Finding out if anyon

[Jerome Yuzyk <jerome -dot- yuzyk -at- FREDDY -dot- SUPERNET -dot- AB -dot- CA>]

KK> I just listened to a piece on NPR last night on the concept of rewar
KK> creativity in children with cash incentives. There were several
KK> interesting results of the study they reported (such as the fact
KK> that creativity is transitive--if you encourage artistic creativity,
KK> you'll end up with more creative writing), but the relevant one is
KK> that the reward needed to be small and out of sight. When the reward
KK> was either large or in view, creativity became subsumed in the large
KK> greed that developed.

While in university I was involved in research on something called the
Overjustification Hypothesis, which posited that paying someone to
do something that they would normally do for free (e.g., for fun) would
actually decrease their later interest in the activity when no reward was
available. In fact, we demonstrated a number of times that paying people
to even _think about_ doing the task was sufficient to reduce their later
interest. This is a very reliable and well-studied phenomenon, explained
by a transference of motivation from the intrinsic interest of the task
to the extrinsic reward for completing the task, given a sufficiently-large
reward.


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    Jerome Yuzyk                      jerome -dot- yuzyk -at- freddy -dot- supernet -dot- ab -dot- ca
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