework, I will give you$2. It's a condition, it's a reward. And you talk about, which makes sense, that rewards do work, but they work in the short run. So let's talk about that. As you just said about the firewood movers, it worked, right? I wanted the firewood movers.

5:37Heidi Grant:I offered five kids$10 a piece. They moved the firewood. So rewards do work, but why only in the short term? Because it turns play, challenges, values into transactions. It changes the meaning of the activity. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever offered reward to your husband so that he can come with you on a tropical island or on a trip? No. No. Why? Because we never offer rewards for something which are already good. Yes. Yes. So if I say to my child, if you do this, I will give you$2. The child thinks, hey, why is he offering me rewards? If he's offering a reward, this must be a bad thing.

6:26Otherwise, he wouldn't offer my reward. So rewarding changes the meaning of the activity. It makes it as a means to something else. Like if I tell you, if you do your homework, I will give you more screen time. And the kid says, homework is not valuable in itself. It's only a means, a tool to get something else. So screen time is more valued than homework. So the meaning changes when you offer a reward. That's why the child loses interest.

6:56Heidi Grant:We like science terms on the podcast. Let's talk about hedonic adaptation. I loved this idea. And why you say it's like pumping a flat tire. Yeah. Let's say you have them move firewood for$10. Right. Okay. The next day you will offer$10. The third day,$10. And the fourth day say, hey,$10, come on, give me$15. They will get used to the idea of$10. And in order to do the same work, you have to increase reward. So this is because of hedonic adaptation, because we easily adapt to material things. Like you easily adapt to your car. You want the new car. You easily adapt to your watch. You want the new watch.

7:41But there are things you will never adapt.

7:44Heidi Grant:Okay, give me an example of one of those. People, connection, growth. You will never say, hey, I am tired of you, this relationship. I am now used to it. I need a new connection. You never say this. So you always spend time with your friends over and over. or you never get worth. So because of hedonic adaptation, they easily adapt to the reward and then you have to increase it. So there is no end to it. Let's talk about the relationship. This really stood out to me in the book, the relationship between reward and control. Yeah. I did my own research in this, on rewarding and praising. I measured how much parents, I measured how often they praise how often they offer reward.

8:33I also measured how controlling they are and also how disrespectful they are. So how did I measure disrespect? There is a very famous scale by Barber, controlling psychological control disrespect scale. There are items like I blame my child, I say bad things to my child, I make fun of my child. Sometimes I make my child embarrassed in front of others. Sometimes I blame my child for my mistake. I sometimes invalidate my child's feeling. This is disrespect scale. So I measured reward, praise, and disrespect. This is what I found. Those who are more disrespectful tend to use more praise and more reward.

9:17Why are they using it? To control the child. For instance, if the child doesn't do homework, a controlling parent things like this. Okay, I can threaten them. This is one way. And the other one is I can offer a reward. Control means I am trying to make my child do the homework. Also, I can blame. Look, I spent so much money on your education. You are not doing your homework. All of them serve one certain goal, to make the child do it. Then we call this control.

9:49Heidi Grant:Right. We sometimes say the carrot and the stick. Like you're either chasing the carrot or you're getting the stick, that kind of style of parenting. Yeah. The same thing. Because what you care about is only the consequence, only the behavior, only the outcome. So let's say you're another controlling parent. What is the opposite of control? The opposite of control is autonomy enhancing parenting. So the child doesn't do the homework. I don't say I will make you do it. I say, let me understand why you don't want to do it. And the child says, it's very boring. Or the child says, it's too difficult.

10:26It is too easy. It is too repetitive. There are many reasons why a child doesn't want to do homework. Let's say it is too difficult. How does giving a reward help the child? So the answer is help. If it is too easy, too easy, reward doesn't help. We will say, okay, it's too easy for you. Let's find something which is above your level so that you are engaged. So, autonomy-enhancing parenting tries to understand why the child doesn't want to do it and those parents want to help, not control.

11:00Heidi Grant:I have more questions about that. We're going to take a break. I am talking to Dr. Asgur Balot. He is the author of The Reward Trap, and we will be right back. Well, Amy, I'm about to head off for vacation. And even with those hotel hair dryers, I know my hair will be, as you like to say, bouncing and behaving thanks to Nutrafol. Yes, I do like to say it. Nutrafol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand, and it's the number one hair growth supplement brand personally used by dermatologists and Margaret and me. Nutrafol's hair growth supplements are peer-reviewed, NSF-certified for sport, and clinically tested.

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14:41Heidi Grant:So I think often as parents, we see controlling our children as part of our job. because the worst thing that people can say to us is that child is completely out of control. And that a lot of feedback that we get is my kid doesn't want to listen to me. My kid is out of control. My kid won't do what I say, you know, and it does feel sometimes to parents mysterious, this thing of like, wait, how do I actually get another human being to do what I want them to do. And that does feel like maybe the biggest mystery in parenting sometimes. And so let's talk about, I thought this was a really interesting phrase in the book, an autonomy orientation as it relates to figuring out this piece of how to get our kids to function in the way we want them to function.

15:43Yeah. So we don't want to control our child. What we want, we can provide structure. Control is different from structure. And control is different from supervision. There are two kinds of control. One is behavioral control. You will act as I want you to act. I will also control your thoughts and feelings. I will tell you what you should think and what you should feel. It's even worse. You are not doing your homework. You should feel guilty. Like you are spending a lot of money on your education. You are not doing your homework. You are responsible. This is all control. What we want is create a value so that the child learns to control themselves for intrinsic values.

16:28Let me give you one example. How many children carry the firewood? Five kids. Okay. Hey, kids, come here. So I need help with this. What do you feel about helping other people? and then they say like, I will never help if there is nothing in it for me. The child has not developed poor social values. And the other child says, okay, I think helping others is nice and it makes you happy. Then you can start a discussion for 10 minutes. Then you say, hey, guys, you want to help me? You won't say, I will cook you a dinner. It's a condition. But you can say, do you want to help me carry this? We will carry this.

17:05Then we will have a nice dinner. We will continue our conversation. We will have fun together, which is not conditional on this. So you want to create interesting motivation and pro-social values so that the child wants to help. This is not controlling, but this is creating a human being who cares about other people.

17:24Heidi Grant:We talked about this with Michelin Duclef, who wrote Hunt, Gather, Parent, about how many cultures helping around the kitchen and being part of the household is somehow more inherent in certain, that the kids just would be gathering fire. It's part of the expectation of the day. Do you think this is a specifically American problem? When I was reading the book, I thought, this seems very American to me, the idea that you get something for doing something. It's like a very kind of capitalist mentality of we do things to get the reward or the gold star. Yes. Especially when you offer a reward to your child for doing a chore, you are implicitly saying this is not your job.

18:13It's my job. You are not responsible. You are not part of the family who is responsible for running the family. We will do everything for you. But if you do it, I will pay you. The child says, oh, it's not my responsibility. So you're teaching your children to be not part of the family who does work for the family. So they think they have to be paid to do this.

18:37Heidi Grant:Yeah, that you say that like mom and dad or mom and mom or whoever it is, do everything in the household and you're just here as a receiver unless we need help. And then we're going to suddenly have to pay you because that's so outside of your understanding of your true role in the family. Yes, perfect. But this is our family, it's our house. We are all responsible for our house. And what you're doing is a part of what it means to be a family. So you have to create this value. Let's talk about, I found this also really resonant, mastery orientation versus reward orientation. So mastery orientation versus performance orientation.

19:24There's Professor Andrew Elliott from the University of Rochester. We published two papers together, papers. This is his theory, and it's a perfect theory. I love it. Those with a mastery orientation, when they're in a class, when they are in a workshop, all they want is to learn more, improve themselves, develop their capacity. They want to master the material in the classroom. They want to learn all the time. So when they learn, when you have a master orientation, you are less anxious. You don't have anxiety because you're just learning. You're improving. You're developing. If you have a performance orientation, you care more about beating others, being better than others, or avoiding being worse than others.

20:11So you care about your public rank than you're anxious. So who knows more? Who will get a better grade? Who is learning more? So those with performance orientation, they can be very successful, no problem, but they will be anxious. They will have anxiety. But if you have a mastery orientation, you won't have anxiety. So whose grades are better? They have both good grades, but those with performance orientation pay a big price, anxiety. So then we ask these questions, how do we create performance-oriented children? By caring about the outcome too much. So rewards and praising, they are all about the outcome.

20:52So if you offer reward all the time to your children, you will have a child with that performance orientation and the child will have anxiety.

21:00Heidi Grant:It's challenging though as a parent because our American system is so set up, it is rewards oriented. So I'll give you an example. I had a child who over the summer, you know, where are they going to go to camp and what are they going to do? And I have a very self-motivated kid. And this child decided they wanted to spend the summer learning how to do a backflip. They were going to teach themselves how to do a backflip. and they would be up at 10 in the morning outside figuring this out. And I couldn't think of a better way for a kid to spend time. It's totally self-motivated. They're just working on mastering.

21:40Heidi Grant:There's no reward. I'm not involved in it at all, basically. But then as a parent start to think about college and everything else, it's hard to put down on your resume. I taught myself a back flip this summer. Our system is so geared towards reward that if you're the valedictorian, then you go to Harvard. And it's hard to stay out of reward orientation if you have a kid who, let's say, is in the basement teaching themselves drums and becoming a really great drummer, and they're passionate about it, they're off screens, they're figuring out problems, It's great for their brain development. How do we get out of a system that feels like it's all predicated on rewards?

22:26We never get out of the system. We are in the system. We will change our relationship with the system. We will be valedictorian. We will go to Harvard. We will do our best with just changing our mindset. We will say, I want to learn drum because I'm enjoying it, not because I want it to get up into Harvard. Right. So there is this misconception. Usually parents think in my workshop or consulting work, parents think if the child has a master orientation, they will fail. It's not true. They will still be successful and they will be enjoying learning. And there is even research in workplaces, those with increasing motivation in their jobs, they have a higher life satisfaction, higher job satisfaction.

23:16So they will still be successful, but the battery will be intrinsic motivation, not extrinsic motivation. So you shouldn't worry. If they do something by enjoying it, they will be even more successful.

23:31Heidi Grant:Let's talk before we close this section about the flow of true learning. I thought this idea was really interesting. Yeah, this is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi from the University of Chicago. go. Sometimes when you do something, you lose track of time. You're so engaged in the activity. Yes. Children often do that when they play video games. Usually parents say, hey, my child has ADHD. So I say, okay, then he or she must not be concentrated in video games. No, they play video games for four hours. And then I'll say, okay, then what you're asking your child to do is not as interesting because when you're interested, you concentrate.