Humor Me

Here's an interesting question:  can making something that most people refuse to do, that might be "good" for them, interesting or fun encourage behavioral change?  Rather than lecturing you to eat your vegetables, could turning the situation around and making it fun or rewarding encourage you to do things that are good for yourself, or your community, or the planet?

Of course this is the carrot and sticks argument.  I can sternly warn you to do what's good, or right, in my opinion and threaten you with punishment.  In this regard I am using coercion to force you to adapt your behavior to what I wish, or what I believe is correct.  Your reactions are self-evident.  You unwillingly adopt the behavior when observed, but probably revert to old behaviors when not observed, and attempt to subvert the system whenever possible.

However, if I can change your thoughts or behaviors by engaging you in something rewarding or fun, you have made a conscious choice without threats.  You are more likely to repeat that behavior and retain that behavior over time, and model that behavior for others.  So, if this model is so much better, why isn't a carrots model used more frequently?  I don't yet know, but I'm forming some opinions.

A new Volkswagen initiative sparked my interest in this topic.  You can see it at The Fun Theory, a new website that supports a program to encourage people to modify their behavior through fun and rewards, rather than sticks and threats.  My favorite is a set of steps that mimic piano keys and allow people who use the steps rather than an escalator to play a tune.

What if your health insurer placed stickers on apples and other fresh fruits and vegetables.  If you purchased one of these at the supermarket you could enter a contest to win an award for healty eating.  It would seem any behavioral change we might desire could be influenced through fun, amusement and games or rewards.  Imagine a trash can that returns a ticket to a lottery each time you place trash in the can.  There'd be little to no litter if people had an incentive to clean up their own litter, much less an incentive to pick up the litter of others.

This kind of thinking is important because we face an array of demographic and societal challenges, in addition to all the challenges in the business world.  New thinking and new methods to encourage the best behavior and modify behaviors over time is welcome, and I think can be rapidly implemented.

Comments

[BarrettJ]

The problem with these reward systems is that it is an extrinsic reward for something, and thus when that reward isn't offered we don't value the intrinsic goodness of the action.

The musical stairways are an easy example - if they have an out of order sign, people won't take them because the reward is the fun of playing the music instead of the benefit of being healthy.

Reward really not any different from punish - you're just moving the scale up. Depriving of reward is exactly the same as giving a punishment.

Say a child gets a sticker when they eat their vegetables as a reward. Then one day, the child doesn't eat their vegetables and doesn't get a reward. Is this any different from always giving a sticker to a child everyday, and then one day when they don't eat their vegetables punishing them by not giving them the sticker?

Research has basically shown that rewards work no better than punishment. For some good reading on this, check out "Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason" by Alfie Kohn - he cites the research that I can't remember off hand.

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I'm seeking the author's name and the full text of a short piece of
humor entitled, "A (or The) Cliche Expert Testifies on the Atom." I
read this piece in a humor anthology in the early-to-mid 1960s. I
believe there was a whole series of humorous pieces with similar
titles, e.g., "The Cliche Expert Testifies on War," etc. The nearest
I've come to success in my own fairly extensive on-line searching was
in the Library of Congress on-line catalog, where I found a reference
to a humor anthology, dated 1969, containing a piece titled "The
Cliche Expert Testifies on War" attributed to an author "F. Sullivan."
I have not seen the text of this piece, but the author's name, F.
Sullivan, does not strike me as the same as the author of the specific
piece I'm looking for, i.e., "A/The Cliche Expert Testifies on the
Atom," although I cannot rule out the possibility that it is the same
author.

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It is well if they lead us to take ourselves not too seriously. and if they enable us to look upon our fellows, even the most eminent and respectable, with humor.

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The best way to be spoiled is with time...if you spoil with stuff, it's probably because you feel bad you're not spending enough time with that person. I was spoiled as a child

with time, even though my parents are very well off and could have easily gone the BMW for the first car route. But they didn't, and it's great!