Effects of reward distribution and performance feedback on competitive responding.
Pay points or money in exact proportion to each learner’s performance and show live scores—fixed or winner-take-all splits kill motivation fast.
01Research in Context
What this study did
College students pressed buttons to earn money in a two-person contest.
The winner could split the pot three ways: winner-take-all, 60/40, or exact-proportion to each person’s score.
A screen showed live scores so players always knew who was ahead.
What they found
Proportional pay kept both players pressing fast until the end.
Fixed splits (winner-take-all or 60/40) made the loser slow down and quit early.
Real-time score feedback plus fair money split created the strongest, longest contest.
How this fits with other research
Mace et al. (1990) saw the same pattern in a classroom: kids shifted their math responses toward the side that paid more points.
Lander et al. (1968) showed pigeons do the math too—response ratios lock onto reinforcement ratios.
WEINER (1964) proved the flip side: when tokens can be lost, rats pause or stop just like humans who see no chance to catch up.
Together these studies say: learners always calculate the payoff; your job is to make the math work for everyone.
Why it matters
Token boards, point charts, or classroom games all run on the same rule. If top earners grab everything, the bottom learner gives up. Share points in proportion to each small success and post scores where everyone can see. You will keep all students in the game and pressing for more.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
To implement competitive contingencies, one must select a distribution of unequal rewards and a schedule of feedback for competitors regarding one another's performance. This study investigated three bases for distributing rewards and two performance feedback conditions. Pairs of college students competed over a series of 2‐min contests in which the competitive response was a knob pull. A sum of money was divided using a proportional distribution or one of two fixed reward distributions. In the proportional distribution, a subject's proportion of the sum was his or her proportion of the total number of responses. The two fixed distributions were divisions of 100%/0% or 67%/33%. Also, in every contest either subject could make a response that would end the contest prematurely and give both subjects the same amount—a sum equal to 33% of the competitive total. In the two feedback conditions, cumulative responses by each subject were either shown to both subjects during the contest or were not shown. The proportional distribution was clearly superior to either of the fixed distributions in number of responses produced across contests. The proportional distribution with feedback produced the largest number of competitive responses, and the 100%/0% distribution without feedback produced the smallest number. Differences among distributions typically emerged only during later blocks of contests. Fixed distributions of rewards often produced decelerating rates of responding, with losing competitors ending the contests before they were completed. Response‐rate decreases were greatest for pairs in which the 2 subjects differed most in their response rates and proportion of wins. The presence of feedback had a small effect, increasing responding for some pairs in the 100%/0% distribution. Performance patterns were interpreted in terms of the consequences arranged for the individual participants by the reward distributions and differences in performance between competitors.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1998 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1998.69-263