[ti:Punishment or Reward] [ar:Steve Ember] [al:Health Report] [by:WWW.51VOA.COM] [00:00.00]This is the VOA Special English [00:02.96]Health Report. [00:04.37]Two recent studies have found [00:07.17]that punishment is not the best way [00:11.46]to influence behavior. [00:13.67]One showed that adults are [00:16.24]much more cooperative if they work [00:19.16]in a system based on rewards. [00:22.37]Researchers at Harvard University [00:25.10]in the United States [00:26.74]and the Stockholm School of Economics [00:30.28]in Sweden did the study. [00:32.42]They had about two hundred college students [00:36.16]play a version of the game [00:38.19]known as the Prisoner's Dilemma. [00:40.87]The game is based on the tension [00:43.36]between the interests of [00:45.60]an individual and a group. [00:47.60]The students played in groups of four. [00:51.14]Each player could win points [00:53.69]for the group, [00:54.76]so they would all gain equally. [00:57.64]But each player could also reward [01:01.20]or punish each of the other three players, [01:05.11]at a cost to the punisher. [01:07.56]Harvard researcher David Rand says [01:10.95]the most successful behavior [01:13.50]proved to be cooperation. [01:16.30]The groups that rewarded it the most [01:19.53]earned about twice as much in the game [01:22.82]as the groups that rewarded it the least. [01:26.57]And the more a group punished itself, [01:30.52]the lower its earnings. [01:32.98]The group with the most punishment [01:36.26]earned twenty-five percent less than [01:39.08]the group with the least punishment. [01:43.01]The study appeared last month [01:45.81]in the journal Science. [01:47.95]The other study involved children. [01:52.19]It was presented last month [01:54.77]in California at a conference [01:57.37]on violence and abuse. [01:59.59]Researchers used intelligence tests [02:03.61]given to two groups. [02:06.10]More than eight hundred children [02:09.04]were ages two to four the first time [02:13.09]they were tested. [02:14.69]More than seven hundred children [02:17.78]were ages five to nine. [02:20.42]The two groups were retested [02:24.52]four years later, and the study [02:27.61]compared the results with the first test. [02:31.80]Both groups contained children [02:35.08]whose parents used physical punishment [02:38.89]and children whose parents did not. [02:42.58]The study says the IQs [02:46.02]-- or intelligence quotients [02:49.07]-- of the younger children who were [02:51.57]not spanked were five points higher [02:55.11]than those who were. [02:57.30]In the older group, [02:59.20]the difference was almost three points. [03:02.46]Murray Strauss from the University [03:06.17]of New Hampshire worked with Mallie Paschall [03:10.11]from the Pacific Institute [03:12.71]for Research and Evaluation. [03:15.69]Professor Strauss has written extensively [03:19.14]about physical punishment of children. [03:22.42]He says the more they are spanked, [03:26.40]the slower their mental development. [03:29.70]He also looked at average IQs [03:32.96]in other nations and found them lower [03:36.69]where spanking was more common. [03:39.38]What do you think are the best ways [03:42.13]to correct misbehavior? [03:44.37]Share your comments at 51voa.com. [03:49.61]And that's the VOA Special English [03:53.70]Health Report, [03:55.10]written by Caty Weaver. [03:57.35]I'm Steve Ember.