Rewarding students for attending school can make them more likely to play truant, experts have warned.
The widespread use of awards is based on the simple and intuitive appeal that recognizing effort and performance will result in improved or continued positive performance.
For this reason, say the researchers from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, awards are often used without a full understanding of whether or how they produce the intended behavior.
Why attendance awards backfire
The study looked at the controversial practice of giving out so-called “attendance awards” and examined data from 15,000 secondary students in 14 areas of California, where such schemes are official policy.
The researchers found that while the awards did alter student attendance behaviour, it was often for the worst.
“While it seems clear that non-recipients may respond negatively (e.g., due to envy), it is important to note that even recipients’ behavior can be adversely impacted,” the researchers wrote.
“For example, an analysis of CEOs who won prestigious business accolades found that the recipients’ firms subsequently underperformed, while the CEOs extracted higher compensation and pursued more privately beneficial activities, such as assuming outside board seats and writing books.”
‘Unintended negative effects’
According to the study, there are three main reasons why even retrospective awards may have unintended negative effects on the recipients’ behavior.
“First, recipients may infer from the awards that their own performance does not conform to the social norm and that they are doing more than required,” the researchers said.
This may lead to reduced effort, particularly if the behavior is inconsequential and not a reflection of the recipients’ abilities and achievements on an important performance dimension.
“Second, awards may send inadvertent signals about the giver’s intent or expectations, such as when awards cause the recipients [and audience] to infer that they have exceeded [low] institutional expectations,” they added.
Both of the aforementioned signaling mechanisms echo the conclusions of other researchers who have looked into this topic, but the researchers say that the resulting behavioral change need not be positive.
“Third, while many studies have shown that people have an inherent preference for high rank and status, awards may single out individuals in a context where the social costs of being singled out outweigh the benefits of the distinction,” the researchers said.
Why the results matter
Using a natural experiment in 2015, researchers Leonardo Bursztyn and Robert Jensen found that the introduction of a performance leaderboard singling out the top three students led to a 24% performance decline in a context where effort was observable to peers and risked provoking social penalties among students.
The strongest effect was seen among previously high-performing students, indicating that the desire to avoid the leaderboard in the future may have driven these results.
“These findings have implications for when and how awards should be used to motivate desirable behaviors – and when they may backfire,” the researchers cautioned.
“These boundary conditions have so far received only limited attention in the literature on organizational awards.”
The researchers said that the results of their study should be of interest to the myriad organisations and leaders using awards.
“They [awards] not only show that awards may have unintended effects on their recipients’ behavior but also point out mechanisms to be considered, notably the signals – intended and unintended – that can be emitted by the use of awards,” they said.