Hand every kid a trophy, and will they stop trying? That’s the worry behind a familiar argument at the end of the season. Sometimes it comes with a number attached. Participation trophies supposedly reduce children’s motivation by fifteen or eighteen percent. We tried to find the studies behind those figures and couldn’t trace them to the research papers they supposedly describe.
What we did find asks a question one step closer to that argument. In a new study, children and teenagers considered races where everyone received a trophy or only the winners did. They expected the awards to affect runners’ effort and pride. Those expectations are worth understanding. But the researchers didn’t give out trophies and follow what happened next. How participation trophies affect a child’s motivation over time remains an open question in the evidence we found.
What rewards and praise can change
Parents hoping to encourage a child have choices to make long before the trophies arrive. Do we promise a reward for taking part? How do we respond when a child does well? Research on those everyday decisions gives us something more concrete to consider.
In one experiment, preschoolers who already enjoyed drawing were promised a shiny certificate, given the same certificate as a surprise, or given nothing. When researchers returned, the children who had been promised the award chose to draw on their own about half as much as the other groups. The same certificate produced different results depending on whether children had been told to expect it. That distinction matters when we talk about rewards as though they all work alike. It also leaves us with a question about trophies. Has the trophy become something the child is working for, or will it simply mark a season they wanted to play?
Praise can carry expectations too, especially when we reach for bigger words to bolster a child’s confidence. Researchers found that adults were particularly inclined to give inflated praise to children with low self-esteem. Yet in an experiment, an inflated compliment made those children less likely to choose a challenge afterward; children with high self-esteem responded in the opposite direction. The encouragement we intend and the effect it has can differ. Whatever award comes home, we can pay attention to how our own words land.
The variable nobody argues about
Research on what makes youth sports fun points toward the experience around the award. In a study involving players, parents, and coaches, trying hard, respectful coaching, and playing well together ranked above winning.
A separate study followed Little Leaguers into the next season. Five percent of children whose coaches received training in encouragement and instruction dropped out, compared with twenty-six percent under untrained coaches. Children who left and children who returned had nearly identical team win-loss records. The leagues weren’t randomly assigned, so coaching may not explain the whole difference. Even so, the finding gives parents a reason to look closely at how a coach encourages and teaches their child.
We can give the plastic cup less weight without pretending to know that it has no effect. The coaching, the car ride home, and the way we respond to effort and mistakes are all places where we can act. You don’t have to settle the trophy argument at the post-season barbecue to make those experiences better for your child.
Try This
The Car Ride Audit
At season’s end, skip the verdict and run three questions on the ride home. What was the most fun all season? When did you try hardest at something? Which teammate made it better? Those questions track what children themselves put at the top when researchers ask what makes sports worth playing, and none of them mentions the outcome.
Then watch one reflex in yourself, the inflation. If yours is the kid with wobbly confidence, notice whether you reach for bigger praise to compensate. Say the true thing at its true size. You kept showing up. That was a hard season and you finished it. For an anxious kid, or one who has learned that adult enthusiasm means a demand is coming, a plain, specific sentence may be easier to take in.
Consider This
What do you remember from your own childhood seasons? Chances are it isn’t an object. It’s a face, a car ride, a sentence somebody said or didn’t say. The trophies went to a box in an attic somewhere. The adult went with you.
Want the research behind this post? Read the Dive Deeper: Participation Trophies -- the overjustification experiment, the praise evidence, and the coach study, with limits noted.
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