I received an e-mail stating, ” I Googled ‘disadvantages of punishment and rewards’ and found your website.”
My website was the 28th website listed on Google. Needless to say, I was grateful for the person’s finding me and subscribing to my free, monthly newsletter, “Promoting Responsibility & Learning.”
In the future, there will be more and more sites devoted to the disadvantages of using punishments and rewards for teaching and parenting. The reason is that the more these external approaches are used, the more obvious they are seen as being coercive and ineffective in changing people’s long-term motivation.
Rewards ask, “What will I get for doing it?” and punishments ask, “What will you do to me if I don’t?” These external approaches are manipulative and coercive. They also lack the prime characteristic for long-term success: perseverance and responsibility.