The phrase "carrot and stick" is a metaphor for the use of a combination of reward and punishment to induce a desired behaviour.
In politics, "carrot or stick" sometimes refers to the realist concept of soft and hard power. The carrot in this context could be the promise of economic or diplomatic aid between nations, while the stick might be the threat of military action.
The earliest English-language references to the "carrot and stick" come from authors in the mid-19th century who in turn wrote in reference to a caricature or cartoon of the time that depicted a race between donkey riders, with the losing jockey using the strategy of beating his steed with "blackthorn twigs" to urge it forward, while the winner of the race sits in his saddle relaxing and holding the butt end of his baited stick. In fact, in some oral traditions, turnips were used instead of carrots as the donkey's temptation.
Decades later, the idea appeared in a letter from Winston Churchill, dated July 6, 1938: "Thus, by every device from the stick to the carrot, the emaciated Austrian donkey is made to pull the Nazi barrow up an ever-steepening hill."
The Southern Hemisphere caught up in 1947 and 1948 amid Australian newspaper commentary about the need to stimulate productivity following World War II.
The earliest uses of the idiom in widely available U.S. periodicals were in The Economist's December 11, 1948 issue and in a Daily Republic newspaper article that same year that discussed Russia's economy.
In the German language, as well as Russian and Ukrainian, a related idiom translates as sugar bread and whip.
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In operant conditioning, punishment is any change in a human or animal's surroundings which, occurring after a given behavior or response, reduces the likelihood of that behavior occurring again in the future. As with reinforcement, it is the behavior, not the human/animal, that is punished. Whether a change is or is not punishing is determined by its effect on the rate that the behavior occurs. This is called motivating operations (MO), because they alter the effectiveness of a stimulus.
In psychology, manipulation is defined as subterfuge designed to influence or control another, usually in a manner which facilitates one's personal aims. The methods used distort or orient the interlocutor's perception of reality, in particular through seduction, suggestion, persuasion and non-voluntary or consensual submission. Definitions for the term vary in which behavior is specifically included, influenced by both culture and whether referring to the general population or used in clinical contexts.
The reward system (the mesocorticolimbic circuit) is a group of neural structures responsible for incentive salience (i.e., "wanting"; desire or craving for a reward and motivation), associative learning (primarily positive reinforcement and classical conditioning), and positively-valenced emotions, particularly ones involving pleasure as a core component (e.g., joy, euphoria and ecstasy). Reward is the attractive and motivational property of a stimulus that induces appetitive behavior, also known as approach behavior, and consummatory behavior.