Social scientists have discovered that we accept responsibility for a behavior if we believe we have decided to perform it without exterior pressures or manipulations. Big rewards as well as punishment can be regarded as external pressure agents that may produce a few results, but it never causes the necessary emotional “buy in” that creates long term ability. Long term commitment derives its glue from personal decision making and responsibility nearly every time. psychologists Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser, in the 1960′s, published remarkable results in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1966 and Freedman’s Robot Study reported fully in Freedman, 1965.
Robots and Rebellion
In the robot study, Freedman wanted to see if he could prevent second to fourth grade boys from playing with a fascinating toy. In a nutshell, Freedman’s approach was simple; ask one group of 22 boy’s to NOT touch the robot, which was one of a small number of toys placed in a room with one-way glass for observation. The other toys were much more boring and unappealing; one of which was a baseball glove without the ball. The second set of 22 boy’s were threatened by punishment if they touched the more appealing toy robot. Upon observation, only one out of twenty-two boy’s among both groups touched the toy robot when Freedman was present. Six weeks later, both sets of boy’s were allowed back into the room for play time, this time without the presence of Freedman to enforce any perceived rules. An astonishing thing happened that day; only 33% of those asked not to touch the far more attractive robot actually touched it, while among the other group of boy’s, the rule was virtually ignored altogether.
When anyone is threatened by any consequence, you may get a short term result especially when present to observe or enforce the rule, but once your presence is no longer accompanied by your ability to enforce, your rule will more than likely be ignored altogether especially if the individual has not bought into the idea personally. On the other hand, when an individual has personally decided to buy into the idea of wrongness, they will tend to act consistent with that which they have now made a personal commitment to do.
Inner change
From these examples, we can see that when we make decisions based upon our own personal value base, these decisions ordinarily tend to stick, but when we make decisions based upon what others believe to be correct for us, we will be forced to display our independence regarding such decisions when ever we get the chance. This is important when raising children or managing employees as you well know. Many a parent is virtually flabbergasted when their child says or does one thing in their parents presence only to do another in their absence. Our job as parents is to help our children develop their own rules; behavior they will be proud of, rather than enforcing our values upon them. unfortunately, the more we believe our children to be a reflection of our standards, the harder this process becomes.
Punishment vs. discipline
Punishment is more about pay-back and less about training and development. When your child embarrasses you in the grocery store, some parents will be more apt to create consequences equal too or greater than their embarrassment factor, while those parents who are disciplined oriented will use the moment for training and helping the child become more responsible. This latter approach is far more complex and uses far more energy and self-sacrifice, but yields a much better crop in the future. In fact, the word discipline is neatly tucked away in the word disciple, which actually means “disciplined learner.” So, if you want great employees or great children it is far more advantageous to “disciple” them by helping them along during the developmental stages as opposed to pushing them along in an effort to create robots who mimic our behavior. But that would mean you were actually in this for them and not yourself to begin with.
