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WHY PUNISHMENT - "DO IT OR ELSE. . ." - DOESN'T WORK

Punishment doesn't work - not well and not for long. It isn't that punishment can't work. It can. People will change their behavior if you can punish them in the right way. The problem with punishment is that you cannot punish people in a way that will get them to change their behavior for any length of time in a business setting. In fact, you cannot punish people and get them to really change their behavior in any setting. You can't use punishment to change the behavior of your spouse, your kids, your friends, your acquaintances, or anyone.

Punishment won't work for you because you can never punish in a way that meets the requirements for the effective use of punishment that psychologists have defined - immediacy, severity, and consistency. The classic hot stove example of effective punishment illustrates this point. If you place your hand on a hot stove, you are punished  (it burns) immediately. The punishment is harsh - it really hurts - so you pull your hand away. A hot stove is consistent.  It will always burn you, not just sometimes. And the stove doesn't care whose hand gets burned. The stove will burn you, your boss, your spouse, your child - it is completely fair and consistent. Place a hand on a hot stove and you get burned - period. Now think about the punishment you can hand out. Chances are it can't be immediate, it's not really that severe, and it is extremely hard to guarantee that you are always consistent. When someone does something wrong, chances are you won't know about it the minute it occurs. You find out when the customer complains maybe hours, days, or weeks later. And how severe can you really be? You can't physically hut anyone - at least we hope not.  You can yell at them.  But after a while - as we all know - people quit listening, and yelling just doesn't do any good. The most severe thing you can do is fire people. But if you are like most of us, firing someone is not something you particularly enjoy doing. Anyway, you can't fire everybody. Finally, there is the matter of consistency. You try to be consistent. But the fact is you can't watch people all the time. Somewhere, sometime, somebody is going to do exactly the same behavior and go unpunished. You won't see it happen - you won't catch them in the act - and you'll have a hard time justifying punishing them if you didn't catch them doing it. Any punishment you can hand out is weak because it just won't pass the "immediate, severe, consistent" test. But let's say you do try to punish people when they do something wrong. What happens?

Something called the "punishment effect" has been well established in research.  Essentially, it says: "When punishment is used to control behavior, people perform at a level just sufficient to avoid the punishment."  Speed limits are a good example of the "punishment effect." Not too long ago, the speed limit on most major American roads was 55 miles per hour. When that was true, we used to ask people all over the country how fast they usually drove in a 55-milc-per-hour speed-limit zone. Consistently, they told us that they drove between 63 and 65 miles per hour. A few said they drove a little faster. When we asked why they all drove 63 or 65 when the speed limit was 55, they said: "If you drive faster than 65, you'll get a ticket." Practically everyone we spoke with had a certain speed - above the speed limit - they felt they could drive without getting a ticket - without getting punished.  Everyone drove at a speed just short of the point at which they thought they might be punished.

Another story that illustrates the punishment effect and the futility of trying to force performance goes like this:

Years ago, a farmer was going to market in his cart loaded with vegetables. Having started out late, the farmer was in a hurry for fear of missing the market opening. Halfway to the market, his mule stopped dead still in the middle of the road and refused to move. No amount of cracking the whip or flapping the reins would get the mule started again. Finally, in anger, the farmer jumped down from the cart and began to beat the mule with a stick.  Still the mule refused to move.  The farmer became incensed, rushed to the side of the road, and gathered up all of the sticks, twigs, and dry bushes he could find. He piled it under the mule and set it on fire. The mule moved - just far enough to pull the cart squarely over the fire.

The farmer punished the mule and the mule responded - just enough to avoid the punishment.

The same punishment effect occurs in the work setting. Inevitably, when we go into a business where managers try to control behavior through discipline or punishment, we find the same phenomenon. Employees soon learn the minimum performance sufficient to avoid the discipline or punishment. Everybody performs fairly close to that level. The tragedy is that that level is usually far below the level of performance that is possible. Because of the punishment effect, these managers get minimum performance from their people.

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