Extrinsic Rewards Undermining Altruistic Tendencies in 20-Month Olds This is an experimental study about how the influence of rewards can affect how a child with a certain task. Children were randomly selected to one of three conditions in either the treatment phase or the test phase. The three conditions consist of: material reward, praise, and neutral reward. (Warneken & Tomasello, 2008) The participants that were selected came from German speaking families from a medium sized urban city. There were 36 children all together that were involved in the study, 20 boys and 16 girls. (Warneken & Tomasello, 2008) The experiment consisted of six helping tasks that were divided among the 2 phases, the treatment phase and the test phase.
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Just like the condition says, if the child in the reward condition helped the experimenter, that child received a reward. If the child in the praise condition helped the experimenter, that child received praise. Also, if the child in the neutral condition helped the experimenter, that child didn’t receive anything. (Warneken & Tomasello, 2008) Than during the test phase, the children were presented with similar helping tasks as in the treatment phase, but different objects were provided. These were considered as distractor toys, which included a violin, a trumpet, and a guitar. In this phase, the child didn’t receive anything if he or she helped the experimenter. The results concluded that the children in the test phase seem to help out more, even when they didn’t receive a reward of any kind and/or some kind of praise. It also showed that the children who were in the rewards condition, seemed to help out less. A consistent finding seemed to be that the children, who were in the praise group and the neutral group, would help out more than the children who were in the rewards group. (Warneken & Tomasello,
Just like the condition says, if the child in the reward condition helped the experimenter, that child received a reward. If the child in the praise condition helped the experimenter, that child received praise. Also, if the child in the neutral condition helped the experimenter, that child didn’t receive anything. (Warneken & Tomasello, 2008) Than during the test phase, the children were presented with similar helping tasks as in the treatment phase, but different objects were provided. These were considered as distractor toys, which included a violin, a trumpet, and a guitar. In this phase, the child didn’t receive anything if he or she helped the experimenter. The results concluded that the children in the test phase seem to help out more, even when they didn’t receive a reward of any kind and/or some kind of praise. It also showed that the children who were in the rewards condition, seemed to help out less. A consistent finding seemed to be that the children, who were in the praise group and the neutral group, would help out more than the children who were in the rewards group. (Warneken & Tomasello,