Rewarding People Wrong

In the article “The Wrong Way to Get People to Do the Right Thing,” author Alfie Kohn argues that a person’s view of himself affects his likeliness to help others. He reveals that people either live up to the expectation that they are disposed to helping others and that they are altruistic, or they live down to the idea that they are selfish and motivated by egotistical reasons. People act selfishly due to the use of rewards and praise to encourage altruism, not human nature.

Kohn states that rewarding people for doing good things leads them to think that the reward caused them to act, thus leading them to think that they are not altruistic. In order for people to do good deeds without a reward, they¬¬ must see themselves as altruistic. He mentions several studies to prove this point. One involves repeated blood donors, in which case those who were reminded of the personal benefits of donating blood were more reluctant to donate than those who were reminded of the benefits to others. A second involves two groups of children, one of which was praised while the other was guided into

By not helping those who are struggling, we incur further costs later, and Kohn argues that this is part of why we help people. He cites newspaper excerpts with examples of healthcare, illiteracy, and family violence as evidence that people think that we should reduce family violence and illiteracy and improve healthcare for pregnant women and newborn babies because it is the most cost-effective method of dealing with these issues. Kohn suggests that financial self-interest inevitably affects the standards for spending tax money, and that people see everything from reducing infant mortality to care for the elderly as an investment, not as a part of humanity’s responsibility to care for others. By reducing issues of humanity to money, people defy the very purpose of