Summary of Alfie Kohn's Punished by Rewards

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 The core of pop behaviorism is Do this and you’ll get that. The wisdom of this technique is rarely questioned. We take for granted that this is the logical way to raise children, teach students, and manage employees.

#2 Rewards are used long before a theory was developed to explain and systematize their practice. They were used by Frederick W. Taylor to encourage maximum efficiency in production at a factory, and by the first public school in New York City to manage the behavior of schoolchildren.

#3 Skinner believed that everything we do can be explained by the principle of reinforcement. He believed that organisms are just repertoires of behaviors that can be fully explained by outside forces. He said that there is no self as we usually use the term.

#4 The book gives the impression that someone else is telling the story, someone who doesn’t care much about him. It is not a big stretch to reduce creativity to a series of novel behaviors selected by the environment, and morality to whether society deems an action appropriate or inappropriate.

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Rafbók: 22 mars 2022