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Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences EPHHR 2022
Volume 8 (2023)
1822
The Influence of School’s Reward Systems on Students’
Development
Zihan Chen *
University of California, Irvine, Irvine, 92697, The United States of America
* Corresponding Author Email: zihanc16@uci.edu
Abstract. This paper pays attention to how reward systems at school influence students’
development. Specifically, this paper discusses how different reward systems work on students with
different life stage, and finally analyzes why those influence occur with the employment of reward
systems, such as operant conditioning and reward addiction. In a nutshell, the paper reveals that
school’s reward systems have both positive and negative effects on students’ development. They
can attract students’ interests, foster good learning habits, establish a positive learning atmosphere,
and increase students’ motivation. However, students may also develop reward addiction, increasing
sensitivity to punishment, and decreasing intrinsic motivation. If teachers aim to maximize the
advantages of reward systems, avoiding deficiencies and keep merits is an efficient way. This paper
provides insights for several deficits in the usage of reward system, pointing out the importance of
addressing those issues. Moreover, by showing positive influence of reward system, this paper
emphasizes the advantages of reward systems and the accessibility of making it a better tool in the
education setting. However, current research does not show whether the influence on reward system
can be affected by individuals’ personalities. Thus, future direction of research can be oriented
toward how people’s personalities exert effects on the impact of reward systems.
Keywords: Reward systems; Students’ development; Age differences.
1. Introduction
Students’ growth has been one of the most significant concerns in countries all over the world.
Since some research [1,2] indicate that reward systems at school have substantial effects on students’
development, but the mechanisms behind the systems and the level of their influence are still
equivocal. Figuring out how the whole systems work and what effects they have can help teachers to
make better plans for educating students.
Former research did not focus on the effect of reward system on different ages of students and also
students with different personalities. Moreover, even though some research studies proposed flaws of
reward systems, they did not find solutions of the problems. As a result, this paper will demonstrate
effects of applying reward systems to students in different ages and unearth potential mechanism that
support the entire systems.
In the main body part, this paper will first introduce the characteristics of students in different life
stages, emphasizing the factors that may affect their growth. Then, this paper will discuss the flaws
and benefits of rewards to students. Lastly, reasons will be listed and analyzed.
2. Characteristics of Students in Different Ages
This paper will mainly focus on stages from primary school to high school and will first introduce
characteristics of primary school students, then middle school, and lastly high school.
2.1 Primary School Learners
Primary schoolers start to figure out who they are and what they want from the world. 6- to 8-year-
old students may act under the impact of impulsive and irrational emotions because of their immature
brain development [3]. As a result, students in this age range are very easy to do things without
considering any consequences. This is corresponded to the results of a 2019 study proceeded by
Chinese researchers [4]. In the study, researchers divided primary school learners into three
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personality types based on Five-Factor analysis [4]. The resilient have the highest score, and the
undercontrolled have the lowest score. There was an upward trend in undercontrolled students, and it
reached the maximum level in grade 5 [4]. The reason why this trend took place is because primary
school students have insufficient self-regulation, which means that they do not have the ability to
control their feelings, emotions, and behaviors. However, since students in elementary schools show
“unlimited trust” and “obedience” to teachers and parents, it is a crucial time for teachers or parents
to promote their growth and teach them how to control themselves [3].
2.2 Middle School Learners
School work becomes a very important job for middle school learners to accomplish. Their
cognitive abilities develop, their memory retention increase, and their learning capabilities evolve.
Cognitively, their logical thinking swiftly enhances, so they gradually obtain the ability to think
properly. The expanding memory retention is significant for them since many exams require students
memorize the content in textbooks. At that time, middle schoolers seek for independence. They start
to disagree with teachers’ or parents’ ideas and sometimes deem they are wrong. They are willing to
accept new ideas, regardless of the quality. Also, in this age range, middle school learners confront
peer pressure and become anxious about their school grades [5]. In order to solve problems of learning
bad behaviors and overwhelming pressure, teachers could apply reward systems to encourage
students perform good behaviors and correctly deal with peer pressure.
2.3 High School Learners
High school learners face enormous stress on their academic works. Nevertheless, there are several
aspects of changes helping them to overcome certain difficulties. For example, their brains develop
maturely. The development of forebrain enables students to think critically, evaluate consequences
appropriately, regulate emotions properly, and memorize things efficiently [6]. Moreover, the well-
established self-esteem may allow students to remain competitive at school [6].
3. Categories of Reward Systems
Reward systems are methods that teachers use to boost students’ good behaviors in classrooms. It
can be divided into two categories: tangible reward systems and intangible rewards systems. Tangible
reward systems, also called external reward systems, include rewards like stickers, hand stamps, small
toys, crayons, and unbreakable mirrors [7]. Intangible reward systems, also called internal reward
systems, include teachers’ appreciation toward students’ works, a positive relationship with teachers,
and students’ senses of achievement [8].
4. The Influence of Reward Systems
4.1 The Positive Influence
Reward system stimulates students’ motivation to learn in both biological and psychological ways.
Students’ poor performance at school may be described to a lack of motivation. When students get
bad grades, they feel disappointed and do not know how to improve their grades. Without outside
help, they may feel less motivated to find solutions, so they keep being underperformed. Nevertheless,
when the teacher offers suggestions of improving grades and gives rewards after students are doing
better, students’ performance enhances. A longitudinal study by the University of Illinois’s
researchers has indicated that reward is a desirable thing for students, it can serve as an outside
reinforcement to increase students’ motivation to complete assignments and maintain good grades
[9]. Also, students could grasp a “healthy learning habit” by giving rewards properly [9]. Adrian
Galvan from the University of California, Los Angeles explores the corresponding brain functions,
and his finding suggests that students’ reward seeking behavior is highly correlated with hyper-
responsive dopamine system, meaning that the more desired rewards are given, the better
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performance students can achieve [10]. As a result, through the application of reward system, students
could be highly responsive to the reward and will be motivated to reach a higher level of academic
performance.
Reward system can also reduce absenteeism. A study of Dagatan National High School
demonstrated that strategic reward intervention could effectively decrease students’ absenteeism [1].
Moreover, many teachers express positive perceptions toward the reward system. A study elicited
that all teachers agreed that reward have positive influence to students‘ learning [2]. Those teachers
found that rewards help establish a positive learning atmosphere, increase students’ participation, and
realize learning goals [2]. Furthermore, the study justified that students are happy to receive reward
from their teacher, and those rewards motivated them to study harder. When they got rewards, they
not only got recognition from teachers, but also obtained positive feedbacks that encouraged them to
inspire their spirits [2].
Overall, reward system is advantageous in increasing students’ motivation, fostering healthy
learning habits, and promote students’ developmental growth. By applying reward system like
behavioral charts or small toys to students, teachers could achieve their teaching goals efficiently.
Therefore, reward system is a powerful tool to develop students’ abilities. Importantly, the
appropriate use of reward systems can help students reach thier potentials.
Moreover, reward systems have different functions toward students in different ages, and for
students in different ages, teachers tend to use distinctive categories of reward systems. For primary
schoolers, reward systems can shape their appropriate behaviors, help them generate happy feelings
like a sense of pride and achievement, and increase their self-esteem [11]. In addition, they are more
likely to be motivated by external rewards like toys or stickers. But for middle school and high school
students, rewards are more likely to boost their academic performance and external motivations [12].
Moreover, they are more likely to be spurred by internal or intangible rewards like happiness caused
by their good exam scores.
4.2 Negative Influence
As teachers continuously use rewards in the teaching context, students could develop reward
addiction. It means that after repetitious exposure to rewards, students become reliant on them and
may not perform well if teachers stop giving rewards. This kind of addiction has several negative
effects. For example, a 2018 study revealed that reward addiction would increase students’ sensitivity
to punishment [13]. By implementing path analysis on the model constructed by several factors of
reward overdose and allergy to punishment, researchers discovered that the reward overdose variables
tremendously and positively affected students‘ level of fear to punishment [13]. Consequently, the
level of students‘ dependence on reward had a positive correlation with students‘ level of allergy to
punishment. The higher the addiction to reward, the more intense students‘ reaction to punishment.
The obvious outcome of increasing sensitivity to punishment is that students’ self-esteem is damaged
when they are punished [13]. Another harmful impact of reward addiction is losing control. While
gaining rewards from teachers, students feel delighted, and because they become dependent on
rewards, they will beocme out of control in exchange for the transient feeling of pleasure created by
reward systems [13]. The addiction will be intensified if the feeling of losing control continues, so
students will fall into a vicious cycle.
Additionally, most parents hold an opposing attitude toward the reward system in the classroom
because it brings increasingly competing pressure and inhibits intrinsic motivation. Some parents
state that reward system produces competing pressures, which causes children to be anxious and
“become overly critical” to themselves [14]. The behavior charts or color charts let students compete
and rank the performance of different students. Once students are behind others, and they do not earn
rewards, they may feel grieved and become afraid of not getting rewards in the future. This exerts
huge pressure on students and may destroy students’ confidence. Another reason parents demurring
reward system is that it impedes the development of intrinsic motivation [14]. This is due to the
reward addiction. Constant needs for reward have caused students to treat reward as a signal to
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perform well in class. Without the signal, students may question whether they should do those
previous behaviors, and eventually abandon those good behaviors. They just focus on the reward, not
themselves. They have lost the ability to intrinsically motivate themselves.
In addition, there is no age difference for the negative influence of reward system on students’
development. For instance, for primary school, middle school, and high school students, they all will
develop addiction of reward and lower intrinsic motivations [11,12].
5. Reasons
5.1 Reasons of Positive Influence
5.1.1 Dopamine responsive
When a person is exposed to a rewarding stimulus, people’s brain areas will release a
neurotransmitter called dopamine [15]. Dopamine can be transferred in the brain, and through the
process of transportation, the level of dopamine increases. Since dopamine is related to reward and
pleasure, the increasing level of dopamine leads to people’s increasing satisfaction and happiness
created by rewards [15]. Thus, the more desired rewards are given, the better performance students
could achieve. In this way, reward is directly associated with students’ positive performance.
5.1.2 Operant conditioning
Operant conditioning is the theory behind the reward systems. It was proposed by B.F. Skinner
[16]. The mechanism of this theory is that “the consequences of a response” decide whether it will be
repeated [16]. Thus, theoretically, a behavior will be repeated if it is reinforced (rewarded) [16]. In
this way, desired behaviors can be achieved by giving rewards repetitively. In real-world situation,
for instance, if a teacher wants her students to actively participate in class, she can say “well done”
or “good job” every time after students answering her questions.
5.2 Reasons of Negative Influence
5.2.1 Reward addiction
Reward addiction is a phenomenon that people develop dependence upon both tangible rewards
and intangible rewards. The reason why it happens is that people’s dopamine system is highly
responsive to reward stimuli. When teachers give rewards to students, students’ dopamine system
will detect the intense stimuli and generate a sense of pleasure after receiving rewards [17]. Once
teachers continuously use reward systems, students’ dopamine systems will respond to stimuli that
“immediately precede and reliably predict the reward,” forming a strong association between
predictors and rewards [17]. In a long run, students’ responses to reward become reflexive and
eventually end with addiction.
5.2.2 Intrinsic motivtaion
Intrinsic motivation is a kind of motivation that do not require external rewards, which means that
people perform certain behaviors because they are enjoyable and meaningful [18]. The thing that can
destroy students’ intrinsic motivation is reward addiction, especially for tangible or external rewards.
Based on overjustification effect, when people are rewarded for doing something indeed “diminishes
intrinsic motivation to perform that action” [19]. As a result, an already internally rewarding activity
could turn to a less intrinsically motivated one [19]. Students gradually fixate on the external
rewarding motivation but ignore their ability to self-motivate.
6. Summary
Reward systems are instruments that teachers use at school. Tangible rewards like stickers and
behavioral charts and intangible rewards like students’ positive relationship with teachers are
frequently employed by teachers. This paper focuses on how reward systems at school can inflict
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effects on students and how they will affect students’ development. Students in different ages have
different education backgrounds, possess distinctive levels of learning abilities, and will be affected
by reward systems to different extent. For example, reward systems help elementary school students
construct good behaviors and habits, but they assist middle schoolers to improve academic
performance. The application of reward systems to students in different ages have both positive and
negative effects. The positive effects contain healthy learning habits, positive learning environment,
and increasing motivations. The negative effects incorporate reward addiction, sensitivity to
punishment, diffidence, and lower intrinsic motivation. The mechanisms behind the positive
influence of reward system are operant conditioning and dopamine systems, which can reinforce
students‘ good behavior, enhance their academic performance, and foster healthy learning habits.
Reward systems‘ negative influences are caused by addiction and dopamine’s responsive feature with
rewards. By using reward systems, students may become dependenable on rewards for long-term
positive performance and lose their capabilities to motivate themselves. The significance of this paper
is alerting some educators and parents certain potential side effects of reward systems in classrooms
and encouraging scientists to conduct studies to overcome those problems and find ways to maximize
the efficiency of reward systems. Current studies lack exploration of the impact of students’
personalities on the implementation of reward systems. In addition, the measurement of the level of
reward overdose and fear to punishment is absent. Therefore, future studies should focus on how
students’ personalities can be affected by reward systems, figure out the basic patterns of the influence
and the potential benefits or risks of those influences, and form solutions or theories that can be
applied to take advantage of benefits or avoid risks. Additionally, it is crucial to create measurement
of students‘ obsession with reward and avoidance to punishment since these two elements are related
to students‘ development. If teachers could accurately measure students‘ reliance of reward and their
susceptibility to punishment, reward systems will escalate to a new level and function better in the
field of education.
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