What works better punishment or rewards?
When we look at motivation for any subject area in life there are 2 main sources of motivation: reward and punishment. These two motives are the drivers for just about every action we take. This affects everything from our personal finances to our day to day lives.
First lets understand rewards and punishments as a source of motivation. Motivation is associated with positive re-enforcement of behaviors or as a reward to do something you don’t really want to do. For many people a positive re-enforcement and reward for working out and dieting may have a reward of cheat meals or new work out clothes. The goal of rewards is to eventually create a more positive view on whatever activity is being involved. On the other hand punishments use fear and consequences to create change. Much like the rewards focused on positive consequences, you do this and you get to do this fun thing. Punishment takes the opposite approach of if you do or don’t do this, something bad will happen. You’ll often see this when it comes to health related actions. If you don’t exercise, your risk of disease X will go up. Punishment uses fear of an outcome as a motivator, it doesn’t attempt to create a positive relationship.
So the big question is which works better?
The reality is that neither one is perfect for every scenario. Each one offers different…
