James McRae
ECO202
Mr. Sowells
Unit 1 Application Assignment
Would the incentives discussed in the video be able to work in a college setting? Why or why not?
No because researchers have documented that when individuals enjoy an activity, paying them can make the activity less enjoyable. Therefore, it would be foolish to pay students who already enjoy school because doing so might actually decrease their motivation to engage in school work and the problem with paying students who don’t enjoy school is that these students will not continue to work hard in school unless they continue to get paid. Basic psychological research indicates that when the payment stops, so does students’ motivation. An exception to these findings would be a student (who initially did not like school and was not working hard) who started working hard when she got paid because she enjoyed the success she was achieving and/or she became interested in the content material. This way of motivating students would have to be monitored very closely to ensure that money was only given to these types of students in these circumstances. Implementing this type of system correctly would be a logistical impossibility for most teachers and administrators. Therefore, I do not believe paying students to attend or engage in college activities.
Have you ever changed your behavior because of an incentive? Which type of incentive is more effective, negative re-enforcement (punishment) or positive re-enforcement? Explain your reasoning with economic theory.
I personally never thought about incentives in college because I haven’t yet encountered any myself however, positive punishment is a contingent event whose onset or increase results in a decrease in the probability of the behavior it is contingent upon. Example, if each time Richard starts eating his mother’s house plants she shows disapproval and if this disapproval reduces the probability of Richard eating the plants in the future, then the...