82. Which Is More Powerful: Reward or Punishment?

Summary

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No Stupid Questions Episode 82: Which Is More Powerful—Reward or Punishment?

Hosts: Stephen Dubner & Angela Duckworth
Release Date: July 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode zeroes in on one of the most fundamental questions in behavioral psychology: "Which is more powerful, reward or punishment?" Co-host Stephen Dubner invites Angela Duckworth (author of Grit) to untangle the nuances between positive reinforcement (reward), negative reinforcement, and punishment. Their discussion explores the definitions, practical implications, scientific research, and real-world applications of each, incorporating both parenting and societal examples.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Glossary: Clarifying Key Terms

[02:25–05:00]

• Reward (Positive Reinforcement): Adding something good to increase behavior (e.g. praise, treats, points).
  • Angela: “Reward is when you pair something good with a behavior in order to get it to happen again. So you provide points for going to the gym…or you say things like, ‘I’m really proud of you.’” (03:13)
• Punishment: Adding something aversive (or withholding something desirable) to decrease behavior.
  • Angela: “Punishment would be getting somebody to do it less by creating pain.” (04:53)
• Negative Reinforcement: Removing something bad to increase a behavior (not a punishment!).
  • Angela: “Negative reinforcement actually means that you are rewarding a behavior…by removing a punishment. So you are taking away something bad.” (04:01)

Human Sensitivity to Reward vs. Punishment

[05:09–07:30]

• Dubner asks if the universe dispenses more reward or punishment.
• Angela draws from Roy Baumeister’s “Bad Is Stronger Than Good” — notes we're more sensitive to negative events.
  • Angela: “We are much more sensitive to bad things in our life than good things…we more ruminate on the bad things.” (05:51)
• Immediate impact: Punishment often elicits stronger, more immediate behavioral changes—hence its popularity with parents and leaders.

Parenting, Teaching, and the “Positive Opposite”

[07:14–11:44]

• Alan Kazdin’s Advice: Instead of punishing, identify and praise the “positive opposite” (the desired behavior).
  • For instance, reward cleaning up rather than just scolding for messiness.
  • Angela: “His recommendation…is to reward the positive. He calls it a positive opposite...now you have something to look for.” (07:48)
• Scaffolding: Helping set up children for success by making positive behavior easier—a proactive alternative to after-the-fact punishment.
• Angela’s Confession: Even with knowledge, defaulting to punishment in parenting is easier and more reactive.

Classroom Management & The Nuance of Reward

[10:59–11:49]

• Strategy: Praise positive behaviors you see (“Thanks, Steven, for having your homework out!”) rather than yelling at everyone.
  • Angela: “What a more skilled teacher says…‘Steven, thank you so much for having your homework out. Julie, I see you’ve got a pencil. Excellent. You’re ready to go.’” (11:32)
• Result: Immediate positive changes in group behavior; praise can work surprisingly quickly.

Listener Experiences with Reward and Punishment

[14:42–16:11]

• Examples from Listeners:
  • Use of temporary rewards and punishments for critical situations; emphasis on explanation in daily life.
  • Making punishment and apology a two-way street between parents and children.
  • Creative non-punitive incentives (e.g. “black cross” to discourage lying).
• Insight: Not all incentive systems are about strict reward or punishment—imagination matters.

The Dangers of Overpraise & “Intermittent Reinforcement”

[16:11–18:17]

• Angela: Warns against “inauthentic praise”—constant, unearned positive feedback loses impact.
  • Angela: “If you really think your kid’s piano playing sounds like cats mating, you shouldn’t be like, oh my gosh, this is incredible, you can praise something else.” (17:10)
• “Intermittent Reinforcement”: Sporadic, unpredictable rewards (vs. 100% every time) may be more effective and resilient for creating lasting behaviors.

Reward/Punishment as Recipient vs. Dispenser

[18:32–19:57]

• Angela: Recipients of frequent, authentic praise are “so happy” and productive, doubting it causes complacency.
  • Angela: “I think people would be so happy. And I also think they’d be really productive. It really makes me more excited to do better now.” (18:44)
• Dubner: Suggests this could be reverse causality.

Societal and Governmental Application of Incentives

[20:11–23:50]

• Governments favor punishment: Laws, fines, and the judicial system are mostly punitive.

• Richard Thaler’s “Fun” Praise: Creative rewards in public policy (e.g. dog poop lottery for clean streets in New Taipei City).

  • Dubner: “Owners who deposited dog waste into a special depository were made eligible for a lottery to win gold ingots, thus literally turning dog waste into gold.” (21:42)

• Debate: If governments use extrinsic rewards (money, prizes), do they undermine intrinsic motivation and virtue?

  • Angela: “...That also sends the message [that] that’s the reason why you would do those things. And I think there are other reasons…So you have to be careful about how you reward things.” (23:09)

Systemic Change and the Kurt Lewin Principle

[24:46–26:00]

• Behavior Change at Scale: Shift from punishment to reward is non-obvious but potentially smart.
• Kurt Lewin’s influence: For change, remove obstacles (make positive behavior easier); don’t just threaten to block negative behavior.
  • Dubner: “If you want to get someone to do something, remove the barriers that prevent them from doing it.” (25:15)
  • Angela: “...Sometimes the smart way is really the non obvious way. Tell them not to? That’s the obvious thing. But the smart thing is not obvious.” (26:11)

Closing Reflections and Practical Takeaways

[27:01–27:22]

• Angela: Even in challenging cases, look for something—anything—positive to praise.

  • Angela: “If you have a really, really disruptive kid…just praise them when they’re just sitting there...you don’t even have to praise extraordinarily great behavior. Just praise them when they’re not doing something terrible.” (26:57)

• Dubner: Thanks Angela with both authentic and “intermittent” praise for her handling of the episode’s question.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On why punishment is so common:

  • Angela (06:38): “Fear and even loathing, like, these are very strong emotions, and they do change our behavior immediately and noticeably.”

• On the challenge of applying reward in real life:

  • Angela (09:22): “Reactive strategies, this like, ‘Oh, don’t do that.’ They take no forethought. They just happen after the fact. And this positive opposite praise, that takes a lot of energy and a lot of proactive, strategic thinking.”

• On authentic praise:

  • Angela (17:10): “People are pretty good at any age at rooting out the inauthentic from authentic compliments.”

• On virtuous cycles:

  • Angela (19:38): “When it comes to human interaction, almost always X drives Y and Y drives X in a kind of virtuous or vicious cycle.”

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Key Timestamps

• [02:25] — Duckworth defines reward, negative reinforcement, and punishment
• [05:15] — Are humans more sensitive to bad than good?
• [07:48] — Alan Kazdin’s "positive opposite" parenting strategy
• [10:59] — Concrete classroom management example
• [14:42] — Listener stories of handling incentives
• [16:11] — Pitfalls of inauthentic praise and the value of “intermittent reinforcement”
• [20:11] — Why governments default to punishment
• [21:42] — The “gold ingot for dog poop” lottery in Taiwan
• [25:15] — Kurt Lewin’s principle for behavioral change
• [26:57] — Praise anything: strategy for tough situations
• [27:01–27:22] — Episode wrap-up: authentic and intermittent praise

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Conclusion: Core Takeaways

• Punishment feels easier and works faster—which is why it’s used so much—but it's rarely the optimal solution for sustained positive change.
• Reward, especially when authentic and well-timed, builds up pro-social behavior and motivation, though it often requires preparation, patience, and strategy.
• In both parenting and society, the “smart” approach is often the less obvious, less reactive one: praise and reinforce the positive alternative, even when it's small.
• Governments, institutions, and individuals tend to default to punishment, but evidence suggests tilting toward reward and making positive behavior easier (removing barriers) would yield better long-term results.
• Balance matters: Watch out for inauthentic, overused, or purely extrinsic rewards, as they can backfire by undermining intrinsic motivation.

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Final Moment

• [27:22]
  • Dubner: “Authentic praise—you handled this question really well today…intermittent praise, you almost always do that. And therefore…I think we should probably do this again next week.”

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This episode arms listeners with a nuanced understanding of how reward and punishment operate, why our instincts often steer us toward the latter, and how a strategic shift toward meaningful, authentic praise and barrier removal might transform outcomes—at home, in classrooms, and across society.

Transcript

[Stephen Dubner]

Resending us.

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[Stephen Dubner]

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[Angela Duckworth]

Everyone get into your seats right now.

[Stephen Dubner]

You're listening to no Stupid Questions, the podcast that explores the weird and occasionally wonderful ways in which humans behave. Here are your hosts, Stephen Dubner and Angela Duckworth.

Angela, I have today the question I think, to end all questions.

[Angela Duckworth]

Great. We'll be finished with the whole podcast.

[Stephen Dubner]

I think we're done after this drops mic. This is elemental, and you're the person to answer it.

[Angela Duckworth]

Okay, no pressure.

[Stephen Dubner]

And I can't believe it took me a year and a half of making this show to ask you.

[Angela Duckworth]

I'm on tenterhooks.

[Stephen Dubner]

What are tenterhooks anyway? The things you hang. A side of beef.

[Angela Duckworth]

Yeah, there's a carcass involved or something.

[Stephen Dubner]

The metaphor works because why?

[Angela Duckworth]

I guess if you're on them, you really want to get off.

[Stephen Dubner]

But doesn't the phrase mean when you're on tenter hooks, like, I can't wait to.

[Angela Duckworth]

Yeah, yeah, because I want to get off these tenterhooks. It's very uncomfortable.

[Stephen Dubner]

That feels like a very halfway metaphor. It doesn't connote what I think it really wants to connote. How about bated breath?

[Angela Duckworth]

How do you even spell bated?

[Stephen Dubner]

Not with a worm bated, but B, A, T, E, D. But what the

[Angela Duckworth]

hell does B A T E D mean?

[Stephen Dubner]

Maybe it's short of abated. Like your breath used to be abated, but now it's only baited.

[Angela Duckworth]

Anyway, I can't wait. Steven, what's the question?

[Stephen Dubner]

Here's the question.

[Angela Duckworth]

My breath is bated.

[Stephen Dubner]

Which is more powerful, positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement? And of course, I want to know upsides and downsides of each okay.

[Angela Duckworth]

And you don't mean negative reinforcement in the sense of removing something that's bad in order to reward you. You just mean punishment. Right. Do you want to ask about reward and punishment, or do you want to ask about positive and negative reinforcement? Cause they're different.

[Stephen Dubner]

I guess I need you to tell me the difference.

[Angela Duckworth]

Let's start with a little glossary. So reward is when you pair something good with a behavior in order to get it to happen again. So you provide points for going to the gym, and people can redeem those points for Amazon credit.

[Stephen Dubner]

That sounds suspiciously like an actual reward that you and your colleagues have been working on.

[Angela Duckworth]

It came to mind because we, as you know, Stephen, recently did a big study on that. And by bottom line is that works. It's an effective incentive. But, you know, we do this all the time. You praise people for doing things like, hey, you know, just want to thank the person who brought in bagels today. Props to you. Or you say things like, oh, I'm really proud of you. You certainly have, I'm sure, given FIFI treats to reward certain behaviors.

[Stephen Dubner]

We don't say that word, we spell it. That's really the only word she knows in her life, but it's an important word.

[Angela Duckworth]

So we know what rewards are. Intuitively, I think punishments like bad dog, or if you yell at somebo for doing something wrong, that's punishment. And I think the reason why these things seem to be the two tools in the armory is like, well, you can reward the good or you could punish the bad. So that's what rewards and punishments are. And negative reinforcement has a very non intuitive meaning. So I apologize on behalf of all psychologists. Negative reinforcement, first of all sounds like punishment, but negative reinforcement actually means that you are rewarding a behavior. You are promoting it, you are incentivizing it by removing a punishment. So you are taking away something bad and thereby making something more likely to happen. Drugs are one example of this. If you have back surgery or you get your knee replaced and your doctor prescribes an analgesic, that drug is negatively reinforcing because it is taking away the pain.

[Stephen Dubner]

How would you describe the relationship between negative reinforcement and punishment?

[Angela Duckworth]

So negative reinforcement would be getting somebody to do this behavior more by taking away pain. Punishment would be getting somebody to do it less by creating pain.

[Stephen Dubner]

Although the punishment could be the withholding of something that they want also, correct?

[Angela Duckworth]

Yes, that's true.

[Stephen Dubner]

Do you feel that the universe generally dispenses more reward or punishment?

[Angela Duckworth]

I would say two things. One is that we must be Rewarded more than we are punished in some absolute sense because we're alive. And it depends on what you consider to be a reward. But it's like you breathe, you go to sleep, and you wake up and you're still there. Meaning that rewards are outweighing punishments, I guess, in some cosmic, universal, objective sense. In terms of our psychology, we're much more sensitive to bad things in our life than good things. I know we were recently talking about Roy Baumeister, the great social psychologist, and one of his seminal papers is called Bad is Stronger Than Good, which is that we are always scanning the horizon for threats. We are much less likely to be reflexively grateful. We more ruminate on the bad things.

[Stephen Dubner]

Now, doesn't that in and of itself suggest that we as a species tend to respond pretty strongly toward punishment or negativity, generally, at least, as opposed to positivity?

[Angela Duckworth]

Yeah. That might lead you, if that's all you knew about this thing called a human, to say, like, well, you should definitely try to change their behavior through punishment, because look at them. They are just really good at noticing and being sensitive to bad things.

[Stephen Dubner]

Whereas if I pat them on the head and say, job well done, et

[Angela Duckworth]

cetera, et cetera, they might not even notice it.

[Stephen Dubner]

Or they might stop working as hard as they worked to get to the place where they earned the reward in the first place.

[Angela Duckworth]

Yeah, I mean, fear and even loathing, like, these are very strong emotions, and they do change our behavior immediately and noticeably. So if you shout at someone to stop doing something, you tend to get an immediate response. And so this is, I think, one of the reasons why there's a lot of punishment in leadership and in parenting. And I say that as somebody. You know, when I raised my kids, I would yell at them all the time, don't do that. Stop it. And that is all, in a way, punishing the negative. Right. I wasn't spanking them, but I was still dispensing verbal punishment.

[Stephen Dubner]

You weren't saying, wouldn't it be nice, Lucy, if you stopped hitting Amanda in the face?

[Angela Duckworth]

Well, okay. So the person whose work I read at the time, my kids were younger, his name is Alan Kazdin. He's at Yale, and he is a clinical psychologist who has this extremely long career. He's seen a lot of different forms of bad behavior, from mild to extremely dysfunctional. And one of his key recommendations is that parents so often react with punishment to things that their kids are doing that are bad. And that is, again, understandable. You know, if you do yell at your kid to stop doing something, you may not get the optimal reaction, but your kid might stop what they're doing for a second. His recommendation, though, is to reward the positive. He calls it a positive opposite. Say, for example, a younger kid might leave all their toys somewhere. What Alan Kassen would say is, you have to actually pick, pause, and think to yourself, what is that opposite? If your kid is leaving their stuff everywhere, the opposite behavior is for them to be cleaning up, putting things away, and now you have something to look for. Every time your kid is cleaning up, you go out of your way to praise it. You're like, hey, Steven, good for you for putting those blocks away. That is such a big help to Mommy.

[Stephen Dubner]

Thanks, Mom. I really appreciate that. What about, rather than just sitting back and waiting for the positive thing to happen, what about facilitating it? What about removing the obstacles that prevent it?

[Angela Duckworth]

Yeah, you can kind of set them up for doing that. And that goes by the incredibly unhelpful term scaffolding. Scaffolding is when you make a hard problem easier for your kid. It's kind of like rigging the system. And I think that's a good idea, too. What's interesting is that I knew this research when I was parenting Lucy and Amanda, and I didn't do a very good job of doing any of this. Like naming the positive opposite, looking for ways to praise the positive opposite. Like, oh, Lucy, I'm just so happy when you and your sister are getting along. It makes me so happy when you're sharing your toys. I would just yell at them. Even when you know it, in the way that a graduate student in psychology might know the right thing to do and yet not do it. These reactive strategies, this like, oh, don't do that. They take no forethought. They just happen after the fact. And this positive opposite praise, that takes a lot of energy and a lot of proactive, strategic thinking.

[Stephen Dubner]

So you're saying you need a little bit more planning or thought to create the reward ahead of time versus the punishment, which just comes out of your mouth naturally. Yeah, but it's not just the response. That's very quick to make. It also produces a really fast outcome. Whereas a reward, the outcome may be much more nuanced. Right. It might be smaller. In other words, you don't stop bashing someone on the head. You start becoming a slightly more mature and kind person. Whatever. Also, there's no guarantee that that process will continue unabated. And thirdly, it might take a really long time. So the more I hear you, I think, wow, reward and punishment are not just flip sides of the same coin. They're totally different. So if that is true, then what we really want to know is what's the best way to think about problem solving. On balance, we know that negativity is powerful. We know that punishment happens intuitively and quickly, and it often works quickly. Whereas all the stuff on the reward side is a little bit more costly, a little bit more nuanced. That sounds like it's gonna be hard to wait for. Would you encourage people to nevertheless cut down on the punishment and bulk up on the reward, even though the benefits may not manifest so quickly?

[Angela Duckworth]

This one is a really clear answer. You should definitely cut down on punishment and increase the praising of the positive. This is a classroom management trick that I used to use, too. You walk into a room and there's a moderate level of mayhem. You got to class maybe like three minutes after the bell rang for some, and the kids are already, like, they're off. And what do you do? Do you yell at everyone? Like, everyone, stop talking. I said everyone, get into your seats right now.

[Stephen Dubner]

Mrs. Duckworth is so mean.

[Angela Duckworth]

Mrs. D, as they used to call me.

[Stephen Dubner]

I'm surprised you let him even do that.

[Angela Duckworth]

I thought it was, like, hip at the time. But here's what a more skilled teacher says. Steven, thank you so much for having your homework out. Julie, I see you've got a pencil. Excellent. You're ready to go.

[Stephen Dubner]

So you identify the positive behavior and pay attention.

[Angela Duckworth]

Yeah. And I will tell you, you don't have to wait like a day or a week for that to take effect. It actually works relatively quickly. And you can imagine that those little moments of praise, the kids don't forget it. They clearly are sort of moved by it. I know bad is stronger than good in some ways, but there is something about that approval that you get that one could argue that that is stronger than being criticized.

[Stephen Dubner]

Still to come on on no Stupid Questions, Stephen and Angela discuss how positive reinforcement and rewards could be used to encourage nationwide pro social behavior.

[Angela Duckworth]

Hey, I'll pay you 10 bucks. If you vote.

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[Stephen Dubner]

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[Angela Duckworth]

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Before we return to Stephen and Angela's conversation about incentives, I'd like to share some of your thoughts on the topic. We told listeners to let us know about their experiences with reward and punishment. Omninot shared the approach that they use with their son. Overall, we use rewards and punishments to get quick and often temporary results in critical situations or to mark an instance of exceptionally good or bad behavior. In normal situations. We just explain a lot and try to convince him to do what we want and he mostly complies. Kalebmezi writes, punishment is setting a standard not just for the kid, but for those punishing. If X happens, Y follows. If a bad word was said, the kid must say sorry and so should the parent. When the kid tells daddy he said that bad word hold everyone accountable. Erondb says that his mother used an incentive for behavior change that didn't involve reward or punishment. When I was a kid, my mother always told me that there would appear a black cross on my forehead when I was telling a lie. Once she dipped her finger in the ashes of the fireplace without me knowing it and made the cross sign on my forehead and then said for me to look in the mirror. I didn't dare tell a lie for more than a year until she told me what she really did. Now back to Stephen and Angela's conversation about how incentives affect behavior change.

Now, what about the fear, since we're talking about children? The fear that overpraise can create a sense of entitlement endowment. You know, a kid ties their shoes and you're over the moon about how brilliant they are, they're gonna think they're the next Einstein. In fact, they don't know anything about math at all.

[Angela Duckworth]

I think that you want to avoid two things. One is inauthentic praise. It really does become empty. I have to say, my late stepmother in law, God rest her soul, she used to say of all of her grandchildren that they were perfect. And she used to say it all the time like, oh, Amanda, you're just perfect, Lucy, my perfect grandchild. And I was like, you know, at some point the word perfect starts to lose its currency. I do think that you should be looking for opportunities to praise, but it should still be authentic. If you really think your kids piano playing sounds like cats mating, you shouldn't be like, oh my gosh, this is incredible, you can praise something else.

[Stephen Dubner]

I think it's great that you can sit through your own horrific piano playing.

[Angela Duckworth]

Yeah, exactly. So I do think that authenticity matters. And people are pretty good at any age at rooting out the inauthentic from the authentic compliments. And the other thing is there is this idea of intermittent reinforcement from animal experiments mostly, which is the following phenomenon. You can praise somebody or in animal experiments, reward them with a little pellet of chow or some sugar water. You can do it every time an animal, say, presses a lever or does something that you're trying to teach the animal to do. You can do it 100% of the time, or you could do it say 80% of the time. And you might expect that rewarding a behavior 100% of the time, that's the strongest form of reinforcement. That's the best kind of reward. But there are experiments that show that in some ways the 80% reward, most of the time it comes, but one out of five times it doesn't. And you don't know when that would be. That can actually be more lasting. So some would argue that with kids, you shouldn't praise 100% of the time. Not only Cause it's inauthentic, but also because you want to get a little bit of this uncertainty into the system. That's debated.

[Stephen Dubner]

Okay. So avoid inauthentic praise. I want to consider intermittent reward. What about you personally? Not as dispenser, because we already know that you love to punish. You understand the power of rewarding, but it sounds like you're naturally inclined toward punishment.

[Angela Duckworth]

I wasn't a very good parent.

[Stephen Dubner]

We gotta get your kids on the show and get to the bottom of this. But let me ask you this. Not you as the dispenser of reward or punishment, but you as the recipient. Tell me about that. How do you respond best?

[Angela Duckworth]

I sometimes imagine what the world would be like if everybody got as much praise as I get daily, if not hourly. I am often praised. I get emails like, oh, I love your podcast. Or I get students who write me. And as a recipient of all that praise, I think about what it would be like if all people got this much praise. I think people would be so happy. And I also think they'd be really productive. I don't think you would make people into complacent underperformers. It really makes me more excited to do better now.

[Stephen Dubner]

It's probably hard to establish causality there, though. In other words, does the praise make you more productive or are you praiseworthy because you already are productive and you're just keeping on keeping on?

[Angela Duckworth]

I know economists like to ask the question of reverse causality. Is X really driving Y? Or could it be that Y drives X?

[Stephen Dubner]

Maybe it's the umbrellas that are making the rain come down.

[Angela Duckworth]

Exactly. But you know what? I think when it comes to human interaction, almost always X drives Y and Y drives X in a kind of virtuous or vicious cycle. Meaning I get praised, and then I have a little more confidence and I feel like woo. When I do well, it's rewarded.

[Stephen Dubner]

Right.

[Angela Duckworth]

That makes me try harder, which earns me more praise, et cetera. And I think if you ask the question about so many psychological dynamics, it's both. And that's why these cycles get entrenched.

[Stephen Dubner]

It's an estuary of praise is what

[Angela Duckworth]

you're describing, not a limited reservoir of praise.

[Stephen Dubner]

What about governments? Let me ask you whether you feel in that realm, whether reward or punishment is more effective, because governments typically are on the punishment side of things.

[Angela Duckworth]

Yeah. Think about the whole judicial system, the penal system. You know, nobody's praising the positive opposite of burglary and other more serious crimes. They're all kind of, after the fact, negative. Consequences which are in theory supposed to have some dissuasive effect.

[Stephen Dubner]

Well, our mutual friend Richard Thaler, who's an economist at the University of Chicago, he wrote an op ed in the Times. This was some years back. It was called Making Good Citizenship Fun. So we're not talking about crime, crime and punishment here. We're talking about compliance, things like that. And he gives a couple examples of how it's a good idea to use what he calls positive reinforcement. You would call reward versus punishment.

[Angela Duckworth]

I would also call it positive reinforcement. I just wouldn't call punishment negative reinforcement.

[Stephen Dubner]

Okay, okay. So he gives a bunch of examples of companies and governments around the world that have implemented fun tools to help people do the quote right things. This is all very much in keeping with the Thaler brand of what he calls nudging. Here's an example, though. New Taipei City in Taiwan recently initiated a lottery as an inducement for dog owners to clean up after their pets. Somehow it always comes back to dog poop on the show.

[Angela Duckworth]

There's a theme here. It's a light motif.

[Stephen Dubner]

Owners who deposited dog waste into a special depository were made eligible for a lottery to win gold ingots, thus literally turning dog waste into gold. The top prize was worth about $2,000. The city reports that it have cut in half the fecal pollution in its streets during the initiative. So that's a nice happy ending story. There are also probably a whole lot of other cases where something like that is tried and it doesn't work. So would you suggest that governments try to take a little bit more from the positive playbook than they typically do? And if so, how would you suggest that they ensure that it does work?

[Angela Duckworth]

I love the idea that we should try some things. I think the Taiwanese dog poop lottery is a completely plausible story. I do wonder about how that could get us into other problems.

[Stephen Dubner]

So you're immediately thinking a lot of counterfeit dog poop and you're stuffing the ballot box with fake dog poop to get the gold ingots.

[Angela Duckworth]

Well, there's moral hazard, but there's also, you know, we can reward people not just through dollars and ingots of gold, but like, think about raising children. I don't think many parents would say that a monetary system of financial incentives and fines is the best way to parent. I think we also want our children to want to earn our admiration or our respect. So if the government could find ways of dispensing incentives that aren't just financial, and the reason is not just a dollars and cents budget cost thing it's also that there can be some problems with extrinsic incentives. Like, hey, if you do this, I'll pay you five bucks. I'll pay you like ten bucks if you vote. That also sends the message that's the reason why you would do those things. And I think there are other reasons that you would do those things. Like, it's the right thing, it's good for everyone. So you have to be careful about how you reward things. But I think we should try. And it is interesting, now that you say it, almost everything governments are set up to do is about punishing the bad, and almost nothing is about rewarding the good.

[Stephen Dubner]

The notion of using a positive reinforcement or reward to prevent someone from doing the bad thing, that's really, to me, the hardest part of that matrix. And people have talked about this over the years. You know, give a bounty to potential criminals rather than committing the crime, rather than dealing drugs, which hurts society overall, wouldn't it be nice to incentivize people to do the pro social thing? But not only is that a slippery slope morally, as you put it, if you pay someone $10 to vote this year, do you expect 20 next year? And then what if you don't have 30 the next year?

[Angela Duckworth]

And also, haven't you undermined the institution of democracy by saying that this is something that people would only do because we paid you?

[Stephen Dubner]

But I have to say, when I look around the world, generally all the world, the governments, the institutions, firms, families

[Angela Duckworth]

and so on, when you look around the whole world, Stephen, go on.

[Stephen Dubner]

It feels like, at least in most of the Western cultures that I'm more familiar with. The standard tool we reach for is the negative, is the punishment, is the fine, it's the prohibition. I think back to something I learned a couple years ago, actually, at the conference that you put together, the first behavior change for good conference, where you had Danny Kahneman come and talk. He was interviewed by Max Bazerman from Harvard. And Danny talked about his primary influence.

[Angela Duckworth]

Oh, Kurt Lewin.

[Stephen Dubner]

Kurt Lewin. And how Kurt Lewin's realization, this goes back probably a hundred years now, is if you want to get someone to do something, remove the barriers that prevent them from doing it. And similarly, I think if you flip that if you want to get someone to not do something, well, our standard response is find a way to lock it down or to threaten them. And I'm just curious whether all this learning that you and your peers have been doing for the past hundred years or so might provide us with some clever opportunity to Think even in a tiny way about flipping that script a little bit and using some kind of reward or positive reinforcement to prevent bad behaviors, antisocial behaviors, a little bit more than we're doing currently.

[Angela Duckworth]

I remember when Danny said there's a smart way and there's a foolish way to change behavior. That's the same thing that we're talking about here. I mean, there's differences between rewards and punishments and the particular principles he was talking about with Lewin. But what they have in common is that sometimes the smart way is really the non obvious way. Like what do you do when your kid's throwing their stuff everywhere? Tell them not to. That's the obvious thing to do. But the smart thing is not obvious. This is another thing that Alan Kazan said. If you have a really, really disruptive kid, like they are hardly doing anything that you can praise when they're certainly not doing the positive opposite. He was like, just praise anything. Literally just praise them when they're just sitting there. You don't even have to praise extraordinarily great behavior. Just praise them when they're not doing something terrible. And so I do think this non obvious route is very often the smart route. And it's maybe for lack of wherewithal or just that we are kind of frazzled. We do the more foolish, reactive, but less effective thing.

[Stephen Dubner]

Well, Angela, I have to say, I think parenthesis, authentic praise. You handled this question really well today. I also think intermittent praise, you almost always do that. And therefore I think parenthetically as a friend that we should probably do this again next week. And it's probably time to go.

[Angela Duckworth]

Parentheses, smile and parentheses. Thank you, Stephen.

[Stephen Dubner]

Coming up after the break, a fact check of today's conversation.

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And now here's a fact check of today's conversation. In the first half of the show, Stephen and Angela conclude that tenter hooks are tools used to hang slabs of meat. This is incorrect. A tenter is a frame on which fabric is stretched to prevent shrinkage while it dries. Tenter hooks attached the material to the tentor. The phrase to be on tenter hooks originated from this method of drying and was used to mean being in a state of suspense or anxiety. Angela wonders about the definition of bated, as in bated breath, and Stevens says it might just be a shortened version of abated, an adjective meaning to lessen in intensity or amount. This is correct. The phrase bated breath death, meaning to hold one's breath in suspense, was first used in Shakespeare's play the Merchant of Venice. Today, baited is rarely used outside of that one specific phrase. Later, Stephen References A 2012 New York Times op ed by Nobel Prize winning economist Richard Thaler, and he reads the following passage about dog owners in New Taipei City. Owners who deposited dog waste into a special depository were made eligible for a lottery to win gold ingots, thus literally turning dog waste into gold. Sorry Professor Thaler, but I have to fact check you here. They figuratively turned dog waste into gold, not literally. A literal transformation would mean a bizarre form of alchemy that would certainly result in humans exuberantly collecting and investing their pet's defecation rather than depositing it into a special bin and waiting for the results of a of lot. Finally, Stephen thinks that in most Western cultures punishment is the standard tool. According to the World Prison Brief, the United States is the most punitive country in the world with 629 prisoners per 100,000 people. But some non western countries have high incarceration rates as well. Rwanda comes in second on the list with 580 prisoners per 100,000 people and Turkmenistan is third with 576. That's it for the fact check. No Stupid Questions is produced by Renbud Radio and is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network. No Stupid Questions is produced by me, Rebecca Lee Douglas. This show was mixed by Eleanor Osborne. Our theme song is and she was by Talking Heads. Special thanks to Dead David Byrne and Warner Chapel Music. To learn more, visit Freakonomics.com NSQ thanks for listening.

[Angela Duckworth]

We were real there we were real

[Stephen Dubner]

as that's what the kids say.

The Freakonomics Radio Network the Hidden side of Everything

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[Stephen Dubner]

Stitch Fix Stop shopping. Get styled. Not today, sweatpants.

[Angela Duckworth]

Somebody's wearing jeans that fit.

[Stephen Dubner]

No photos, please. I'm just a regular dad who happens to have a stylist. I really look my best when someone else makes the decisions. Hey, we can all see you two way mirrors.

[Angela Duckworth]

Just share your size, style and budget,

[Stephen Dubner]

and your stylist sends personalized looks right to your door.

[Angela Duckworth]

Stitch Fix get started today@stitch fix.com I

[Stephen Dubner]

want to hug you.

I'm gonna hug you.

[Angela Duckworth]

I'm coming in for a hug.