"The surprising science of motivation" - Incentives Don't Work?

craftsy21

craftsy21

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An interesting video clip I just watched - a bit long, so I'll sum it up...



Basically this guy is talking about a number of studies that have shown that the idea of incentives for getting tasks accomplished, is outdated and notentirely correct - or at all in some cases.

Obviously this sort of stands directly in conflict with the ideas of big business, capitalism, and economics... and I don't entirely believe everythinghe's saying, personally.� But I do think there's some truth there...

It refers mostly to situations where some form of creativity is involved... when people in the study were offered different levels of incentives for getting ajob done that involved creative thinking, there was no connection with the highest level of incentives.�
What do you guys think?� Maybe posting this late at night wasn't the best idea.. but west coasters might care right now.� Rex?
 
i read something similar recently. he really tries to drill his arguments, but the basis of them seem legit to me. some of the most innovative things havecome from engineers and creative people working on personal projects or side projects that branch off of their bread and butter projects.
 
sounds sort of right but the title is misleading imo

i think what's interesting is how difficult it can be to predict how certain incentives will sometimes promote behavior totally different from that whichthey were created to.

i.e. the basis of books like freakonomics.

it's almost impossible to correctly predict the outcome and the far-reaching implications of what appear to be basic laws/policies/ etc.

good thread btw......more of this less of the light skinned vs. dark skinned nonsense please? thanks.
 
Oh yeah... I learned this in school a long time ago... i used to tell job interviewers this line to discuss my form of motivation... really impresses
 
Originally Posted by tecca nena

Oh yeah... I learned this in school a long time ago... i used to tell job interviewers this line to discuss my form of motivation... really impresses
Click to expand...


so whats the line?
 
self-discovery and self-driven interest is always more powerful and genuine than when you're being motivated by a carrot.
 
DUH.

But no one pays you do whatever you want.

Why do you think there are people washing toliets?

How you going to get someone to find passion in cleaning toliets.
 
Its ultimately up to management to apply these techniques in the workplace... Because trying to motivate someone intrinsically cannot be applied to a broadrange of people like external motivators are... With the exception of a company's culture, which may attract people who find their mission meaningful
 
bump cuz i thought it was interestig and more people should see it.

btw i dont think the whole intrinsic/autonomy model works universally. for example at my job i work by myself all the time. i have 2 bosses that look over whati do and demand and expect things from me just like any other jobs. However, while I do get my work done on time and as efficiently as possible.

I DO NOT in any way shape or form have the companies best interests at heart. What I'm saying is once I'm done I basically do nothing...I sleep, I goon NT, I do my hw. I mean there are million things I could be doing that are work related and are probably productive, but I just don't do them.

Why? because I'm not motivated to do them or in other words there is no incentive for me to do them. I won't get paid more, it wont be recognized by mybosses because they consider it something that should be done anyway, and it doesn't hurt me not to do it because I can do it when I actually have to.
 
I searched my name and found this, otherwise I would have missed this.

This video does good job of proving that in those experiments monetary incentives inhibited creativity. If you hang a large monetary reward in front ofsomeone, that person is likely to play thing safe. When that is not the case, when the pressure is lowest, the creativity is at its greatest. This is very truein Hollywood. big budget films that are expected to be blockbusters, are usually very bland and unimaginative. The smaller budget movies tend to be moreinteresting and sometimes they grow into a massive monetary reward, as was the case with Star Wars. Star Wars started as smaller budget film, Lucas and theother makers of the film had huge commercial success but they did not expect it, they made that film like it was minor project. The same was true of theSimpsons, it was never meant to be the show that carried Fox's prime time lines up. This is also true in literature, much of mankind's best works werenever written for profit.

I can see this at work with the candle experiments, with little to gain or lose, people act more freely. Those results do not prove that humans are completelyirrational and do not respond to incentives. To me it shows that stress and pressure has strong effect on people, enought override the motive power of materialrewards. By its nature, these experiments were flawed because there can be no assumption of ceteris paribus and the reasonis because by being offered rewards, that group has a level of pressure that the other group does not so the level of pressure, a variable that must be heldconstant, has to change has one changes the reward variable.

This guy is not the first to essential declare virtus economus dead. For over a century the rational actor in economics hasbeen called into question when people's actions do not match with the simplified version of economic theory. In other words, sometimes people act againsttheir self interests. Typically these "irrationalities" which are discovered end up being the result of rational people who were motivated by nonmaterial and non monetary rewards, they were operating under conditions of risk and uncertainty or they were operating with limited information.


His talk is informative and potentially valuable. The most valuable point that I get from it is that most people's creativity gets stifled when they areunder pressure and the opportunity cost of failure is at its highest.
 
Dude searched his own name
laugh.gif


Anyways, this should be well known already. Money as the #1 incentive will not necessarily lead to the best results. The best results usually happen whenself-motivated people work on things that interest them.
 
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