Judy Cameron and W. David Pierce (1994), Review of Educational Research 64(3):363–423 — DOI-10.3102/00346543064003363
Key takeaways
Registered from the two papers that analyse it, not a reading.
- As Deci, Koestner and Ryan report it (LIT-557, p. 632): no overall reward effect on free choice and a small enhancement on attitudes (d = 0.14); verbal rewards enhance both (0.38, 0.39); tangible rewards undermine free choice (−0.21) but not attitudes; expected tangible rewards undermine free choice (−0.25); task-contingent rewards undermine free choice (−0.23 after outliers); performance-contingent rewards do not affect free choice and enhance attitudes (0.19). It concluded there was no reason not to use rewards in education and called for “abandoning cognitive evaluation theory” (their p. 396, as quoted).
- As its authors’ 2001 abstract restates it (LIT-562): Cameron and Pierce “concluded that negative effects of reward were limited and could be easily prevented in applied settings”.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-03 at the owner’s request, as the rival meta-analysis to
Deci, Koestner and Ryan (LIT-557) in the dispute over whether rewards
undermine intrinsic motivation. That paper is compared_against this one.
The authors’ later reply, Cameron, Banko and Pierce (2001), LIT-562, has
since been read (NOTE-587). It restates this paper’s results (its
pp. 6–7) and keeps its conclusion, but this paper itself is still unread. This entry is kept because the 1994 paper is the one Deci
et al. reanalyse and the one the literature cites.
Deferred because it was not read. Nothing in the record should lean on it
beyond what Deci et al. say about it.
No instruction for machine-learning practice; nothing here belongs in the anthology.