hello everybody have you ever been to the circus and been so amazed watching these animals do these awesome tricks and have you ever wondered how these animals were trained to do these really awesome tricks well if you wondered today is your lucky day because i'm going to tell you how so you go to a circus and you see tigers jumping through hoops of fire you see elephants standing on chairs while leaning on each other's backs you see dancing bears and parrots riding bikes and you might think to yourself how do these animals learn how to do this well it shouldn't surprise you that trainers use principles of operant conditioning to train animals how to do these tricks so let me ask you a question do you think that a trainer is going to be bring a bear into the circus ring and wait for the bear to begin dancing and then reinforce the bear for dancing or do you think that trainers are gonna bring elephants to the circus ring wait for for elephants to naturally just start standing up on a on a bench or pedestal and go into this certain formation or do you think that a trainer would bring a tiger into a cage with flaming rings and wait for the tigers to jump through the flaming rings and then reinforce them and the answer is absolutely not it's not gonna happen right when you bring a tiger into a cage with flaming rings a tiger is not going to naturally just jump through a ring um a tiger is actually going to be naturally very adverse to fire and probably isolate itself to the other side of the cage [Music] or if you're going to wait for a bear to dance a bear is not going to just naturally begin dancing with its trainer right it's never going to happen so so you can't wait for it to happen and then reinforce it you can't do that because it's not going to happen so instead what trainers use is they use a technique called shaping and what shaping is is reinforcing behavioral tendencies in the right direction then gradually reinforcing responses that are more similar to the desired response so shaping is also known as a method of successive approximations because what you're doing is you are reinforcing behaviors that become more closer and more closer to the end goal behavior so let me give you a example of shaping if you want to teach a tiger how to jump through a hoop of fire what you do first is you bring a tiger into a cage uh with a hoop of fire okay initially the tiger is going to uh turn his back to the fire because you know because animals are naturally scared of fire eventually the tiger is gonna turn around and look at the fire you know maybe just out of curiosity or just to check if it's still there and what you do is as a trainer you will then reinforce the tiger for looking back at the ring of fire so eventually after repeated reinforcement the tiger learns oh if i want to get food i have to look at the fire right but eventually looking at the fire is not enough uh now the tiger has to face the fire in order to get reinforcement right so then what you're doing is okay tiger no more reinforcement until you actually face a fire so then the tiger will turn around face a fire and then you give it food right so after a few sessions the tiger will learn okay if i want to get food i have to face the fire after a few more sessions facing the fire is not enough now the tiger has to approach the fire to get the um to get the reinforcement right so tiger learns okay i need to approach the fire if i want to get food right and eventually that's long enough the tiger now has to get on the pedestal next to the ring of fire in order to get reinforcement right so the tiger learns through reinforcement okay i got to sit here in order to get the food the reinforcement and eventually the tiger will learn that sitting on the pedestal is not enough now the tiger has to jump through the ring of fire in order to get the reinforcement right so what you're doing is you're shaping the animal's behavior in such a way to eventually end up with the desired behavior at the end so that's why this is called the method of successive approximations because with each step you are approximating and getting closer to the desired behavior so this is called shaping and once again this is you this is using operant conditioning principles to teach animals how to do certain behaviors such as circus tricks so maybe after step 20 you finally got success so obviously when it comes to animals shaping can take weeks or months for an animal to learn a single trick operant conditioning principles can also be applied to human beings so with operant conditioning principles are applied to human beings it is called behavior modification so behavioral modification is applying operant conditioning principles to humans to improve behavior and achieve desired goals examples of desired goals are stop procrastinating quit smoking and avoiding manholes and this last one dealing with the manholes is is something that i have experience with because after college i worked as an employment specialist right and we use behavior modification to teach adults with developmental disabilities such as autism we use operant conditioning to teach them work skills and social skills and one of my clients she had this fascination with manhole covers you know the those round middle things on the street so every time she saw a manhole she would get really excited and she would run to it and then she would like try to touch it and jump on it uh so for whatever reason she had the fascination with these with these metal things and this is uh not appropriate social behavior it's kind of weird right so we had to stop it because it was not appropriate and in addition it's very dangerous because manholes are on streets and uh moving cars are also on streets so in the ho in order to stop her behavior her inappropriate behavior with respect to manhole covers on the streets every time she had a day where she did not approach a uh a manhole cover we would reinforce her with a plastic toy from the 99 cent store so we'd take her to the center to the 99 cent store and we should we would tell her okay lynn good job you did not uh do anything with the manhole today so today you you get to pick any toy you want to so we use reinforcement right and eventually over time her inappropriate behavior decreased after many months to the point where she no longer behaved inappropriate with manhole coverage that she saw on the street so this is just one small example but operant conditioning has been used in general to increase productive behaviors or decrease unwanted or dangerous behaviors in humans so behavioral modification has been used successfully for example to help individuals quit drugs or quit alcohol it's also been used in the classroom to help students improve their grades it's also been used as in my example to teach adults with developmental disabilities social skills and employment skills so when it comes to opera conditioning in real life with in terms of its application to human beings what psychologists recommend is that we emphasize reinforcement and avoid punishment at all costs and the reason why they want us to avoid punishment when it comes to applying operant condition conditioning to humans is because punishment can lead to a lot of negative consequences that we can that will talk about in just a few minutes so we want to emphasize the positive aspects of human nature and human behavior and emphasize those with reinforcement so once again in my job working with people with developmental disabilities that included people who were autistic people with down syndrome and mild to moderate mental retardation so using behavior modification uh by using reinforcement and also by avoiding punishment we're able to teach these adults with disabilities skills so that they can be more independent in their lives maybe with respect to their social behavior and also more independent in terms of their work behavior so one example of operant conditioning in real life is sometimes um when individuals are trying to quit smoking for example every time a person goes a day without the cigarette they might reward themselves with their favorite candy bar or dessert uh every time um they maybe smoked one cigarette too many uh you know above their goal then they might punish themselves by snapping a rubber band against their wrist right so this punishment will hopefully discourage the individual from smoking in the future and stick stick to the program but once again for the most part psychologists really recommend that human beings avoid punishment even self-punishment so that's operant conditioning and once again the application of operant conditioning to human beings is called behavior modification so there are pros and cons of punishments so first of all we're going to talk about when punishment works when it is appropriate punishment works for behaviors that can't be ignored for example with respect to criminal behavior so when it comes to criminal behavior treating criminals with love and compassion and understanding unfortunately sometimes it just doesn't work so um very hardened criminals aren't going to respond with empathy so you might see for example a gangster and say oh i'm just i just said joe okay oh joe please don't don't rob the bank that's not very nice joe come on you know i love you joe do you want to lose my love you're right if you wrap that bank i'm not gonna love you anymore we're not gonna be friends you think joel's gonna care he's a hardened criminal right so for for some criminals that are really hardcore uh love sympathy compassion doesn't really work for them so the most effective way to control hardened criminals is by threatening them with punishment so punishment is appropriate for hardcore criminals in addition punishment is more appropriate when it can be more immediately administered right because immediately punishing a self-destructive behavior is more likely to eliminate it so examples of self-destructive behaviors uh where punishment might be effective is like um a person who does who does drugs right or a person who is addicted to alcohol or who engages in self mutilation punishment unfortunately is sometimes the most effective way to contri to con control uh that type of self-destructive behavior um unfortunately once again for these self-destructive behaviors uh love or compassion sometimes is not as effective as punishment obviously your first course of action should be empathy love support understanding you know of course when dealing with individuals who engage in self-destructive behaviors but frequently unfortunately that's simply not enough and punishment is more effective and once again if you're going to apply punishment immediate punishment is is the is the way to go in addition milder punishment often works just as well as harsh punishments so what you want to do is if you do administer punishment it is recommended that you use the least amount of punishment that is effective so don't use extreme punishment because extreme punishment can sometimes worsen the situation and so we'll talk about that more in the next slide how harsh punishment can lead to unintended negative consequences so milder punishment is many times just as effective so you want to go with milder a punishment when it comes to punishment consistency is important if you are not consistent with your punishment you're basically shooting yourself in the foot right you're self-sabotaging yourself so if you want to for example decrease the behavior it's really important that you consistently apply the punishment not sometimes you know but all the time and that's going to make the punishment more effective okay so this is when punishment works uh it works for criminal behavior or self-destructive behavior use the mildest punishment that is effective and also you be consistent with your punishment however there are many cons associated with punishment which is why psychologists recommend that we avoid punishment so when punishment fails punishment punishment often fails because it is often administered inappropriately or mindlessly sometimes parents might go into a blind rage with their children for a very minor behavior so sometimes parents can basically be too extreme in their punishment so maybe they had a bad day so they might take it out on the children and give a more extreme punishment than fits the crime if you will or maybe they're just frustrated with the child for engaging in a mildly bad behavior but because the parent told the child over and over right they're so frustrated with the child their punishment might be more extreme even though the bad behavior was actually very mild so sometimes the punishment is too is too much in addition punishment is sometimes administered inappropriately because children are masters at manipulating their parents my sister used to do this all the time when she was in trouble she would do this fake cry right and my dad would just look at my little sister and say oh i'm sorry right and then basically my dad would let my sister get away with any misbehavior that she engaged in because my sister would manipulate my dad with this fake cry you know what it worked so ironically sometimes parents might not administer enough punishment because they are being manipulated by their children with with their fake cries so yes children are masters of manipulation addition uh lastly sometimes parents will administer punishment without knowing all the details of the situation so here's an example when i was younger my sister was a brat okay i hate to say that but she was because she was daddy's little girl and she got away with everything so uh every so often she played with my toys even though she wasn't supposed to right and she would like break my toy like she would break my gi joe dolls right how the heck do you break a gi joe doll that is something that doesn't happen accidentally that's something that happens deliberately right she pull the head off or something or she dismember the arms and legs and break my toys and i would get pissed off so i would kick my sister's butt so what would my sister do she would cry and cry and cry and cry and then my dad would see what's happening right see us fighting see my sister crying and then my dad would then kick my butt and my dad would say you never hit girls you know pick on somebody your own size you know because she was my my small sister so she was smaller than me she was a girl but here's the thing if my dad knew why i hit my sister my dad should have actually scolded my sister like don't break your brother's toys you know that's why he's mad at you so don't break his toys so if my dad understood the situation instead of scolding me he would scold my sister right and stop her from making my toys and then we have no problems um anyways that's my perspective so anyways from my perspective my dad didn't understand what happened and he applied punishment inappropriately to me when in my opinion my sister totally deserved to get her butt kicked [Music] but this was 40 years ago so [Laughter] we're uh me and my sister we're pretty cool now so okay uh in addition uh to uh to that uh the recipients of punishment can often respond with anxiety fear or rage so sometimes you can have negative emotional reactions when people are punished so for example excessive extreme punishment can lead to maybe a lower self-esteem of a child it can lead to maybe later depression it can lead to anger and violent behavior acting out you know as a child it might get resentful right for being punished so this might make the child very angry and more violent but class for the most part when it comes to punishment children are very resilient right so you can punish children without having any ill negative emotional or psychological effects however please also remember that children are individuals right some children are very delicate some children are very sensitive so if you have a delicate sensitive child you got to be very mindful of the punishment that you administer to that child because it could affect them um negatively then a child who's more resilient okay so anyways punishment can us often lead to uh emotional or psychological issues to some children a small percentage also the effects of punishment can be temporary it may depend on the punisher being present so basically from punishment what a child might learn is how not to get caught right so in this particular picture this child learned how not to get caught um for writing on her face with with markers so she figured out hey if mommy's not home i can write on my face all i want to right so basically the punishment that was given to her really didn't do any good as she figured out how to avoid that punishment so what she learned was not correct behavior what she learned was how to engage in bad behavior without getting caught so that's why punishment is sometimes not effective um so punishment maybe may depend on the punisher being present and as you know class it's impossible for the punisher to be always present also most behavior is hard to punish immediately because well like i said the punisher is not always present so going back to the parent and child relationship parents work right so if a child misbehaves a parent is unable to punish the child simply because you know the the parent is at work so punishment might not come into a few hours later when the teacher tells the parent what the child did right so um remember i told you that punishment that is immediately administered is most effective unfortunately immediate punishment is not always possible because parents work um i'll give you another example let's say that you got a new puppy and your puppy uh takes a dump on your carpet okay i i know that's really gross but just go with it your new puppy takes a dump on your carpet but you can't do anything about it because you're at work right so you come home from work you know six hours after your puppy did did the dump and then you look at the dump and then you look at your puppy and then you might scold your puppy bad dog bad dog right so what happens is because the punishment occurred so much so six hours after the dump occurred the puppy is not going to make the connection between the punishment and the behavior right so this is like another reason why punishment is often hard to administer because quite simply it's often impossible to to administer punishment immediately so that the organism is more discouraged by the punishment you know because it's immediate and also the organism might not make the connection between the unwanted behavior and the punishment unless the punishment was immediate in addition punishment has a weakness because punishment conveys little information about desired behavior so punishment even when it is administered immediately it teaches an organism whether it's a dog or a human what not to do however one thing a punishment doesn't necessarily teach is a punishment doesn't necessarily teach an organism what to do what is the correct behavior so if you punish your dog for taking a dump on your carpet it doesn't necessarily teach your dog the correct behavior that is to take a bathroom break outside as opposed to on the carpet right so there's a big difference between punishment and teaching so in addition to punishing your dog right for doing inappropriate behavior you also have to teach your dog what is the correct behavior the same thing goes with bad grades so you can punish your son or daughter for filling you know a test or filling a test building a test or filming a class however punishing your child doesn't necessarily teach your child the correct behavior to be more successful in school so in addition to the punishment you also have to provide your child with guidance how to do better in school and improve their academic performance lastly sometimes a punishment can be reinforcing because it brings attention sometimes attention even negative attention is what a person is after in the first place so punishment might actually increase the unwanted behaviors because it might bring the attention the child wanted all along so please be careful uh if you are punishing your child for for bad behavior you may actually be reinforcing that bad behavior if it's the attention that child wanted so please please be aware of that because of the many negative drawbacks associated with punishment most psychologists believe that punishment especially severe punishment is a poor way to eliminate unwanted behaviors in most situations so instead of punishment psychologists have guidelines to uh or alternatives for punishment so number one in order to deal with unwanted behavior we should avoid abuse abuse obviously and give information about desirable behavior and focus and reinforce desirable behavior so this sounds pretty simple right uh just avoid abuse you don't check easy to do give information about desirable behavior right check easy to do uh reinforce desirable behavior check easy to do but let me also tell you class that this is easier said than done instead of punishment what psychologists recommend is that parents try what's called what's called extinction so we covered extinction earlier so try extinction and reinforce alternative behaviors so here's what happens you go into a supermarket right and then let's say that your child wants candy right or your child might want uh toys we were all kids once so i i can remember giving my parents a hard time about candy and toys i just love candy and toys as a child the first thing i do when we go to a store is i run to the candy section or run to the toy section and beg my parents to buy me candies and toys [Music] sometimes kids have uh like these tantrums right if a parent says no no no no candy no toy uh the parent uh says no the little child would go where where or sometimes they might even just lay on the ground and kick their legs i want that toy and why i want the toy and cause a scene so frequently uh because they're causing a scene what parents will often do is they say okay okay okay i'll get you the toy please just be quiet right because their parents are embarrassed in public and in order to make their child stop uh this behavior they'll give in and they'll actually reinforce the negative behavior by giving in and purchasing the the toy or the candy right so that's not good right because you're increasing the probability that your child is going to have a tantrum in the future so what psychologists recommend instead of of reinforcement or instead of punishing the behavior right because you want to avoid punishment because of the potential negative consequences instead of a punishment what they recommend is extinction when your child has a tantrum in the store what you want to do is literally walk away from the child right so by walking away from the child you're avoiding punishment right and what's going to happen is that your little child is going to be on the ground look at you and say mommy where are you going or daddy where you going and then your little child is going to run after you and eventually over time your child is going to learn that having a tantrum in the store is not going to result in reinforcement it's not going to get him or her the candy it's not going to get him or her the toy right so as your child learns this there's going to be a decrease in tantrums over time to the extinction however like i said this is easier said than done because if your child is having a tantrum in the store and you just walk away from your child people are gonna look at you like you're crazy like what a bad parent how could you just ignore your crying child right so once again that's why i said it's easier said than done and as a parent you're going to feel sad or bad or just allowing your kid to cry himself out as you walk away from him so once again it tugs at your heartstrings um it might bring a little bit of embarrassment as people give you dirty looks in public as you walk away from your crown child but nonetheless try extinction and uh probably uh the the best way to get rid of tantrums in public okay so that's that oh this is one of my students she is from long beach and she said that she was walking uh by the um by the boats in long beach and she met this man and they just started the conversation and the man said hey i'm going to catalina tomorrow would you like to go and my student she said yeah she just met that man like literally that hour and the man seemed nice invited her to uh ride on this boat to canada and my students said yeah so my student friend this is totally ill-advised by the way uh she went with the stranger to catalina on his boat and she was surprised that not only was it that man she met the day before but also his friend was also there that she didn't know about so she said okay whatever you know they seem really nice so she went as it turned out these two guys were perfect gentlemen you know nothing weird happened that they had a good time you know a good friendly time and uh she got to go to catalina for free on a stranger's showboat so so everything worked out fine so here she is in in this selfie that she took on that trip to catalina with her two new friends i don't know if she ever met up with them again but good for her once again i totally would not recommend that you do this here she is again uh she took a picture at san diego zoo and she said that uh there was actually like like a blue screen or something and that's a fake panda she's carrying i forgot what that was like like a blue screen panda and they basically use a computer to to to fill in the the panda and the scenery still pretty cool oh more halloween pictures pretty awesome [Music] wow look at those eyes man her eyes are huge all right pretty funny oh this picture here was taken by one of my psychology students so she sent it in and pretty awesome i think this is a a very famous iconic photo perhaps you've never seen this but at one time it was a very popular photo that was in the media a lot and my student took the picture hello kitty cat very cute very very very cute oh look at that move all right so now we're going to talk about reward so we talked about problems with punishment and when it's appropriate for example with criminal behavior or self-destructive behaviors but in general when it comes to everyday use punishment is really really um not recommended by by psychologists you know they actually recommend that you avoid punishment and instead focus on accentuating or reinforcing wanted behavior or positive behavior okay so now we're going to talk about rewards there's also issues with using rewards number one rewards are sometimes misused because number one they have to be tied to the desired behaviors but sometimes rewards are given to behaviors that are not that are not deserving if you will you know like i'll give you a i'll give you an example so your book says that many teachers reward students with inflated grades for simply trying or they might give students a higher grade than they deserve for mediocre classroom performance and the reason why they do this is for many reasons number one because they don't want to destroy the academic self-esteem of students so as an educator i want students to learn i want them to be self-motivated but if i give them a bad grade i might demotivate them from learning right so i think to myself as a teacher okay if i give students a a higher grade than he or she deserves i'm going to make them feel good about themselves i'm going to give them confidence and i'm going to make them want to learn more right so that's one reason why as an educator i might want to give students a higher grade than they actually deserve to encourage their effort and interest so according to your text grade inflation is a misuse of a reward because it is not tied to actual academic achievement so if we be if we reward student for mediocre work for simply trying this leads to influen inflated grades and mediocre students who are not equipped to um to compete at a higher level of education such as at the universities so let me give you some examples so an example of a misuse of rewards as i said earlier is great inflation so in reality you know this is just kind of like a cartoon like you know making uh making humor of it but um maybe an a might be average work b would be below average c might be complained until you get a better grade d is the dean gets involved f is file lawsuit i is in complete denial right so this is you know this is just humorous making light of great inflation um but unfortunately this is somewhat reflective of reality when some students get higher grades than they actually deserve based on their real performance objective performance so why does grade inflation occur once again for many reasons number one you know a few decades ago if a student got a bad grade the parents would come down on the student hey son you know why your grades so bad you better buckle up and you better study more right so there was parents applied pressure to their children to do better in school a few decades ago but more recently in this century if a teacher gave a student a bad grade unfortunately parents are more likely to confront the teacher like why are you giving my son a fail he's a good boy you know he doesn't deserve a fail you're a bad teacher so obviously this is something that teachers want to avoid so this might motivate some teachers to to artificially inflate grades to avoid um conflict with angry parents right so this could contribute to great inflation i'm not saying this only reason i'm just saying you know it potentially could in some cases contribute to it um in addition as an educator as i said earlier i want to i want to encourage students to to study i want them to be confident in their ability abilities to learn so one way i might do this as an educator is by giving them higher grades than than they deserve um also a great inflation could be due to some professors they might want to get tenure so when it comes to universities or when it comes to like a colleges um in order to get tenure there's a lot of things that are to get full employment by a university or college in order to be a full-time professor if you will a tenured professor one of the things that the community looks at is the grades of the student so imagine i'm a new professor at the university okay and i want to be full-time i want to be tenured imagine that my students do really bad okay so i give my students the grades they they deserve and i give them c's right mostly c's and some d's and some bees but mostly seas [Music] so what's going to happen is that the tenure committee is going to look at me right as a professor they're going to look at my students grades and they're going to say you know what danny you're a bad teacher because most of your students are getting c's so you're a bad student so we're going to deny you tenure right so what's what happens is as a professor i might feel pressure to give my students higher grades than then they deserve in order to help ensure that i look better as a teacher and increase the chances that i get tenure so obviously when it comes to tenure decisions it's much more than grades there's many other things that come into play when it comes to when it comes to ten year decisions but students grades is just one ingredient of many so i might maybe fix that ingredient by giving my students higher grades so as a result what happens with grade inflation is that students turn in mediocre work so in reality right a student turns in a grade that's actually a c minus but as a professor i might inflate it to a b plus right so i to me a b plus is inflated but then this student because of great inflation and unrealistic expectations they think they should get an a so in reality it's actually a c minus so another reason why great inflation occurs is because of websites like ratemyprofessors.com so when it comes to choosing classes many students might go to ratemyprofessors.com right and they'll look at the ratings of the teachers if i give my students the bad grades that they deserve what happens is they're going to get pissed off and they're going to go to rate my professors.com and then they're going to give me bad reviews they might say for example don't take danny's class he is a terrible teacher and i studied and i just got to see he is terrible do not take his class he sucks right so then they might rate me one on the score on the scale of five right so i'm gonna get bad reviews i'm gonna get bad ratings so what's gonna happen students are to avoid taking my classes because i gave my students the low grades that they deserve so what's going to happen students avoid taking my classes my classes are going to get canceled i'm gonna get my uh i'm not gonna get paid because my classes were canceled because not enough students enrolled in it um i'm not gonna get paid i'm not gonna be able to make my house payment and i'm gonna end up living on the street right so obviously that's the worst case scenario so i make light of it but you know i mean there is a grain of truth in this because i want to get good ratings right as a professor so maybe as a professor in order to increase my ratings on greatmyprofessors.com i might inflate my grades of my students just a little bit right so that they give me better ratings so more students take my class so my classes don't get cancelled so that i have an income so i can pay for my house right so that is like another little thing that could contribute to uh grade inflation so let me just tell you class that i do not engage in great inflation okay so the the the grade that you get in my class is the grade that you deserve so i just wanted to use it as an example okay so great rate my professors can contribute to great inflation so what does this all mean uh so with with grade inflation what this really hurts is this hurts the student okay so what happens is as a student you're not learning as much as you could or should because you're getting higher grades than you deserve right so then what happens is basically you're learning that mediocre learning is outstanding learning when in fact mediocre learning is mediocre learning so what happens is you are going to go into college with a shaky foundation of the fundamentals of math a shaky foundation of the fundamentals of chemistry a shaky foundation of the fundamentals of english right so because you have those shaky foundation fundamentals when you go into college you're not going to be able to compete with other students whose grades were not inflated and worked really hard in high school in order to get the high grades that they actually earned so you're going to be at a huge disadvantage going into college not only are you going to be have shaky foundation of knowledge but you're also going to go into college with unrealistic expectations of how much studying you have to do so in high school let's say you study uh three hours a week and you got a 4.0 gpa do the great inflation right you study three hours a week so you think to yourself yeah man i'm so smart you know i studied three hours a week and i got a 4.0 you know yeah i'm just gonna i'm just gonna kick ass through college because i'm so smart you know i got a 4.0 gpa damn man after three hours of studying damn college is gonna be a breeze so what happens is you go into college and you think you just need to study three hours a week to get a's in college guess what wrong so not only did you have shaky fundamentals going into college but also you had unrealistic expectations about how much work you had to do in order to excel in academics so what's going to happen you're going to end up failing all your classes and you're going to end up dropping out of college because you weren't well prepared so this is what grade inflation does to students so when it comes to grade inflation um great inflation doesn't hurt me right matter of fact it kind of helps me because as an educator i get better ratings i'm more likely to get tenure and i'm more likely to be liked by students and students are more likely to take my classes because of great inflation right so it doesn't hurt me but what it does hurt is it hurts you the student so that's why i as an educator as an educator i refuse to engage and engage in great inflation so let me tell you that for the most part uh great inflation is not something that's very common in education but nonetheless it does happen on occasion okay so rewards can be misused because sometimes unfortunately rewards may not be tied to the desired behavior in addition rewards can also fail because rewards can backfire so what happens is if you reward somebody for something if you like reward um somebody for a behavior that they already enjoy doing rewarding somebody can actually lead to a decrease in their intrinsic enjoyment of a task so let me give an example that didn't really come out right so maybe this example will make it more clear if you enjoy crochet okay you just love doing crochet it's your pastime it's your hobby it's your passion so you have just a genuine intrinsic enjoyment of crocheting you do it because you want to you do it because it makes you happy but let's say now i say you know what i love your your crochet work so much i'll pay you five dolla i'll pay you 20 for each piece that you make for me right so by rewarding you with money for something you already enjoy doing basically it turns that activity into a job right so what happened is by paying you for crocheting it's actually going to have a negative impact on your enjoyment of that activity so now you're gonna like crocheting less so it's really ironic but paying somebody uh to do something that they already enjoy doing can actually actually lead to a decrease in enjoyment of that task so here's another example uh you have a son or dollar okay and your son or dollar enjoys learning you know they have just a natural curiosity about the world about the world about chemistry about history about math right so they naturally gravitate towards uh towards academics and studying so they they get pretty good grades you know they get a's and b's in in high school okay um so once again your kids are self-motivated right to learn because it's natural curiosity but let's say as a parent you want to encourage their learning and you say okay son or daughter i will give you 100 for each a that you earn on your report card right so now what happens is the the motivation for learning is not because of interest the motivation for learning is now money right so what happens when you take away the money when you take away the motivation uh from from your child right you say okay uh son of daughter uh here's your money i i think you're pretty i think you're pretty smart so i don't think i'm gonna pay you any more for getting a's so by taking away the money you're taking away their motivation and this can actually lead to a decrease in their academic achievement after you take away the reward so once again this is an example of when rewards can backfire so the conclusion is that sometimes rewards are necessary right to motivate behavior however you should use rewards sparingly so use as little reward is as as necessary if you reward a child for example too much money for good grades basically it's going to have a greater negative impact on their intrinsic motivation for learning as they begin to attribute their learning to the money as opposed to self-interest so those are some problems with rewards so there was an experiment that showed how pain or rewarding students can actually have a negative impact on their future behavior so in this experiment uh psychologists went to a preschool and they engaged preschoolers playing with felt-tip markers right and these preschoolers were divided into two groups for one group they were promised a reward for playing with the markers and for the second group no reward was promised for playing with markers right so before the experiment these two groups were observed right so students in the first group they spent about 16 16 percent of their play time was spent playing with affiliate pins and those who were not expecting reward they also uh used about 16 percent of their time playing with their fellow tip marker you know when they had an opportunity to to play with it [Music] so these two groups there was very little difference right in the amount of time that they played with a felt tip marker so what happened was one group was then [Music] promised a reward for playing with the marker and the second group was not promised a reward for playing with the marker one week later after the experiment the researchers actually came back and what they found was those who expected a reward played with the markers less after the experiment ended right so uh playing with the markers went from about 16 percent all the way down to 8 so they played with the markers about half as much when they first expected a reward for playing with a marker for those students who were not expecting a reward for playing with the marker after the experiment was uh was ended they played with the marker about equally uh in about the equal same amount after the experiment ended so according to the psychologist what happened was by giving students a reward for playing with the marker this had a negative impact on their intrinsic enjoyment of playing with the marker as a result after the experiment ended they played with the marker less for those students who were not promised a reward for playing with the marker if they didn't expect or get a reward for playing with the marker um obviously it did not impact the amount of time that they played with the marker the next week because their intrinsic enjoyment was unaffected right so this is experiment kind of showed how a reward can backfire and actually lead to a decrease in the rewarded behavior okay class well that's it for this zoom video i'll see you in the next one and we're going to close out and finish chapter 7. i'll see you there you