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Applying Psychology
in the 21st Century
Dollars for Scholars: Should
Parents and Children Be Paid
for Doing the Right Thing?
It’s one of the basic rules of parenting: Good
fathers and mothers
are supposed to be in-
volved in their children’s lives and watch
out for their best interests. Yet some parents
don’t do this as much as they should. Per-
haps these behaviors were never modeled
by their own parents, or perhaps they are
overwhelmed by the stressors in their lives.
But for whatever reason, they don’t do such
things for their children as taking them to
the dentist, getting them a library card, or
attending parent-teacher conferences.
To deal with the problem, a privately
funded program
in New York city called
Opportunity NYC is testing a highly contro-
versial solution for getting low-income par-
ents more involved in their children’s health
and education: It pays them to do it. For in-
stance, the program pays parents $200 for
each child who receives an annual medical
checkup. It pays $50 every two months for
each child who attends school regularly
during that period. It even makes some pay-
ments to the children themselves if they are
in high school, and, for instance, they take
precollege standardized
tests or accumulate
suffi cient credits toward graduation.
Opportunity NYC has the goal of less-
ening economic hardship in low-income
families through these direct payments
and encouraging families to take the initia-
tive to invest in their children and to im-
prove their futures. This seems noble
enough—families get money they very
much need, but only if they engage in cer-
tain behaviors to advance the health and
education of their children. In operant con-
ditioning terms, the payment is a positive
reinforcement.
In principle, the benefi cial
behaviors should become well learned
(OpportunityNYC.org, 2009).
So what objections could people have to
such a program? For one thing, it has been
criticized as insulting and patronizing to
low-income parents. But also, whether
such a program would work to change be-
havior for the better over the long term is
an open question. People might be moti-
vated by the rewards
to learn to engage in
the appropriate behaviors, but it’s unclear
that those behaviors would persist without
the rewards. Furthermore, some critics be-
lieve it may undermine students’ natural
enjoyment of learning; instead, they will
focus on the fi nancial rewards (Kelley,
2007; Sebire, Standage, & Vansteenkiste,
2009; Vansteenkiste et al., 2005).
Opportunity NYC intentionally takes
advantage of
operant conditioning princi-
ples in an attempt to change people’s be-
havior for the greater social good. If it
works as intended, it will help relieve the
fi nancial strains of poverty-stricken fami-
lies, and it will have coaxed those parents
into giving their children better futures
than they might otherwise have had. Still,
the idea of paying people to be socially re-
sponsible and meet their parental obliga-
tions strikes many people as the wrong
approach to take, and it remains to be seen
whether the program is effective.
• Do you believe that rewarding students fi nancially for doing well in school reduces
their motivation to learn for learning’s sake? Why or why not?
• How might you determine if Opportunity NYC is an effective program?
RETHINK
themselves angry or enraged. It is unlikely that individuals
in such an emotional
state will be able to think through what they are doing or control carefully the degree
of punishment they are infl icting. Ultimately, those who resort to physical punish-
ment run the risk that they will grow to be feared. Punishment can also reduce the
self-esteem of recipients unless they can understand the reasons for it (Leary et al.,
2008; Miller-Perrin, Perrin, & Kocur, 2009; Zolotor et al., 2008).
Finally, punishment does not convey any information about what an alternative,
more appropriate behavior might be. To be useful in bringing about more desirable
behavior in the future, punishment must be accompanied by specifi c information
about the behavior that is being punished, along with specifi c suggestions concerning
a more desirable behavior. Punishing a child for staring
out the window in school
could merely lead her to stare at the fl oor instead. Unless we teach her appropriate
ways to respond, we have merely managed to substitute one undesirable behavior
for another. If punishment is not followed up with reinforcement for subsequent
behavior that is more appropriate, little will be accomplished.
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