The effects of praise and blame as incentives to learning.

Abstract

The preceding review of the literature leaves no definite conclusions to be drawn as to the effectiveness of praise and blame as incentives to learning. This has been brought about, it is felt, through there being no clear-cut conception of the basic principles involved, or through a nonrealization or non-differentiation of what was being sought and what was actually being done. The groups employed as subjects in this experiment were comprised of the following: 85 boys and 81 girls from six 7th grade classes, and 84 boys and 102 girls from six 8th grade classes, all from the Woodland Way Junior High School in Hagerstown, Maryland (population, approximately 35,000); 192 boys from six high school classes at McDonogh School, McDonogh, Maryland (a private boys' school near Baltimore); and a college group of 30 men. The apparatus employed with the college subjects was standard laboratory equipment for measuring the physiological changes of blood pressure, pulse, and breathing rate. The purpose of this investigation is threefold: to seek an answer to the question of the effects of Praise and Blame as incentives in learning; to observe the effects of different testers; and to determine the attendant emotional aspects, as evidenced from physiological changes recorded on a kymograph. This investigation was not concerned with testing the effects of Praise or Blame as psychological opposites, but rather their effectiveness, per se, in producing a change in the learning situation. The statements of Praise or Reproof were administered rather much as would be done in any routine classroom situation of like nature; but with the precaution that no external factors of either tester would bias the results.

Generalized effects of praise and reproof.

“…In a deliberate effort to obtain distinctly high and low achievers, the data for analyses are based on 52 females, selected from the total number of 128 students, who were present for all procedures and who scored either in the upper or lower third of the total ACH-test score distribution; absences, either from one of the COMP or the ACH-test administrations, reduced the sample size. Moreover, since a limited number of males were represented in the upper and lower thirds of the ACH score distribution (9 and 12, respectively), and ample evidence of possible sex differences had been reported (e.g., Schmidt, 1941;Stevenson, 1961), males were eliminated from experimental analyses.…”

“…Several studies have been conducted to assess the effects of praise and reproof on learning and performance. Schmidt (1941) obtained differential effects between performance and reinforcement, while Child and Whiting (1959) emphasized the importance of level of aspiration as a factor in success and failure. Hurlock's (1925) results indicated that praise was clearly the more effective condition for improving the performance of both high-achieving and lowachieving students, yet an obvious inference from Van De Riet's (1964) data was that academically low students would perform better when reproved and worse when praised, while normal or high-achieving students would perform better when praised and suffer lower achievement when reproved.…”

The Interpretation of Approval and Disapproval by Delinquent and Non‐delinquent Adolescents1

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VLTHOUGH SEVERAL EXPERIMENTERS (3,6,8,10,11,13) have demonstrated differences among individuals in responses to social approval and disapproval, none has dealt directly with the processes by which a given event may function at the same time as blame for one individual and as praise for another A relationship of this phenomenon to practical social problems has been suggested by others (4, 7) who maintain that effective utilization of social rewards and punishments as guideposts is essential to mature behavioral control and healthy culmination of the socialization process This study mvestigates the process of interpreting the occurrence of approval and disapproval events, as well as differences among individuals m the operation of this processThe experiments described here rest upon the assumption that individuals categorize or organize their expenences into relatively integrated systems This conceptualization process is conceived as a perceptual phenomenon which is analogous to ordinary psycho-' The research reported here was supported m part by the Rockefeller Foundation for research jn percepbon and social psychology, and in part by the United States Office of Naval Research under ccmtract Nonr-1858 (12) The authors express their gratitude to the staffs and adnunistrabons of the following institutions for their co-operation m supplying subjects The Hun School

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“…VLTHOUGH SEVERAL EXPERIMENTERS (3,6,8,10,11,13) have demonstrated differences among individuals in responses to social approval and disapproval, none has dealt directly with the processes by which a given event may function at the same time as blame for one individual and as praise for another A relationship of this phenomenon to practical social problems has been suggested by others (4, 7) who maintain that effective utilization of social rewards and punishments as guideposts is essential to mature behavioral control and healthy culmination of the socialization process This study mvestigates the process of interpreting the occurrence of approval and disapproval events, as well as differences among individuals m the operation of this process…”

“…The Sttuattonal Interpretation Test The construction and validation of the Situational Interpretation Test has been reported elsewhere (8), and therefore only a brief summary is given here In the administration of this instrument, the individual is confronted with a number of situational or interpersonal events descnbed in brief, one-paragraph "stories " For each event, the individual is forced to make a choice between two possible interpretations one indicating a high (positive) the other a low (negative) state of selfevaluation The instrument consists of eight positive events (four social praise and four situational success items) and eight negative events (four social criticism and four situational failure items) The test items are typified by this example of a positive (social praise) item You are just finishing a project which you had hoped would be a success At tunes you had some trouble with it and wondered how it was going to turn out One of the people in charge of the project comes in, looks at your work, and says, "It looks like you did a good job, you really did wdl" Which thought would you ha\e'> (a) This means I'm doing very well (self-positive) (b) He IS just trying to build me up (self-negative) On each item of the SIT, choice of the self-negative mterpretation is scored 1, choice of the self-positive interpretation is scored 0 Since there are eight positive event items and eight negative event items, the scores for each class of events (positive, negative) range from 0 to 8 A score of 8, then, indicates a maximum tendency to interpret events of that class as self-negative, similarly, a score of 0 mdicates a maximum tendency to interpret events of that class as self-positive…”