We were all teenagers and we remember the outrage and protest caused by parental prohibitions. How to communicate with growing children? And what methods of education are the most effective?
Even if a teenager already looks like an adult, do not forget that psychologically he is still a child. And methods of influence that work with adults should not be used with children.
For example, the method of «stick» and «carrot». To find out what works best for teenagers — the promise of a reward or the threat of punishment, 18 schoolchildren (12-17 years old) and 20 adults (18-32 years old) were invited for an experiment. They had to choose between several abstract symbols1.
For each of the symbols, the participant could receive a «reward», «punishment» or nothing. Sometimes the participants were shown what would happen if they chose a different symbol. Gradually, the subjects memorized which symbols most often led to a certain outcome, and changed the strategy.
At the same time, adolescents and adults were equally good at remembering which symbols can be rewarded, but teenagers were noticeably worse at avoiding “punishments”. In addition, adults performed better when they were told what might have happened if they had made a different choice. For teenagers, this information did not help in any way.
If we want to motivate teenagers to do something, it will be more effective to offer them rewards.
“The learning process for teenagers and adults is different. Unlike older adults, teenagers are unable to change their behavior to avoid punishment. If we want to motivate students to do something or, conversely, not to do something, it is more effective to offer them a reward than to threaten with punishment, ”says lead author of the study, psychologist Stefano Palminteri (Stefano Palminteri).
“In view of these results, parents and teachers should formulate requests to teenagers in a positive way.
Sentence «I’ll add money to your expenses if you do the dishes» will work better than the threat «If you don’t do the dishes, you won’t get the money.» In both cases, the teenager will have more money if he does the dishes, but, as experiments show, he is more likely to respond to the opportunity to receive a reward, ”adds co-author of the study, cognitive psychologist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (Sarah-Jayne Blakemore).
1 S. Palminteri et al. «The Computational Development of Reinforcement Learning during Adolescence», PLOS Computational Biology, June 2016.