In the article “Negative Effects of Reward on Intrinsic Motivation” by Judy Cameron, she argues that handing out awards can be inherently harmful. There has been research done over the past 30 years that suggests handing out gold stars or demerits makes the student less motivated to only receive the praise. Once the praise has been given then often the information is forgotten about. The students will also enjoy the task less and will be less engaged once the rewards have ceased. When rewards are properly arranged though, they can have a positive influence on the students. Teachers set up rewards systems to praise students for their hard work and accomplishments. The student’s extrinsic behavior quickly turns into intrinsic behavior when this is the situation.

Cameron and her research team conducted a new research that compared her new study to previous discoveries done by Deci. In Cameron’s work, they compared a reward group with a non-reward group on measures of intrinsic motivation. The reward system was broken down into activities of high and low interest for the students. For high interest rewards, the effects of the reward were broken up into the type, expectancy, and contingency. Verbal rewards had small positive significance for children but had a high positive significance for adults that engaged in the high level of task interest. Verbal awards are shown to increase measures of intrinsic motivation. This shows that not all praise is necessarily negative.

The overall results of the study helped prove that when praise was expected by the student and it was not given, that the student had a negative reaction to the activity, this is especially true for activities of low interest. It is important to praise the student for a job well done, but not for every task that they complete. Setting up an incentive program would be difficult to accomplish. The students will work harder if the reward system is limited. Cameron suggests that rewards produce significant decreases in students’ intrinsic motivation. Rewards can be used to produce positive, negative, or no effect when measuring intrinsic motivation.

As a teacher who used rewards in her classroom, Judy Cameron found Deci et al.’s report on negative effects on student intrinsic motivation as a result of rewards in the classroom. Because Cameron strongly disagreed with the results, she took Deci et al.’s research and examined flaws in the procedures. Cameron discovered that the study failed to outline conditions of giving rewards. So Cameron conducted further research that looked closely at the conditions of providing rewards and how that affected intrinsic motivation. Cameron discovered that while some rewards had negative effects on motivation, there were just as much positive effects to be seen. Deci et al. focused on high and low initial task interest and how rewards impact motivation based on these variables. Rewards have a negative effect only on high initial interest tasks, as they created a controlling environment and pressure to succeed. Cameron accepted this but needed further thorough research to see if the overall effect of rewards was indeed negative. Cameron looked into the following seven conditions of providing rewards in the classroom: for doing a task, for doing a task well, for achieving/surpassing a certain score, for exceeding others, regardless of task involvement, for completing a task, and for completing each problem/puzzle/unit. The study showed that rewards for achieving/surpassing a certain score and for exceeding others had positive effects on intrinsic motivation, in addition to tasks with low initial interest. Rewards given regardless of task involvement, completing a task held no significant impact on intrinsic motivation. Through Cameron’s research, one can easily conclude that rewards do tend to have a negative effect on intrinsic motivation but if used wisely by teachers, can be useful and productive in the classroom. However, if not implemented correctly, rewards can turn off students’ intrinsic motivation just as easily by putting unwanted pressure on the students.