Too Many Awards?

Is it bad for Mensa to give too many awards?

This is a trick question, susceptible to a wide variety of interpretations. Nearly every word in the question cries for a definition. But we'll settle for definitions of "too many" and "awards."

Awards: medals, certificates, pins, buttons, plaques, honors, diplomas. No one ever suffered from well-deserved recognition of praiseworthy work. Psychology acknowledges this with research about "positive reinforcement." Reinforcement not only makes the person feel good about having done well, but it encourages that person to continue to do well or even better. And having something concrete to show for having done well is even better than just receiving verbal praise.

So, can there be too much of a good thing? Will recognition cause the person to cease to perform and just "rest on his laurels"? Will too much recognition result in boredom and devaluation of the honors?

It is my opinion that it is not so much a problem of "too many" as of the quality of the awards. Awards given for every little thing, requiring little effort, have little value, less than the daily star given by a teacher to an average student.

On the other hand, if a certain amount of effort and a certain depth of quality of the effort are required for the award, then the award means something. If each award recipient has put out the effort, both in quantity and quality, each such award retains its value, even if many individuals have made the effort. And if there are a fairly large number of awards, but each on a different subject and each holding the recipient to the same high standard as every other award, how can that devalue the awards just because there are more of them?

It becomes a matter of what the award requires and how the decision to give is reached. In my opinion, the criteria for any award should be clear-cut and clearly understood by all the applicants. The criteria should require a fairly high standard of effort and should make it clear just what must be done to achieve that standard. Many Nobel prizes are awarded, but everyone knows how superior your work must be to get one, and I have never heard anyone complaining that there are too many.

Maybe it's really a matter of setting the criteria for awards; not how many but how high the quality of effort and result is that is required for each award, and how clearly that quality is defined.

—Mary Kimball