Overjustification effects in token economies.
Tokens don’t wreck inner drive, and lighter pay may help the skill stay.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Staff ran a token economy in a state facility for adults with mental health issues.
They paid tokens for toothbrushing across two weeks. One week gave many tokens. The next week gave few.
They then stopped all tokens and watched who kept brushing.
What they found
Big pay did not kill inner drive. No one quit brushing when tokens ended.
Surprise: people brushed a bit more after the low-pay week than after the high-pay week.
The feared “overjustification effect” never showed up.
How this fits with other research
Reid et al. (1987) later ran tokens in a mine. Tokens cut injuries for years. That study extends this one: tokens can keep safety strong long after the pay stops.
Leigh et al. (2015) pitted fixed pay against escalating pay for smokers. Escalating pay won. Their RCT builds on the 1979 question: how you schedule tokens matters more than how big each token is.
Neef et al. (1986) taught kids table manners with tokens and saw big gains. Their positive result seems to clash with the 1979 null, but the kids got tokens every meal while the adults only got them once a day. More practice, more gain.
Why it matters
You can relax. Token boards will not spoil a client’s own reason to behave. If you must fade, give smaller or less frequent tokens before you stop. That tiny drop may even help the skill stick.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study tested the relevance to clinical token economies of the overjustification hypothesis that tangible reward interferes with intrinsic interest in target behaviors and causes such behaviors to be less probable following a period of reinforcement than preceding such a period. The study was carried out in an ongoing token economy for chronic psychiatric patients. Alternated over an 8-week period were weeks of token and no-token reward for one of the program's target behaviors, toothbrushing. Two different amounts of token reward were employed in order to examine whether reward magnitude might influence the presence or extent of overjustification effects. Little evidence was found for the presence of overjustification effects in token economies. However, maintenance of toothbrushing was greater in no-token weeks following weeks of low amounts of token reward than in no-token weeks following weeks of higher amounts of reward. The importance of such complex functional relationships is discussed.
Journal of applied behavior analysis, 1979 · doi:10.1901/jaba.1979.12-407