Competition (1 of 3) Alfie Kohn Homepage. Interview with Alfie Kohn | LearnCentral. Punished by Rewards. Our basic strategy for raising children, teaching students, and managing workers can be summarized in six words: Do this and you'll get that. We dangle goodies (from candy bars to sales commissions) in front of people in much the same way that we train the family pet. In this groundbreaking book, Alfie Kohn shows that while manipulating people with incentives seems to work in the short run, it is a strategy that ultimately fails and even does lasting harm. Our workplaces and classrooms will continue to decline, he argues, until we begin to question our reliance on a theory of motivation derived from laboratory animals. Drawing from hundreds of studies, Kohn demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives.
Programs that use rewards to change people's behavior are similarly ineffective over the long run. Promising goodies to children for good behavior can never produce anything more than temporary obedience. Extrinsic Motivation. Achievement vs. learning. Extrinsic Motivation. Operant Conditioning. Positive Reinforcement. Punishment. Motivation. Motivation has been shown to have roots in physiological, behavioral, cognitive, and social areas. Motivation may be rooted in a basic impulse to optimize well-being, minimize physical pain and maximize pleasure. It can also originate from specific physical needs such as eating, sleeping or resting, and sex. Motivation is an inner drive to behave or act in a certain manner. These inner conditions such as wishes, desires and goals, activate to move in a particular direction in behavior. Types of theories and models[edit] Motivational theories[edit] A class of theories about why people do things seeks to reduce the number of factors down to one and explain all behaviour through that one factor.
Conscious and unconscious motivations[edit] A number of motivational theories emphasize the distinction between conscious and unconscious motivations. Psychological theories and models[edit] Motivation can be looked at as a cycle where thoughts influence behaviors and behaviors thus drive performance. Carol S. Dweck | Department of Psychology. Mindset (book) Carol S. Dweck (born October 17, 1946) is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University.[1] She graduated from Barnard College in 1967 and earned a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1972. She taught at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of Illinois before joining the Stanford faculty in 2004.
Contributions[edit] Professor Dweck has primary research interests in motivation,[2][3][4][5][6][7] personality, and development. "In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. This is important because (1) individuals with a "growth" theory are more likely to continue working hard despite setbacks and (2) individuals' theories of intelligence can be affected by subtle environmental cues. Selected publications[edit] Dweck, C. Sources[edit] See also[edit] Goal orientation References[edit] Drive. Flow (psychology)
Concentrating on a task is one aspect of flow. In positive psychology, flow, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting loss in one's sense of space and time. Flow shares many characteristics with hyperfocus. However, hyperfocus is not always described in a positive light. Some examples include spending "too much" time playing video games or getting side-tracked and pleasurably absorbed by one aspect of an assignment or task to the detriment of the overall assignment. In some cases, hyperfocus can "capture" a person, perhaps causing them to appear unfocused or to start several projects, but complete few.
Just as with the conditions listed above, these conditions can be independent of one another. Notes.