Should society reward good behavior?


Kiwikku's avatar
Whenever parents reward kids for doing good stuff, people always say not to because "The real world doesn't do that." - Well why not? It's already known that we punish the bad. But studies show that negative rewards can be more effective when combined with positive rewards. 

If we think people should reward themselves for doing good behavior, then why don't we let them punish themselves too? Obviously that doesn't work. Why shouldn't we reward good deeds AND punish bad ones? I can't think of any good reason besides so-called "character development" and "self motivation."

There should be monetary rewards, vacations and maybe even status symbols. The issue then becomes people doing the good thing to get the reward and not because it's the right thing to do. But you know what I say to that? Who cares? The good thing still gets done regardless of the motives- and that benefits society overall. 

That's like saying people who don't do bad things don't do it because they fear the punishment, instead of because the thing they want to do is bad. WHO CARES about the reason someone avoids doing evil as long as they avoid it? When you flip the logic, it makes absolutely no sense. 

I thought of this as a political debate due to crime and punishment etc.
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ItsNotFilia's avatar
1. Apparently, it can only help with manual/repetitive/simple labour an/or tasks that don't require a lot, or any, thinking.
2. If everyone's on their best behaviour, giving money to everyone won't make them richer, but poorer, because of some fundamental mechanics of Economics.
3. It would go according to the agenda of those who make the rules, not necessarily the masses themselves: they can reward things you disagree with.
PotatoOni's avatar
Sounds interesting. While there are already rewards for special deeds, like charity for example, rewards for more mundane good deeds could be effective aswell.

Like for example a annual reward for not causing car crashs or driving too fast. Could be a coupon for 6 months free or price reduced gasoline or something like that.
cruorvylkas's avatar
Interesting idea.  In the RP I play, one of the cultures has a "social credit" system.  Basically people live their lives however.  But should someone, say, volunteer for a project or something (houses for humanity, for example), those hours are recorded, signed off on and banked.  Later, say the same person wants to request a loan for a house; those volunteer hours banked can be used to go against the loan, meaning they can get a loan without having to request for so much because they already have worked time towards that loan.

Say a group or family wants to help said person out and they have the same 'credit' built up, they can donate what they've accumulated to the person, lowering the need for said loan, or perhaps not even needing the loan at all now because of so many banked hours being put towards it.

I guess that's the fun yet sad part about such things; great ideas that'll never see reality.
The statement "The real world doesn't do that." is an inaccurate generalization also. There are cases when people are rewarded for doing the right thing. Here's one example: www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/w…

There's also less tangible benefits, such as a better college accepting your application because you worked for a charity.


Ebonsong's avatar
Good deeds are already rewarded. People are congratulated, some are awarded medals, given gifts, improved social status, publicity, etc..

If they turn it into a pissing contest then it'll get out of hand. "I'm not going to do that good deed because the rewards are shit."
KodakBatterie's avatar
I believe there should be some reward, to many good people slip by unnoticed, whilst all the worst people get on television and ( arguably) get to run government , not to mention run major world religions. As a society we tend to  praise poor behaviour and even romanticise it; I mean how many books, movies and video games 'sex up' the life of a killer or criminal , implicitly suggesting the portrayed behaviour is behaviour worthy of praise whereas people who do real good tend to be treated with suspicion at best and apathy in general. Now I'm not saying we should hand out gold stars to every teenager that's helps an old lady across the road ( apologies for the stereotype) , but I bet if we did a lot more old ladies would be crossing roads and less teenagers would think it was 'cool' to illegally drink every weekend. (  I am personally 16 , and whilst I haven't  helped any  old ladies to date , I most certainty do not drink alcohol.I write this with regards to the idiocy of my 'peers')
FlipswitchMANDERING's avatar
So you want to give adults money for not killing people? You want to treat adults like children?

You lefties are nuts.
k-Re's avatar
Rewarding a behaviour that society considers good could 
1. make the person do a good deed to get the reward depending on how good the reward is
2. weaken the person's original altruistic motives: rewarding a positive deed could gradually build the idea that doing a good deed isn't good enough in it's own right.
Kiwikku's avatar
I actually wonder what the point of altruism is even?
It doesn't work for bad deeds, so why should we treat them so differently?
Notorius-Quack's avatar
Can you give me an example when a kid have a reward for doing good stuff?? Because at my school the teacher would not give you something for doing your homework or passing the grade because that's something you must do!

They only give you reward if you do something extraordinary like been the best student of the year of winning an athletic competition, and they didn't punish you for not doing your homework but your score would be 0 so maybe at the end you could fall the grade, well that's your problem. The only time when they cared about you is when you had a violent behaviour.

And  I also think society works the same way, people shouldn't give rewards for doing things we must do! unless is something extraordinary.

Helping an old lady to cross the street is not doing something nice, is something everybody must do. We need people with more moral principles and less selfish thoughts.
KodakBatterie's avatar
You say passing exams or helping an old lady across the street is something we 'must' do but if you think about it morality is subjective at best and truly is a figment of the human mind. If anyone so pleased they could fail all there exams and laugh at old lady's struggling to get across the street and it would impact there survival in any way . I think we should reward good behaviour otherwise no-one will care if they do good ,as they would get no benefit. I mean kudos to you  for believing in the intrinsically 'good' nature of human beings but that notion is about as flawed as saying the magic man in the cloud exists and created us all and honestly cares about humanity a.k.a. God. 
Notorius-Quack's avatar
Oh..ok. I still believe in that, I believe in the inner good nature of people and that people still do things for free.

Instead of giving rewards for good behaviour, we should invest that money in good education, that make people grow like better persons.

In my country firefighters are volunteers they give their life for people they don't even know, sometimes they have problems at their work because of their schedules. If that's not an example of the good nature of people then I don't know what it is.
Jenny42's avatar
Unfortunately, as seen from all these different views from all different countries, which was very interesting to read!  Rewarding those who do good, is an idealistic notion that really cannot survive large scale when humans are involved,  We make a mess of everything even being nice to other people.  Can you imagine just getting people to agree on what rewards there will be and who to give them to?  This may have merit small scale, maybe in a town or community.  We have something like that here where I live.  We have a 'Local Hero' program the winner gets a big cash prize every year and the names with stories are submitted by people who live here.  We have have teacher and educator of the years those have amazing prizes that also come with raises!    Maybe we should all try to start something like that in our towns and that can make a difference!
Kiwikku's avatar
That does seem more achievable. Can you imagine having an "anti-police" who take people away and put them in vacation resorts or something, or write anti-tickets that you actually can cash in for money lol? Sounds a little nutty.
Jenny42's avatar
I love the idea of an anti-police with trade-in tickets!  Maybe you can get with local shops and businesses to donate ticket values!  I would love to be able to trade a ticket for a spa day or a facial, even something small like a coffee!catching love 
Kiwikku's avatar
Hey, that might work!
Jenny42's avatar
I might call it something else though, 'anti-police' has a negative connotation, maybe a Good Deeds Citation or something like that, I bet the Chamber of Commerce would be interested in this, and it would be cool if it caught on.
Kiwikku's avatar
Yeah, has a better ring to it.
Ragerancher's avatar
Well scoeity often doesn't work that way, those that get the rewards tend to be selfish individuals who are quite happy to ride roughshod over others to get what they want. You then have people being rewarded for incompetence (see banking bonuses) or the whole "good guys finish last thing". Fact is society rewards people who are selfish, driven and don't give 2 shits about anyone else.
Kiwikku's avatar
That's why I think we need these rewards.
Ragerancher's avatar
I do too but unfortunately I doubt we will see that. I remember feeling the injustice at school because the children who misbehaved ended up getting more "good behaviour" prizes than I did when I rarely misbehaved, a complete farce.
topcat-sama's avatar
 I remember my group of friends in highschool who never really misbehaved and generally got A's NEVER got any prizes but when a bad kid does one good thing they get the prizes. I mean it's good that the school was rewarding good behavior but the really good kids never got any prizes :shrug:
Ragerancher's avatar
It did annoy me when, according to the star chart for good performance, I was one of the lowest performers in the class despite frequently getting the best results. The fact I then got into the best state school in the area sort of highlighted that.