
Studies Find Reward Often No Motivator - 10ren
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/motivation.html
======
brg
This was also the topic of Dan Pink's TED talk,
<http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html>, which came across the
RSS feed about 9 hours ago, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=782171>.

In that presentation, the speaker talked about the candle experiment and some
of its variations. He mentions that for purely mechanical skills, rewards
indeed have been shown to repeatedly increase productivity. But for non-
mechanical tasks, where the task is not immediately solvable or requires
calculation, the promise of a reward to the top performer often diminishes the
time in which the task is completed.

He didn't mention any deeper analysis though. For instance, one can wonder
about the difference in the attitude between the top performers in the reward
and non-reward groups. Does a participant get pre-occupied with the fact that
they have not solved the problem first, and thereby reduce the amount of
attention they are giving to the problem at hand? Do they have the same amount
of concentration throughout the task, or after what they perceive to be a
"deadline" do they stop caring.

A major difference between Pink's talk and this article is that this posits
that the previous questions don't matter. Instead, it hints at the fact that
once any reward is offered, the work done suffers because it diminishes one's
intrinsic motivation. I wonder if this can be tested against the hypothesis
that the reward becomes an object measuring stick to the quality of work;
while another person's respect or praise might not be as easily objectified
and measured motivating one to do more work.

------
andreyf
It's a little more subtle than Kohn admits, however. While promises of rewards
ahead of time evoke feelings of bribery or coercion, a system where praise and
rewards are often the "natural outcome" serve as great motivation. Consider
the products specializing in making things fun/addicting - video games. WoW
throws in as many "rewards" as possible - hell, even changing your password is
rewarded: <http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/404957/Picture%2039.png>

Highly recommend further reading:
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0071351450/>

Alfie Kohn's "No Contest" is also a great read in the same vein:
[http://www.amazon.com/No-Contest-Case-Against-
Competition/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/No-Contest-Case-Against-
Competition/dp/0395631254/)

~~~
zach
There is a reason why "achievements" (NB: nearly always by that name, hmm...)
are the most pervasive game design pattern today.

I want a t-shirt that says "Actually, I'm just doing this to get the
achievement."

~~~
Xichekolas
I think achievements work because they satisfy our inner magpie. It's the same
reason "complete collections" are more valuable than merely "greatest hits".
The extra items that make the collection "complete" may suck, but, by God, you
can check ALL the boxes on the list.

When I play a game with extensive achievements, the game is always fun right
up until I complete the last one on the list. At that point, I almost totally
lose interest. I have tried to fight that, to the point of avoiding some
achievements so the character doesn't feel "done"... but it's hard. As
expected, merely starting a different character can make all the achievements
seem worth it again (because the checkboxes are once again empty), even though
I have already done them all before.

------
cschwarm
There's little doubt that the motivation crowding-out effect [1] exists.
However, before one runs around, saying that rewards are "often no motivator",
one should remember the basic premise of these studies:

"People were intrinsically motivated to complete a certain task, initially."

In many economic contexts, this is seldomly the case. How many people are
intrinsically motivated to fix a broken toilet, for example?

True, it may hold under certain circumstances -- so-called creative and
similar work.

But developing software is not just creative work. There's also lots of
boilerplate work to do to make software a good product: It needs to satisfy
the wants and needs of the user, not the developer. It needs to be easy-to-
use. It needs informative and reassuring promotion (ie. a nice homepage). It
needs proper documentation. It needs to be easily installable and removable.

But even Free Software developers are not intrinsically motivated to provide
these features. Thus, many Free Software projects fail badly as products.

Sure, there may be people out there who are intrinsically motivated to do some
of these tasks - writing, for example. But when they are, they often have
better things to create, namely their own creative works. Why should anyone
who enjoys to write, care about the lack of documentation for some unknown
software project, even if it's "Free"?

This is why so-called "non-free software" is useful and necessary and hardly
anything "immoral" or "unethical": It provides benefits lots of people want
and need.

In other words: I doubt, the GNU project posted this on their web site to
educate the public. Probably, they just did it to support their political
agenda.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation_crowding_theory>

------
Virax
Let me rebut: the problem is not with existence of rewards, the problem is the
_size_ of the rewards. Employees who are merely _praised_ for their good work
are demotivated because they realize that praise is all they will likely
receive in the near future - they had been hoping for a raise, the assurance
of a raise, or an opportunity to advance their career.

Case in point: in the finance industry, employees work very hard and are not
praised. They are also paid very well, and their pay is usually tied to their
performance except in 2008 when everyone got a huge bonus in spite of the
meltdown.

------
run4yourlives
I find this strange. I'm not going to completely discount the study, but I
would like to counter - with capitalism itself.

Capitalism enforces the reward concept so effectively, that every now and then
we almost collectively implode exchanging rewards. The system works too well,
if anything.

Aside from that, the only thing this shows is that people who enjoy the task
in question will do a better job than those who do not. Well, duh. A talent is
a combination of skill and enjoyment - of course they will outperform someone
who is simply assigned a task.

That doesn't mean rewards don't encourage behaviour, it just means that you
can't pay for passion.

~~~
roundsquare
>I find this strange. I'm not going to completely discount the study, but I
would like to counter - with capitalism itself.

True, but I'd argue that there are two (fuzzy) categories. Using
pharmaceuticals as an example, the huge monetary awards are what pushes
investors, etc.. but I'd wonder how much that drives the scientists. I'm not a
scientist and don't have quick access to one to ask right now, but if this
division does hold true, then it fits this article (albeit given the fact that
they ignored people who's only goal is to make money, i.e. the investors).

>Aside from that, the only thing this shows is that people who enjoy the task
in question will do a better job than those who do not

Not true. The study said that when people were given an external motivation,
their enjoyment _decreased_. Thats a much more significant statement since it
means that adding a monetary reward won't get you better results.

Obviously the above assumes the article is correct...

------
BigZaphod
This matches my own experience exactly. I've often felt _more_ demotivated the
more someone threw incentives at me to finish something and I've tried to
explain, but it's like there's a mental block there and no one wants to admit
that this could possibly be true.

------
DanielStraight
Truly excellent article. Thanks for sharing. This is the kind of stuff I hope
for every time I refresh Hacker News.

------
andresmh
How is reputation different from praise? Isn't reputation one of the main
motivators for participation on Free and Open Source software? Also, if we
look at sites like perlmonks, stackoverflow, slashdot, reddit etc, karma they
are all about points and levels.

------
GrandMasterBirt
Thats true, and I find that true in my own work, but low compensation also
turns someone off just as much.

As long as your programmer feels they are being paid a fair amount, give them
fun work to do and they'll slave away at it like billions of dollars are going
to come out of it.

