Page 221 - The Power to Change Anything

210 INFLUENCER

order to go home, he and his comrades had to win the war.
They’d never go home until the enemy was defeated. Avoiding
a mission simply put off the inevitable and might well give the
enemy more time to prepare.
Contrast their circumstances to that of their own children—
the Vietnam soldiers. They were allowed to go home when their
tour was over, not when the war was over. And if they disobeyed
orders, avoiding immediate danger, rarely did anything ever hap-
pen to them. So, rational beings that they were, they avoided
danger, broke regulations, caused problems, and otherwise did
their best to stay out of harm’s way. Their parents were rewarded
for being heroes, while they were rewarded for watching out for
themselves.
So take heed. When behaviors are out of whack, look
closely at your rewards. Who knows? Your own incentive sys-
tem may be causing the problem.

PUNISHMENT SENDS A MESSAGE, AND SO DOES
ITS ABSENCE—SO CHOOSE WISELY

Sometimes you don’t have the luxury of rewarding positive per-
formance because the person you’d like to reward never actu-
ally does the right thing. In fact, he or she does only the wrong
thing—and often. In these cases, if you want to make use of
extrinsic reinforcers, you’re left with the prospect of punishing
this person. Fortunately, since punishment is from the same
family as positive reinforcement (half empty/half full), it should
have a similar effect. Right?
Maybe not. Punishment far from guarantees the mirror
effect of positive reinforcement. In virtually hundreds of exper-
iments with laboratory animals and humans, punishment
decreases the likelihood of a previously reinforced response, but
only temporarily. And it can produce a whole host of other
undesired effects. When you reward performance, you typically
know that the reward will help propel behavior in the desired