Immediate costs and rewards loom larger than future ones.
More quotesThe children chose to draw before anyone offered them a certificate. That detail is the whole experiment. Drawing already had a reason: it was enjoyable.
Then an adult arrived with a glossy piece of paper and converted play into a scheme. Two weeks later, with the scheme removed, the children who had been promised certificates drew less. The unrewarded group carried on.
It is easy to read this as an argument against rewards. That would be daft. People need paying. Tedious practice sometimes needs a shove. Good work deserves recognition. The problem is that a reward also tells a story about the activity. Apparently this is the sort of thing one does to obtain a token.
I have seen reading programmes become badge factories. Children discover the quickest books, adults admire the totals, and nobody asks whether a single sentence survived the journey. At work, the same trick acquires a dashboard. Close enough tickets and you win; the awkward customer can rot until next month.
The measurement that matters comes later and is rarely in the presentation. Remove the prize. Stop announcing the leaderboard. Let the manager go to lunch. The remaining behaviour shows what the incentive built.
In the nursery, the pens and paper came back. So did the children. Some of the drawing did not.