Why you shouldn't be rewarding your dog! Punished by Rewards with dogs.

The book (Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn) argued that dangling carrots in front of peoples (or dogs) faces, bribing them to do desirable behaviours, will in most cases remove the intrinsically rewarding aspects of that task, simply by the presence of a reward.

There were many examples and studies of this effect presented in the book, one of which would be rewarding children for reading books. It pointed to common schemes that are used by schools, libraries and even parents to encourage the child to read more books. All of these schemes included the use of rewards or brides to manipulate the child into reading.

What was found by these schemes is that children would pick shorter books with more pictures and graphics. In other words, easier books. Once the schemes ended there was no improvement in the children's want to read, in fact the opposite was the case. The children resented reading, if there was no bribe to coerce them to read.

The trouble with using rewards, is that as soon as you reward a behaviour that may have already been intrinsically rewarding to the child or dog, you reduce or even eliminate the intrinsic reward mechanism associated with that behaviour. Because not only do you get the child or dog focussed only on the reward, but you blatantly say to the child or dog “I am manipulating you to perform this behaviour”. How are you doing that? By rewarding the behaviour!

I'll give another example, this time with dogs. Let's say you're teaching your dog to play fetch. And you do so by using food to reward the dog for bringing the toy back to you. Or even worse, the moment the dog grasps the toy in his/her mouth you mark that with ‘yes’ or praise the behaviour and then give the dog some food. What this does is it immediately turns something that would have been intrinsically motivating to the dog (grasping imaginary ‘prey’ in his/her mouth) into just another obedience command.

This would be fine if you were teaching a formal obedience retrieval (dumbbell retrieve etc), in which case you could reinforce or reward the obedience retrieval, with the use of a primary reinforcer like food or a toy that has been allowed to be intrinsically motivating to the dog. But by no means will you be able to use a dumbbell retrieve as a reward for some other obedience command as there is nothing of a biologically innate reinforcement in that type of retrieve, as we have not allowed there to be so. This is fine when teaching a form of an obedience retrieve, however when we are trying to get a dog to find an innate biological satisfaction in chasing an imaginary prey (our toy) and then the dog knowing how to trigger that dopamine hit again (by bringing it back to us to throw again for the dog) is something entirely different. When teaching fetch, I want the dog to become addicted to the game, so that I can use the game to reward obedience behaviours that the dog does not find intrinsically rewarding. This is not possible when we are rewarding the dog, for playing something that in itself should be a deeply enjoyable experience for the dog. This includes using food to teach an ‘out’ command.

I recently saw someone try and use food to ‘reinforce’ a dutch shepherd puppy for biting a decoy. This dog you could see was already extremely motivated to bite, but for some strange reason the handler felt it necessary to shove a bowl of food in front of the dog when he commanded the dog to ‘out’. By the end of the utterly stupid training session, the dog barely knew how to bite! The grips were terrible, the dog no longer bit the decoy on command instead just barked in order to fulfil the ‘obedience protection’ (it had to be agitated by the decoy before it decided to bite). Whereas before all of this nonsense, the pup was biting completely perfect motivation! This is what can happen when you reward behaviours (like biting) that are already intrinsically rewarding to the dog.

The conclusion:

Using rewards can completely ruin your relationship with your dog when they are used incorrectly. If you are going to use rewards, if possible it is best to surprise the dog with the reward rather than bribe the dog to do a certain behaviour while dangling a reward (luring).

You should NEVER reward a behaviour that the dog enjoys performing, with a primary reinforcer (food etc).

I hope you have benefited from reading this! If you would like to read more of my insightful articles in the future you can subscribe to my mailing list.