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Effects of Rewards on Children's Prosocial Motivation: A Socialization Study

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Abstract

This study examined the relation between mothers' attitudes/practices regarding the use of rewards and children's susceptibility to the undermining effects of rewards. We assessed the attitudes/practices regarding rewards for 72 mothers and assigned their children to a control condition or to one of four experimental conditions that differed in whether children received rewards for helping and whether children engaged in the helping task or watched other children help. Children were then given an opportunity to help in a nonreward free-choice period. Rewards enhanced helping in the immediate situation. However, rewards undermined children's helping in the free-choice period, but only for children whose mothers felt positive about using rewards. Moreover, mothers who felt more positive about using rewards reported their children to be less prosocial than children of mothers who had less positive attitudes. It was suggested that children's responses to rewards depend in part on their experiences with rewards. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Developmental Psychology
1989.
Vol. 25, No. 4, 509-515
Cop\
right 198^ by the American Psvchological Association, Inc.
0012-1649/89/$(X).75
Effects of Rewards on Children's Prosocial Motivation:
A Socialization Study
Richard A. Fabes, Jim Fultz, Nancy Eisenberg,
Traci May-Plumlee, and F. Scott Christopher
Arizona State University
This study examined the relation between mothers' attitudes/practices regarding the use of rewards
and children's susceptibility to the undermining effects of
rewards.
We assessed the attitudes/prac-
tices regarding rewards for 72 mothers and assigned their children to a control condition or to one
of four experimental conditions that differed in whether children received rewards for helping and
whether children engaged in the helping task or watched other children help. Children were then
given an opportunity to help in a nonreward free-choice period. Rewards enhanced helping in the
immediate situation. However, rewards undermined children's helping in the free-choice period, but
only for children whose mothers felt positive about using rewards. Moreover, mothers who felt more
positive about using rewards reported their children to be less prosocial than children of mothers
who had less positive attitudes. It was suggested that children's responses to rewards depend in part
on their experiences with rewards.
In recent years, many researchers have obtained data sup-
porting the conclusion that adults' use of salient external con-
trols (including material rewards) to induce compliance in chil-
dren may undermine children's later intrinsic interest or the
likelihood of internally guided behavior (see Deci & Ryan,
1985;
Lepper, 1981). The predominant explanations for why
rewards undermine intrinsic motivation involve social-cogni-
tive mechanisms whereby individuals monitor their behavior
and its context and then weigh the relative absence or presence
of intrinsic and extrinsic forces to determine the reasons for
their
behavior.
Although evidence supporting
a
social-cognitive
explanation of
the
undermining effects of rewards has been re-
ported (see Lepper
&
Greene, 1978), we propose that the devel-
opment of internally guided behavior (and related social infer-
ences) is as much a product of children's specific socialization
experiences as it is one of the maturation of social-cognitive
processes (see Costanzo & Fraenkel, 1987; Maccoby, 1983).
This research was supported in part by a Faculty-Grant-In-Aid
Award (420893) from Arizona State University to Richard A. Fabes, as
well as by a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Institute of Men-
tal Health (1 F32 MH09181-01) to Jim Fultz. Support was also pro-
vided to Richard A. Fabes and Nancy Eisenberg by a grant from the
National Science Foundation (BNS 8807784). Nancy Eisenberg was
also supported by a career development award from the National Insti-
tute of Child Health and Development (K04 HD00717). An earlier ver-
sion of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Southwest-
ern Psychological Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 1987.
We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Michelle Paxton, Mia
Nyman, and Jeff Scott. Special appreciation is expressed to the adminis-
trators, teachers, students, and parents at Broadmor and Laird Elemen-
tary Schools, Tempe, Arizona. We also thank Carol L. Martin for her
comments on drafts of this article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rich-
ard A. Fabes. Department of Family Resources and Human Develop-
ment. Arizona Stale I 'niversity. Tempe, Arizona 85287.
The primary purpose of this research was to examine the rela-
tion of
mothers'
self-reported attitudes and practices regarding
the use of rewards within childrearing contexts to their chil-
dren's tendency to be adversely affected by their use.
Other researchers have also suggested that children's experi-
ences with rewards influence their reactions to the use of re-
wards. For example, Lepper (1981) has suggested that different
parenting practices or social control techniques influence chil-
dren's internalization of
social
and moral values. According to
Lepper, permissive parenting involves pressure that is insuffi-
cient to promote compliance (i.e., the child is poorly social-
ized).
Consequently, the noncompliant behavior may come to
be internalized (i.e., the child may perceive his or her noncom-
pliant behavior
as
internally motivated). Moreover, parents who
use overly sufficient external controls to induce compliance un-
dermine children's internalization because the salient nature of
the external pressure leads them to believe that their behavior
was a function of the external inducement rather than intrinsi-
cally motivated. Lepper concluded that internalization most
likely occurs when social controls not only are successful in pro-
ducing compliance, but also are sufficiently subtle to prevent
the child from inferring that his or her compliance was solely
a function of extrinsic controls (e.g., to get rewards or avoid
punishment). However, to date, no one has directly examined
how children's experiences with rewards affect their reactions
to their use.
On the basis of the argument presented above, the present
research was designed to examine the relation between chil-
dren's experiences with instrumental rewards (i.e., if you do
that then you get this) and the impact of such rewards on chil-
dren's prosocial motivation. The present research is based on
the premise that children's responses to the use of instrumental
rewards depend in part on their experience with such rewards.
Specifically, we predicted that children whose parents rely on
instrumental rewards to achieve desired ends should be espe-
509
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510
FABES,
FULTZ, EISENBERG, MAY-PLUMLEE, CHRISTOPHER
daily likely to lose interest in the previously rewarded behavior
or activity when the reward
is
no longer
available.
For these chil-
dren, the presence or absence of external controls may have be-
come highly salient because they
have
had
a
history of increased
experience with such rewards.
In our study, mothers of elementary-school children com-
pleted a survey that was designed to assess their attitudes and
practices regarding the use of tangible instrumental rewards for
activities that their children do not find attractive. The children
of these mothers were presented with an opportunity to help
needy children. Some of the children were offered a reward for
helping, whereas other children did not receive a reward. Be-
cause the undermining effects of rewards have been found to
occur vicariously when children see other children receive a re-
ward (Morgan, 1983), both direct and vicarious reward and
nonreward conditions were included. We expected that chil-
dren whose mothers reported feeling relatively positive about
the use of instrumental rewards and used them more often
would be less willing to help for no reward after having been
previously rewarded for doing so than would either those chil-
dren whose mothers reported
less
positive feelings about the use
of instrumental rewards and used them infrequently or those
children who did not receive a reward.
To
examine possible developmental effects, we included chil-
dren in two age
groupings:
children between the ages of
7
and 9
years
and children between
9
and
11
years.
We
grouped children
in this way because researchers have established that children
younger than
9 years
generally
have
difficulty verbalizing princi-
ples that are thought to be important in determining the effects
of external forces on intrinsic motivation, such as discounting
(DiVitto & McArthur, 1978) or the use of multiple sufficient-
cause schemata (Smith, 1975). Moreover, to examine directly
whether developmental differences in children's abilities to use
attributional schemata were related to the effects of rewards,
we tested these children for their ability to discount intrinsic
motivation in the presence of salient external pressures.
Finally, our study was also designed to test Lepper's (1981)
suggestion that parents who use overly salient external controls
to induce compliance in their children may be as successful as
those parents
who
rely
less
on external controls, but only
as
long
as the controls remain salient. To examine this suggestion, the
mothers of the children in this study rated their children's past
prosocial tendencies in situations in which the child (a) was
asked to assist by the mother, (b) was asked to assist by another
child, and (c) assisted without being asked (Iannotti, 1985). It
was predicted that mothers who value the use of rewards with
their children and those who place less value on them would
report comparable levels of compliance by their children when
the prosocial act was requested by a parent. In situations in
which the request did not come from the parent (i.e., when
asked by a child or spontaneous assistance), mothers who have
positive feelings about the use of instrumental rewards were ex-
pected to have children who were reported to be less prosocial
than were children of mothers who value and rely less upon
rewards.
Method
Subjects
Participants were 72 grade-school children (37 boys and 35 girls) and
their mothers. Children ranged in age from 80 to 140 months (M =
107.17 months). Second- and third-grade children (n = 36) were com-
bined to form one age group (M = 96.22 months) and fourth- and fifth-
grade children (n = 36) were combined to form the older age group
(M = 118.11 months). The mothers generally had some education be-
yond high school, with a median income for the family between $35,000
and $40,000, and were mostly from two-parent, Caucasian families with
an average of 2.7 children.
The children and their mothers were recruited from public elemen-
tary schools in a southwestern community. The experimenters went into
the children's classrooms, discussed the research with the children, and
gave the children letters that explained the nature and requirements of
the research to take home to their parents. The parents then called the
experimenter to schedule a time to come to the university to participate.
All participation was voluntary.
Procedures
Children. The children were randomly assigned to a control condi-
tion or to one of four experimental conditions that differed in terms of
whether the child was exposed to a reward and whether the child directly
engaged in the helping task (actor condition) or watched other children
engage in the task (observer condition) prior to a free-choice period.
First, we describe the procedures for the nonreward/actor condition and
then contrast these procedures with those for the remaining conditions.
Each child in the nonreward/actor condition was told by a same-sex
experimenter that he or she would be listening to some stories on a au-
diotape player and asked some questions about the children in the sto-
ries.
The experimenter told the child that they could not begin the sto-
ries right away because the experimenter had some work to finish and
then brought out a box containing a large number of small blue and
yellow paper squares. The child was told that, until the experimenter
finished, he or she could help some poor, sick children in the hospital
who had nothing to play with while they were sick. It was explained that
the children in the hospital enjoyed playing a game with the pieces of
paper in the box but that the paper had to be put into piles according
to color before the pieces could be taken to the hospital for them to play
with. The experimenter then put two piles of paper in front of the child
and demonstrated the sorting procedure.
The experimenter told the child that he or she would be finished in
just a couple of minutes and that the child could sort the paper until the
experimenter was through. The experimenter then went to a desk at the
back of the room and pretended to work on some papers for 2 min.
After 2 min, the experimenter returned to the table and put the piles
to the side. While moving the sorted pieces of paper, the experimenter
surreptitiously placed a marked piece of paper on top of each pile to
indicate the point at which the child stopped sorting.
The child was told that it was time to listen to the stories on the tape.
On discovering that the tape was not in the room, the experimenter
explained that he or she had to go to another office to find the tape and
that he or she would be back in a few minutes. The child was told that
he or she could help the children in the hospital some more or could
play with some other games while the experimenter was gone. The ex-
perimenter brought out a box of colored blocks and some cartoon
books, as well as the box of papers and the sorted piles, and left the
room. The amount of time that the child spent sorting paper was moni-
tored through a one-way mirror by a research assistant who was blind
as to which condition the child was assigned. After 2 min, the experi-
menter returned and put the papers and toys away. When the child left
the room at the end of the experiment, the number of pieces of paper
that the child sorted during the performance and free-choice period
were recorded.
All of the materials were then put away, and the presentation of the
taped stories began. Each child listened to six story pairs that were devel-
oped and used by Smith (1975). Each story pair included one story in
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REWARDS AND PROSOCIAL MOTIVATION511
which a child chose one of two toys in the absence of a plausible extrin-
sic cause and one story in which another child made the same choice in
the presence of a plausible extrinsic cause. The content of the story pairs
varied according to whether the extrinsic cause was a reward, an order,
or an obligation (two stories each).1 To increase children's comprehen-
sion of the stories, each story was accompanied by pictures representing
the content of the story. The order of presentation of the intrinsic and
extrinsic stories was counterbalanced.
At the end of each story pair, the tape was stopped, and the child was
shown a series of five drawn faces that differed in the degree to which
the faces were smiling or frowning. The child was asked to point to the
face that showed how much each child in the two stories wanted to play
with the toy chosen in the stories. The faces represented a 5-point scale
ranging from not at all(
1
= big frown) to a lot
(5
= big
smile).
A measure
of the child's ability to differentiate intrinsic and extrinsic motivation
was derived by subtracting the child's ratings for the child in the extrin-
sic-cause story from his or her rating of the child in the intrinsic-cause
story. Thus, the higher the mean difference score was, the greater was
the child's ability to differentiate intrinsic and extrinsic causes of behav-
ior (i.e., the degree to which extrinsic motives cast doubt on internal
causes).
The procedures for the children in the reward/actor condition were
identical with those used for children in the nonreward/actor condition
except that these children were also told that they would receive a re-
ward (a small toy) if they helped the children in the hospital by sorting
the paper while the experimenter worked at the desk (they received this
toy after the experimenter completed his or her work).
The procedures for the children in the observer conditions were de-
signed to parallel those procedures used in the actor conditions, but
these children were told that they would be watching a tape of what
some other children had done earlier in the day. Each child in the nonre-
ward/observer condition watched a videotape that included a male and
female experimenter and two same-age children (one boy and one girl)
going through the procedures outlined for the nonreward/actor condi-
tion. The tape also showed the children sorting paper for the children
in the hospital for 2 min. Then, the free-choice period followed in the
same manner identified previously.
For children in the reward/observer condition, the tape and proce-
dures were identical with those used in the nonreward/observer condi-
tion except that the children in the tape were told that they would each
get a prize for helping the children in the hospital and were shown re-
ceiving their prizes after they finished. This tape was identical with the
one used in the nonreward/observer condition except that the portions
that pertained to rewards were edited out of the tape used for the nonre-
ward condition. The children in this condition did not receive a reward
themselves.
Because it has been found that an individual's previous compliance
can affect subsequent compliance (Eisenberg, Cialdini, McCreath, &
Shell, 1987), a nonreward/control condition was included. The only
difference between this condition and the nonreward/actor condition
was that, during the time the experimenter worked at the desk, the chil-
dren in the control condition were given a choice of games to play (colors
or mazes) instead of the helping task. After 2 min of playing with the
games, the second free-choice procedures began. The experimenter in-
troduced the child to the helping task, as well as the other games, and
told the child that he or she could play with any of the games while
the experimenter went to look for the lost tape. The second free-choice
period and story presentation then proceeded as outlined above for the
other conditions. Thus, the children in this condition engaged in two
free-choice periods and were not introduced to the helping task until the
second free-choice period. By comparing children in the two nonreward
conditions with children in the control condition, we can assess the
effect of initial compliance, or of watching others comply, on subsequent
behavior.
Mothers. Each mother was given three scales to complete while wait-
ing for her child. First, she was asked to complete a family demographics
questionnaire that included items related to the parents' education and
occupations, family structure and income, ethnic, racial, and marital
status.
Then, in a counterbalanced fashion, the mothers also completed
a Reward Scale and a Child Prosocial Behavior Scale (CPBS). The Re-
ward Scale was developed for this study and consisted of items designed
to assess parents' attitudes and practices regarding the use of instrumen-
tal rewards with their children. Initially, the scale consisted of 15 items.
A factor analysis with varimax rotation was performed on these 15
items,
and only items that had loadings with an absolute value greater
than .50 were retained (SPSSX, 1983). Only one factor emerged in this
analysis (accounting for 45% of the variance) and consisted of
8
items
that reflected mothers' feelings about the use and impact of rewards
(e.g., "The use of rewards to motivate children can be considered a type
of bribery," "The use of rewards to motivate children can help produce
desired behavior," "The use of rewards to motivate children makes them
stop working when rewards are no longer available") and 2 items that
pertained to the mother's practices regarding the use of instrumental
rewards with her children (e.g., "To what extent do you provide your
child with a reward for behaving properly?", "To what extent do you
give your child a reward for doing something he or she does not like to
do?") Each mother indicated on a scale from
1
(very
low)
to 5 (very high)
the degree to which she agreed with or behaved in the way identified in
the statement. The alpha reliability coefficient for the abbreviated 10-
item Reward Scale was .85.
The CPBS was based on Iannotti's (1985) rating scale of children's
prosocial behavior. Using a 7-point scale
(1
=
low,
and 7 = high), moth-
ers were asked to rate their perceptions of their children's past prosocial
tendencies (e.g., the extent to which the child cooperates, comforts,
shares, etc.) within three separate eliciting situations: (a) prosocial be-
havior after an explicit request from the mother, (b) prosocial behavior
after an explicit request from another child, and (c) spontaneous proso-
cial behavior without a request. Initially, each subscale consisted of 13
items.
However, on the basis of the same criteria identified for selection
of items on the reward scale (using three separate factor analyses), the
"parental request" subscale was found to consist of 9 items, whereas the
"child request" and "spontaneous behavior" subscales were found to
consist of 8 items each. The proportion of variance accounted for by
these factors was .62, .53, and .68. for the three factor analyses, respec-
tively. Coefficient alphas for the abbreviated parent, child, and sponta-
neous subscales were .93, .88, and .84, respectively.
1 Examples of the texts of the story pairs (see Smith, 1975) follow:
A. "Tom was at the playground and he saw two toys there: a hammer
and a shovel. And he played with the shovel." (intrinsic cause story);
"Joe was at the playground and he saw two toys there: a hammer and a
shovel. Joe's mother was there and she said that Joe could have some ice
cream if he played with the shovel. And Joe played with the shovel."
(reward-extrinsic cause story)
B.
"Mary came home from school, and there were two of her toys: a
doll and a painting set. And Mary played with the doll." (intrinsic cause
story);
"Ann came home from school, and there were two of her
toys:
a
doll and a painting set. Ann's father was there and he told Ann to play
with the doll. And Ann played with the doll." (order-extrinsic cause
story)
C. "Billy was at his house and he was deciding whether to play the
record player or to play with his kite outside. And he played with the
kite."
(intrinsic cause story); "Eddie was at home and he was deciding
whether to play the record player or to play outside with his kite. Eddie's
little brother was doing his homework, and the noise from the record
player might have bothered him. And Eddie played with the kite." (obli-
gation-extrinsic cause story)
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512
FABES,
FULTZ, EISENBERG, MAY-PLUMLEE, CHRISTOPHER
Results
Effects
of Mothers' Reward Attitudes and
Rewards on
Prosocial Motivation
Mothers' mean summed score on the Reward
Scale was
29.40
(SD = 7.10; range = 14-46; possible range = 10-50).
To
exam-
ine the relation between mothers' attitudes and practices re-
garding the use of instrumental rewards and the effects of
such
rewards on children's prosocial motivation, children were di-
vided into two groups on the basis of the mothers' scores on the
reward scale. An approximated median split (the cutoff score
was 29) was used to divide children into a negative reward-use
group
(i.e.,
those children whose mothers did not have relatively
positive feelings about the use of instrumental rewards and did
not use them relatively frequently; n = 37) and a positive re-
ward-use group
(i.e.,
those children whose mothers had positive
feelings about the use of instrumental rewards and used them
frequently with their children; n = 35). Mean scores on the Re-
ward Scale for the negative and positive reward-use groups were
23.97 (SD = 4.37) and 35.14 (SD
=
4.36), respectively.
To examine whether rewards affected children's helping be-
havior in the immediate context in which they were used, a 2
(reward condition)
X
2 (reward-use group) analysis of variance
(ANOVA)
was
performed on the number of pieces of paper that
children in two actor conditions sorted during the 2 min that
the experimenter worked at the
table.
(Recall that only the chil-
dren in the
two
actor conditions were actually
given
an opportu-
nity to help prior to the free-choice period.) The results of this
analysis revealed a main effect for reward condition only,
F(
1,
24) = 6.27, p < .05. Children in the reward/actor condition
sorted significantly more pieces of paper (M
=
86.46) than did
those children in the nonreward/actor condition (M
=
60.27).
Next, we used a one-way multivariate analysis of variance
(MANOVA) to compare children's free-choice responses (e.g.,
time helped and number of paper sorted) in the nonreward/
actor, nonreward/observer, and the nonreward/control condi-
tions.
This analysis failed to reach significance. Means for the
number of seconds spent helping and the number of pieces of
paper sorted during the free-choice period were 85.1 and 72.9
for the nonreward/actor condition,
78.1
and 62.6 for the nonre-
ward/observer condition, and 76.8 and 63.2 for the nonreward/
control condition.2 Thus, in this study, initial compliance, or
watching others comply, did not significantly affect subsequent
behavior.3
We examined the effects of
reward,
mothers' attitudes/prac-
tices,
and type of task involvement on children's willingness to
help during the free-choice period by computing a 2 (reward
condition) X 2 (reward-use group) X 2 (actor-observer condi-
tion) MANOVA with a control group, with the amount of time
helped and the number of pieces of paper sorted during
the
free-
choice period
as the
dependent
variables.
The multivariate anal-
ysis (Pillai's Trace) revealed only a significant main effect for
reward condition, F(2, 61) = 6.02, p < .01. There was also a
marginally significant multivariate Reward Condition X Re-
ward-Use Group interaction, F(2, 61) =
2.75,
p < .10. For the
amount of time that children helped during the free-choice pe-
riod, the univariate analysis revealed a significant main effect
for reward, F(\, 62) = 6.44, p < .05. Children who received a
Table 1
Percentage
of Children
Who
Helped During
the Free-Choice Period by Condition
Condition
Nonreward
Negative use
Positive use
Reward
Negative use
Positive use
N
24
19
13
16
Children who
helped
%
88.33
100.00
84.62
43.75
n
20
19
11
7
reward spent significantly less time helping during the free-
choice period than did those children who did not receive a
reward (Ms = 49.2
s
and 80.2 s, respectively).
The univariate analysis for the number of pieces of paper
sorted revealed only a significant Reward Condition
X
Reward-
Use Group interaction,
F(
1,
62) = 4.70, p < .05. According to
simple effects analyses computed for the positive and negative
reward-use
groups,
reward and nonreward children in the nega-
tive-use group did not differ in the amount of paper that they
sorted during the free-choice period (Ms
=
73.46 and 58.5, re-
spectively, p < .36). In contrast, there was a significant differ-
ence between reward and nonreward children in the positive-
use group: Reward children sorted less paper than nonreward
children (Ms = 42.8 and 76.4, respectively), F(\, 30) = 4.78,
p<.05.
Thus,
these initial analyses supported our predictions only
for the amount of work (e.g., number of pieces of paper sorted)
but not for the amount of
time
that the children helped. How-
ever, closer examination of the distribution of the amount of
time that children sorted revealed that children either helped a
considerable amount of time or not at all. For example, 15 of
the 72 children (21%) did not help at all, and
21
children (29%)
helped for the entire 2-min period (kurtosis = -1.56). As a re-
sult, children were dichotomized into groups on the basis of
whether they helped at all during the free-choice period. Subse-
quently, we computed a 2 (reward condition) X 2 (reward-use
group) X 2 (actor-observer) loglinear factorial analysis with a
control group. The dependent variable in this analysis was the
proportion of children who helped during the free-choice pe-
riod. The optimal model for willingness to help included only
an effect for the Reward Condition
X
Reward-Use Group inter-
action, x2
(1,
N
=
72) =
3.93,
p<
.05.
These data are presented
in Table
1.
According to simple effects computed for the reward
2 The means for the number of seconds helped and the number of
papers sorted during the free-choice period for the reward/actor condi-
tion were 48.1 and 56.3, and the means for the reward/observer condi-
tion were 56.4 and 51.8, respectively.
3 When sex and age were included in these (or any of the analyses of
reward effects), no significant main effects or interactions with these
variables resulted (the means by age and sex were very comparable).
Thus,
because of the relatively small cell sizes when the analyses in-
cluded age and sex, these variables were not included in any of the analy-
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REWARDS AND PROSOCIAL MOTIVATION513
and nonreward conditions, the proportion of nonreward chil-
dren in the negative and positive reward-use groups who helped
during the free-choice period did not differ significantly, x2 (1.
N=43)= 1.75, p < .20. In contrast, the analysis of the propor-
tion of reward children who helped in the negative and positive
reward-use groups was significant, x2
(1,
N = 29) =
4.53,
p <
.05:
Children who were rewarded and whose mothers valued
and used rewards relatively frequently were significantly less
likely to help than were those children who were rewarded and
whose mothers valued and used rewards less often. Children in
the reward/positive-use group were about half
as
likely to help
during
the
free-choice period than
were
the children in the other
three conditions (see Table 1). Thus, the differences in time
spent helping appeared to
be
due to the disproportionately large
number of children in the reward/positive-use group who did
not help at all during the free-choice period.
We
then examined the
degree
to which children helped when
they were willing to assist by computing a 2 (reward
condition)
X
2 (reward-use group) factorial MANOVA; the de-
pendent variables in this analysis were time-on-task and the
number of pieces of paper sorted during the free-choice period.
This analysis included only those children who helped to some
degree (n
=
57), and the results failed to reveal any significant
multivariate or univariate effects. Thus, when those children
who did not help at all were eliminated, children in the four
groups helped comparable amounts both in terms of
time
and
effort.4
Relations With Discounting
To examine differences in children's ability to discount in-
trinsic motivation in the presence of salient extrinsic pressures,
children's responses to the taped stories were analyzed by com-
puting a 2 (age group) X 2 (reward-use group) X 2 (sex) X 3
(content of stories; e.g., reward, obligation, order) repeated
measures
ANOVA
for the children's differences scores on the
three types of stories. The between-subjects main effect for age
group
was
significant,
F(
1,64) =
8.03,
p
<
.01;
across
all
stories,
older children had significantly higher difference
scores
than did
younger children (see Table
2).
Thus, older children were more
skilled at differentiating between intrinsic and extrinsic motives
for the story characters' behavior and in judging the relation of
Table 2
Mean Discounting Difference Scores
by
Context
and Age
Group
Table 3
Means and Standard
Deviations for
Mothers'
Reports
of
Children's Prosocial Behavior
by
Reward
Use Group and Situation
Discounting context
Reward stories"
Obligation stories"
Order stories
All stories combined3
Younger
children
(n = 36)
M
.61
.49
.42
.51
SD
1.25
1.17
.63
.77
Older
children
(n = 36)
M
1.35
1.13
.50
.99
SD
.97
1.35
.64
.74
Combined
(n = 72)
M
.98
.81
.46
.75
SD
1.17
1.30
.63
.79
Reward use
group
Negative
Positive
N
36
34
Parent
request
M SD
6.05 .66
5.71 1.18
Child request
M
6.05"
5.59a
SD
.62
1.00
Spontaneous
behavior
M SD
5.85a .69
5.45" .84
a Means within a situation were significantly different (p < .01).
these motives to intrinsic motivation. There was also a signifi-
cant within-subjects main effect for the content of
story,
F{2,
128) = 6.41, p < .005. Children were significantly better at
differentiating intrinsic and extrinsic motives in the story pairs
involving rewards and obligations than they were in the story
pairs involving orders (ps <
.05,
Tukey's test for repeated mea-
sures).
Moreover, there was a marginally significant Content of
Story
X Age
Group interaction, F(2,128) =
2.54,
p
<
.08.
Older
children were significantly better at differentiating intrinsic and
extrinsic motivation in story pairs involving rewards and obli-
gations than were younger children (ps <
.05;
see
Table 2).
The association between children's discounting ability and
their tendency to be adversely affected by rewards was exam-
ined by computing contingency coefficients for the relation be-
tween the measures of discounting and whether children who
received a reward helped during the free-choice periods. These
coefficients were computed separately for each age group. In
general, the contingency coefficients
were
low,
generally ranging
from .09 to
.25.
None of the coefficients
was
significant. In addi-
tion, we computed similar contingency coefficients for the chil-
dren in the other conditions (separately for each
age),
and these
results were also very low and not significant. Thus, children's
ability to discount did not predict their subsequent prosocial
motivation.
Mothers' Perceptions of Children's Prosocial Behavior
We analyzed mothers' perceptions of their children's proso-
cial behavior by computing a 2 (age group) X 2 (reward-use
group) X 2 (sex) MANOVA, with the three subscales of
the
re-
vised social perception scale
(e.g.,
request by parent, request by
child, spontaneous behavior) as the dependent variables (only
70 mothers completed the CPBS). Only the multivariate main
effect for reward-use group
was
significant, F(3,60) =
3.08,
p <
.05,
although there was also a marginally significant main effect
of
sex
of child, .F(3, 60) =
2.31,
p < .10. Mean scores for the
three subscales are presented in Table 3 for each reward-use
a Means for younger and older children were significantly different (p <
.05).
4 When children who did not help at all were eliminated, mean num-
ber of seconds on task and number of pieces of paper sorted during the
free-choice period were, respectively, as follows: 87.9 and 70.2, for the
nonreward/negative use condition; 88.9 and 76.4, for the nonreward/
positive use condition; 72.5 and 86.8, for the reward/negative use condi-
tion; and 90.3 and 97.9, for the reward/positive use condition.
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514
FABES,
FULTZ, EISENBERG, MAY-PLUMLEE, CHRISTOPHER
group. The univariate main effects were significant for reward-
use group for the request-by-child and the spontaneous-behav-
ior subscales,
Fs(
1,
62) = 8.16 and
7.41,
ps <
.01,
respectively.
Inspection of Table
3
reveals that mothers who were more posi-
tive about the use of instrumental rewards and used them more
frequently reported that their children's past prosocial behavior
in
these two
situations
was
significantly
lower
than that reported
by mothers who were less predisposed toward instrumental re-
wards. This trend was also present in the parent-request situa-
tion, but this difference did not reach statistical significance
(p < .10). Thus, in comparison with mothers in the negative
reward-use group, those mothers who felt generally positive
about rewards and used them more often reported that their
children
were less
prosocial.
There
was also
a significant univar-
iate main effect for sex of child on the spontaneous-behavior
subscale, F(l, 62) = 4.96, p < .05. Girls were reported to have
engaged in significantly more spontaneous prosocial behavior
(M
=
5.88) than were boys (M
=
5.45).
Discussion
There are several important implications of this study. First,
our data provide important insight regarding the effects of
re-
wards on children's prosocial responsiveness. Although a num-
ber of investigators have found that material rewards increase
the occurrence of
helping,
sharing, and cooperation in the im-
mediate context (see Grusec, 1982), the findings of our study
support the conclusion that they may also undermine subse-
quent prosocial motivation in situations where rewards are no
longer forthcoming. This finding is consistent with other re-
searchers who have found an undermining effect of rewards on
intrinsic motivation when an individual is induced to engage in
a target activity or behavior as an explicit means to an extrinsic
end (Lepper & Greene, 1978). Moreover, the inclusion of two
types of reward contexts (direct and vicarious) in the present
study provides a type of within-experiment replication and in-
creases the generalizability of the findings.
Second, mothers' reports regarding their use of rewards were
found to moderate their effects on children's free-choice proso-
cial behavior. Thus, a critical contribution of this study is the
finding that children's willingness to
help
during the free-choice
period
was
undermined by rewards primarily for
those
children
whose mothers had positive attitudes about using
rewards.
This
finding is consistent with our suggestion that children's reac-
tions to rewards result in part from their specific socialization
experiences.
In contrast to our
findings,
other researchers have found that
prosocial behaviors can be trained and are generalizable (e.g.,
Fisher,
1963;
Warren, Warren-Rogers, & Baer, 1976). Thus, al-
though the present study was not specifically designed to ad-
dress the issues of training and generalization of prosocial be-
havior, the findings of our study do have some important im-
plications for these issues.
As Moore and Eisenberg (1984) pointed out, in most in-
stances in which reinforced prosocial behaviors were found to
generalize, reinforcement was used in combination with other
techniques (e.g., providing prosocial attributions, modeling).
Grusec and Redler (1980) tested the effectiveness of providing
children with either reinforcement
or
prosocial attributions and
found that, although both techniques increased helping, for
most children, only the attribution of prosocial characteristics
had an effect on generalization. Grusec (1982) suggested that
one possible explanation for this failure to generalize may be
that the children remembered the attribution for behavior bet-
ter than the reward for the act and that this carried over into the
new setting when help was requested. From our perspective, we
would extend this argument and suggest that children's social-
ization experiences may influence the relative salience of the
available information. For those children whose mothers rely
more heavily on rewards to induce behavior, rewards may have
become especially salient because of their frequent use and are
therefore more likely to be remembered.
As
a result, these chil-
dren help when rewards for helping are available but are less
willing to do so when they are not.
The fact that children's ability to discount was not related to
reward effects may indicate that children tend to react to the
presence or absence of rewards in an almost automatic manner
and that their tendency to do so is influenced by their experi-
ence with such rewards and not by social-cognitive processes
alone. It is interesting that, although there were age differences
found in children's ability to discount others' intrinsic motiva-
tion in the face of external pressures, there were no age differ-
ences found in the behavioral manifestations of the effects of
rewards. Furthermore, the correlations between the measures
of discounting (at least as measured by children's verbal re-
sponses to others' hypothetical behaviors) and children's ten-
dency to be
adversely affected
by
rewards
were
weak.
Thus, chil-
dren appear to have developed these reactions to reward con-
texts by
8
to 9 years of
age.
Although important developmental
questions remain regarding how children develop these reac-
tions,
future research using children younger than those used
in the present study must be conducted before these questions
may be answered.
Another important finding of this study is that mothers who
had positive feelings regarding
the use
of rewards and used them
often reported that their children were relatively less likely to
have behaved prosocially either spontaneously or when re-
quested by parents or peers (although we did not predict that
this would be
the
case
in situations when the parent
was
request-
ing
such
behavior).
There appear to be several possible explana-
tions for these findings. First, it may be the case that mothers
who have very positive feelings about using instrumental re-
wards have undermined their children's internalized desire to
behave prosocially because of their increased tendency to use
rewards. Such a conclusion is consistent with Lepper's (1981)
contention that rewards may undermine subsequent intemal-
ization in children by increasing the salience of the external
control. Second, the
findings
also may be due to the possibility
that mothers who have very positive feelings about using re-
wards have developed these tendencies because their children
were initially recalcitrant regarding prosocial acts. As a result,
these mothers may have had to resort to the use of rewards in
order to achieve an increased level of compliance and therefore
feel relatively positive about their
use.
A
third possible explana-
tion may be that the mothers themselves recognize the inverse
relation between incentive level and intrinsic motivation. Thus,
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REWARDS AND PROSOCIAL MOTIVATION515
mothers who are likely to use rewards often may attribute their
children's prosocial acts to extrinsically motivated factors and
therefore believe that their children's prosocial behaviors are
relatively unlikely to occur either when requested or spontane-
ously. However, recent findings by Boggiano, Barrett, Weiher,
McClelland, and Lusk (1987) suggest that parents are more
likely to perceive a positive rather than a negative relation be-
tween tangible rewards and intrinsic interest. This
finding,
to-
gether with the
finding
in the present study that mothers in the
positive reward-use condition not only tended to report using
rewards more often but also felt that they had positive conse-
quences, appears to argue against the last explanation and per-
haps best supports the second explanation.
One final explanation for these
findings
may be that mothers
who value the use of rewards may have a more "pay for work"
approach to the world, valuing altruism and self-sacrifice less,
and therefore encouraging it
less
in their
children.5
The fact that
mothers in the positive-use group rated their children lower
across all three subscales supports this notion. If
this
explana-
tion were correct, one would also expect children in the nonre-
ward/positive-use group to show less prosocial motivation dur-
ing the
free-choice period than children in the nonreward/nega-
tive-use group, but this was not the case. However, given the
correlational nature of this aspect of the study, it is not possible
to provide a definitive answer as to which explanation is most
appropriate. In addition, the fact that mothers' self-reports were
used to
assess
both attitudes toward rewards and their children's
prosocial behavior may be problematic. Thus, it
is
desirable for
future researchers to have ratings of children's behavior done
by trained judges who are
less
likely to differ on dimensions that
might affect their ratings.
Finally, in contrast to Eisenberg et
al.
(1987), we did not find
differences that were due to initial compliance. However, Eisen-
berg et al. found that the effectiveness of the foot-in-the-door
procedure increased with
age:
It was not significant for kinder-
gartners,
was
only marginally significant for second
graders,
and
was highly significant for fifth graders. Thus, one reason we
failed to find such an effect may be the fact that most of the
children in our study
were
younger than
fifth
graders. Moreover,
the difference between the studies may also be due to a differ-
ence in the time delay between initial compliance and the subse-
quent opportunity to assist. In the Eisenberg et al. study, there
was
a delay of at least 24 hr, whereas in our study the time delay
was only a few minutes. Thus, the children in our study may
not have had the developmental skills or had enough time to
consolidate changes in their self-attributions or self-percep-
tions.
In summary, this study has important implications for theory
and research on the effects of rewards on children's internaliza-
tion of desirable values and behaviors. If socialization pro-
cesses, as well as self-perceptions, affect the utility of rewards
for producing internalization, future researchers should explore
further when and how each of these factors produces its effects.
5 We are indebted to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this
explanation to us.
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Accepted December 13, 1988
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This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
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Veli katılımı, eğitim kalitesini artıran en önemli etkenlerden bir tanesidir çünkü çocukların okuldaki davranışları, veli tutumlarının bir yansımasıdır. Ebeveynler övgü ile farklı tutumlara sahiptir. Bazı ebeveynler övgü ile ilgili olumlu tutuma sahipken, bazı ebeveynler olumsuz tutuma sahiptir. Okul liderleri bu tutumları keşfederek, etkini veli katılım programları tasarlayabilir. Ancak hem uluslararası hem de ulusal alanyazında ebeveynlerin övgü tutumlarını ölçen güvenilir ve geçerli ölçek bulunmamaktır. Bu nedenle nicel yöntemli betimsel modeldeki bu araştırmanın amacı, ebeveynlerin övgü tutumlarını ölçen geçerli ve güvenilir bir ölçek geliştirmektir. 447 kişiden toplanan veri ile Açımlayıcı Faktör Analizi yapılmış, 9 maddeli, bir ölçek geliştirilmiştir. Ölçek iki faktörden oluşmaktadır. Bu faktörler “motivasyon” ve “kontrol” tutumları olarak adlandırılmıştır. 357 toplanan veri ile yapılan Doğrulayıcı Faktör Analizi ile ölçeğin yapıları doğrulanmıştır. Zamandaş geçerliği için Psikolojik Kontrol, Yüksek Beklenti ve Ceza Ölçeği kullanılmıştır. Her üç ölçek ile Ebeveyn Övgü Tutum Ölçeği arasında olumlu ilişki bulunmuştur. Bu olumlu ilişi de övgünün olumsuz bir ebeveyn tutumu olduğunu göstermektedir. Bu bulguda davranışsal ekolden ziyade Özdüzenleme Kuramının tezlerini doğrulamaktadır. Sonuç olarak, Ebeveyn Övgü Tutum Ölçeği, geçerli ve güvenilir ölçme araçları okul liderleri ve öğretmenler tarafından veli katılımında kullanılmak üzere alanyazınına kazandırılmıştır.
Chapter
Prosociality is a multifaceted concept referring to the many ways in which individuals care about and benefit others. Human prosociality is foundational to social harmony, happiness, and peace; it is therefore essential to understand its underpinnings, development, and cultivation. This handbook provides a state-of-the-art, in-depth account of scientific, theoretical, and practical knowledge regarding prosociality and its development. Its thirty chapters, written by international researchers in the field, elucidate key issues, including: the development of prosociality across infancy, childhood, adolescence, and beyond; the biological, cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms that underlie and influence prosociality; how different socialization agents and social contexts can affect children's prosociality; and intervention approaches aimed at cultivating prosociality in children and adolescents. This knowledge can benefit researchers, students, practitioners, and policy makers seeking to nurture socially responsible, caring youth.
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The present research examined the hypothesis that in contrast to theory and research indicating that tangible reward decreases subsequent interest in enjoyable academic activities, rewards are perceived by adults as effective techniques to maximize long- and short-term subsequent interest for academic tasks of both high and low initial interest level. The results of our first three studies demonstrated that college students and parents view tangible reward as more effective than other less controlling techniques to enhance intrinsic motivation and value rewards more for intrinsically interesting academic behaviors in comparison with others (e.g., prosocial behaviors). Our fourth study supported the hypothesis that adults do not subscribe to the minimal-sufficiency analysis of increasing intrinsic motivation but prefer a maximal-operant principle in which the likelihood of producing long-term interest in academic tasks is assumed to vary positively with the size of a reward. Our fifth and sixth studies investigated illusory correlation as one mechanism that may perpetuate beliefs about the assumed positive relation between tangible reward and intrinsic interest in academic tasks.
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Assessed prosocial behavior in 52 52–66 mo old preschoolers using 3 approaches: (1) naturalistic observation of prosocial events; (2) structured measures of perspective taking, empathy, and 2 types of prosocial behaviors; and (3) teacher ratings of prosocial behaviors under different eliciting situations. Results show that different categories of prosocial behavior within the 1st 2 settings were relatively independent. Teacher ratings were internally consistent but generally unrelated to the other measures. The structured measure of prosocial behavior that had a peer as the recipient was the best predictor of the equivalent observed behavior. Inconsistencies in previous research investigating the empathy–altruism relationships may reflect differences in assessment procedures, because significant relationships between different forms of empathy and prosocial behavior were dependent on the operational definitions of these processes. Ss demonstrated a sensitivity to the needs and feelings of their peers. Although this capacity was not tapped by traditional measures of perspective taking, it may have mediated prosocial behavior in the natural setting. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Through the use of an illustrated story-pair technique, 24 kindergartners, 24 2nd graders, 24 4th graders, and 24 college students were asked to make attributions in a way that called for the use of the multiple sufficient cause schema, one of the schemata defined in H. H. Kelley's attribution theory. Kindergartners did not use the schema (or any other systematic mode of attribution), whereas the responses of the 4th graders and the college Ss were overwhelmingly consistent with use of the schema. The 2nd graders fell in between these 2 extremes. Close inspection of the 4th grade and college data, however, suggested that they may have been generated by 2 somewhat different attribution processes--the college data by a true use of the schema and the 4th grade data by a simpler, more primitive process, which is discussed in this paper. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Examined developmental differences in the use of distinctiveness, consensus, and consistency information for making causal attributions. 144 1st, 3rd and 6th graders and college students were presented with brief story pairs consisting of an act manifested by an agent toward a target person. Each story in a pair was accompanied by a different level of a particular type of information (e.g., high consensus for one and low consensus for the other). Ss were asked to make causal inferences about both the agents and the targets. Results reveal significant age-related differences in the ability to use each type of information. Young children's use of distinctiveness information yielded the predicted agent attributions significantly more often than it yielded the predicted target attributions, while the reverse was true for consensus information. Findings are interpreted in terms of causal principles: Information was used in the predicted manner at a younger age when a covariation principle was required than when a discounting principle was required. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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2 studies examined the extent to which overjustification effects can be explained in terms of expectations deriving from the offer of a reward by the experimenter. This issue was tested by including a condition in which subjects merely observed another child perform an activity for a promised reward. The results of Experiment 1 showed that while such observer subjects manifested a short-term decrement that was not significantly different from the involved reward group, in the long term the decrement did not persist. A suggestion emerged that the "recovery" of the observed group was due to their trying out the activity, and this suggestion was verified in Experiment 2. While the central hypothesis has therefore to be rejected, an interesting new phenomenon has been uncovered with important applied implications.