By: Emily Shwake

If your nieces and nephews have worked hard, any reward is a good reward. At Bar-Ilan University in Israel, lead researcher Avi Banozio performed a study to see the correlation between hard work and if it affects how children value the reward they receive.

The experiment consisted of both four-year-old and six-year-old boys. They were asked to perform a task that required either a lot of effort or minimal effort. When the six-year-olds worked hard and received an unattractive reward (which they had previously devalued), they considered the prize to be of more weight and were less willing to give it away. Aunts should be aware, though: four-year-old boys were not as easily convinced and threw out the rewards they found unattractive.

Adults have a similar response pattern: when adults work hard but receive a lousy reward for their efforts, they experience feelings of disappointment, confusion, or “cognitive dissonance.” To resolve those feelings their perception of the reward changes so that the prize seems more valuable than it actually is.

Photo: monkeybusinessimages
Published: August 26, 2015