April 13, 2023 • 12 mins
Expanding our Vocabulary – Extrinsic incentives bias
We often believe that people can be motivated by incentives – just up the incentives, and they will be more motivated. This is actually a bias, and when employed, can be counterproductive.
MADTv Safety at Work episode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVB5lQpPYow
Dan Ariely’s videos - https://danariely.com/resources/#gallery
Hidden Brain episode - https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/what-do-you-want-to-be/
Humankind – a hopeful history – (where I learned of this term) https://www.amazon.ca/Humankind-Hopeful-History-Rutger-Bregman/dp/0316418536
Connect with Tanya Hewitt on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanya-hewitt-55804529/
Buy her a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/tanyah
Credits:
Adam Johns – voiceover - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjohns730/
Beverley McKiver – composer and player of the music Tell Me About Love - https://www.linkedin.com/in/beverleymckiver/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Adam Johns (00:03):
Welcome to Beyond the Minimum, where we'll be exploring the world of work. We'll be chatting about concepts, ideas and phrases, explore practices and delve into what good looks like. Work can be purposeful value lead, and more meaningful to all who interact with the workplace. This podcast is brought to you by Tanya Hewitt who lives in unceded Algonquin, Anishinaabeg territory, otherwise known as Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Tanya Hewitt (00:33):
Hello, everyone. It has been a number of years since I have seen a presentation by Sidney Decker, he is now in Australia, whereby he was talking about a very well signed intersection. In Europe, I believe in the Netherlands, that the city council decided to take all of the signs away, which might have been very destabilizing for a lot of people. Because without the signage, how will the drivers know what to do? And how will they behave? Well, this was a pilot project, it was well surveyed as it was being introduced. And what they found was that, in contrast to having the very well signed intersection, with lights and stops, and arrows, and all this kind of thing, when they took all of that away, the traffic slowed down. And because of slowing down, they didn't engage in as many accidents as they had before. When they took the rules away, people started to make eye contact with pedestrians and with other drivers. And they would then have this tacit agreement amongst them in order to know who goes next. There were kids that didn't get killed as a result, because people were far more aware of the pedestrians that were in that intersection. And it was a really insightful concept that is
(02:23):
starting to catch on in some places in North America with traffic circles, replacing a lot of lighted intersections where,again, the judgment of the drivers is going to be way more important than this automatic adherence and compliance to rules of the road. I don't know what this means for self driving cars. But it does suggest that there is going to be much merit to looking at intersections, and evaluating do we need all of the signage and all of the lights and all of the instructions, or our drivers going to be better served and the population as a whole, better served with fewer rules?
Adam Johns (03:15):
Today's episode is expanding our vocabulary.
Tanya Hewitt (03:18):
Hello, everybody. Today's expanded vocabulary is the extrinsic incentive bias. Most of us assume that extrinsic incentives will motivate behavior. At this time, with the labor shortage that a lot of businesses are experiencing, we feel as though bells and whistles are what will entice people to work, things like salary, bonuses, benefits, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, this does work to a point. But beyond that, we are all looking at this very well entrenched bias.
(04:07):
Years ago, I took a course from Dan Ariely on Coursera when the platform was new, and I got to be able to take things withouta cost. And he talked about research he did on clutch basketball players. These are players who can pull off amazing results when the stakes are high. And being such players, they make more money. However, as a researcher, Dan Ariely was interested in collecting data over the clutch player's career, not just the high powered games, and sure enough, when he looked at the data in its entirety, the clutch players had a similar record to any other professional basketball player. They miss plenty of baskets. And importantly, when the stakes were very high, the clutch players weren't superhuman, and some made critical shots at critical times, and others miss them. In fact, he focused on a correlation not a causation, just a correlation, just a reminder, they're not the same with high stakes. And often, high stakes are correlated with poor performance.
(05:28):
There's a wonderful MADTV parody of this. I will put this in the show notes. I have used parts of this video in talksdemonstrating that when the stakes are high, performance can suffer. It's wild because we think that the higher the incentive, the better we perform, justifying the incentive.
(05:51):
I remember reading a book of Daniel realities, I believe it was predictably irrational, where he described experiments he didwith participants doing various puzzles, and the score on the puzzles was inversely related to the reward they would get, which seems completely opposite to the way that most people think. Dan Ariely has a series of videos on motivation where he talks about our poor predictive capacity concerning how we will feel during the execution of a task. While in the task, we may be fulfilled, experiencing flow, but when we're not in the task, we often overweight the extrinsic incentives and underweight the intrinsic.
(06:39):
Years ago, I heard Peter Pronovost talk about being in Germany, typically a law abiding country having a horrible publichealth problem. Men's public washrooms were a mess. There was urine everywhere. And with the extrinsic incentives bias, radio ads were taken out. There were advertisements on buildings, buses and bus shelters, pleading with men to use the urinal in public washrooms. This went on for months. A urinal designer, designed a urinal with a fly near the drain. These urinals were installed in a few particularly nasty public washrooms. And overnight, the problem was solved. Men now had something to aim at pulling on their intrinsic motivation over the public health instructions to use the urinals. being lectured at didn't work, making it more of a game did.
(07:49):
On Hidden Brain, Ken Sheldon talked about how a previous researcher had talked about not only the importance of intrinsicmotivation, but how fragile it is. I will put this link to this podcast in the show notes. If someone is intrinsically motivated in something, and is compensated for this with money, this can destroy the intrinsic motivation. This can happen over the short term, but can also lead to long term consequences over decades. Ken himself did a study of scholarship varsity athletes who were paid to play. Those that did not become professional not only stopped playing, they stopped following the sport altogether, which was different from other athletes who weren't paid to play in their university days. They played recreationally and followed the sport for many years. Both groups were great athletes in their late teens, and those who are paid to play lost interest in the sport in the long term. This was interpreted as the control they had over their lives being minimal. They could not walk away while they were under scholarship. And when they finish their studies and regain control. They turned on their varsity years and the whole sport entirely. Whereas those who were playing recreationally had full
(09:39):
control over their ability to leave at any time. And that then precipitated a love for the sport later on, that they kept upeven though they weren't bound to it in university. I have heard Do not make your passion your career for exactly this reason. Orchestra players can learn to resent the instrument they once loved. Because extrinsic motivation, quashed their drive and replaced it with money. It's wild, but it happens. And it's tragic to hear.
(10:26):
We all need a basic amount of money to live. But beyond that, this default extrinsic motivation bias is more of just asocietal bias that we have bought into, rather than allowing people to use some of their internal intrinsic motivations to be able to propel them for performance, and fulfillment.
(10:54):
I thank you for listening. I don't know if this is your first episode, or if you are a regular listener, having reallyappreciated some of this content. I just wanted to tell you that I really do appreciate you for listening. If you would like to express your gratitude for this podcast, I would encourage you to buy me a coffee, head on over to buy me a coffee.com/tanyah that's buy b-u-y me m-e a coffee c-o-f-f-e-e all one word.com/t-a-n-y-a-h tanyah. I will put this in the show notes. And I would really sincerely appreciate your support. In addition to that, you can rate and review this podcast and I really, really appreciate that you are here listening to what I am sending out to you guys. Thanks so much.
Adam Johns (12:09):
Thank you so much for listening to Beyond the Minimum with Tanya Hewitt. We hope this episode aligned with you. Maybe it was diametrically opposed to us, at any rate, we trust it made you think. The more we can think about our workplaces and start talking about them, the more we can collectively make a real difference. If you're living in Canada, please find out the Indigenous territory in which you reside. Begin using it to introduce yourself. Please reach out to Tanya through her email Tanya@beyondsafetycompliance.ca. Connect and chat with her on LinkedIn. Follow her company Beyond Safety Compliance. And remember to ask yourself the question, How does your work look? Because we can always go Beyond the Minimum.
Welcome to Beyond the Minimum, where we'll be exploring the world of work. We'll be chatting about concepts, ideas and phrases, explore practices and delve into what good looks like. Work can be purposeful value lead, and more meaningful to all who interact with the workplace. This podcast is brought to you by Tanya Hewitt who lives in unceded Algonquin, Anishinaabeg territory, otherwise known as Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Tanya Hewitt (00:33):
Hello, everyone. It has been a number of years since I have seen a presentation by Sidney Decker, he is now in Australia, whereby he was talking about a very well signed intersection. In Europe, I believe in the Netherlands, that the city council decided to take all of the signs away, which might have been very destabilizing for a lot of people. Because without the signage, how will the drivers know what to do? And how will they behave? Well, this was a pilot project, it was well surveyed as it was being introduced. And what they found was that, in contrast to having the very well signed intersection, with lights and stops, and arrows, and all this kind of thing, when they took all of that away, the traffic slowed down. And because of slowing down, they didn't engage in as many accidents as they had before. When they took the rules away, people started to make eye contact with pedestrians and with other drivers. And they would then have this tacit agreement amongst them in order to know who goes next. There were kids that didn't get killed as a result, because people were far more aware of the pedestrians that were in that intersection. And it was a really insightful concept that is
(02:23):
starting to catch on in some places in North America with traffic circles, replacing a lot of lighted intersections where,again, the judgment of the drivers is going to be way more important than this automatic adherence and compliance to rules of the road. I don't know what this means for self driving cars. But it does suggest that there is going to be much merit to looking at intersections, and evaluating do we need all of the signage and all of the lights and all of the instructions, or our drivers going to be better served and the population as a whole, better served with fewer rules?
Adam Johns (03:15):
Today's episode is expanding our vocabulary.
Tanya Hewitt (03:18):
Hello, everybody. Today's expanded vocabulary is the extrinsic incentive bias. Most of us assume that extrinsic incentives will motivate behavior. At this time, with the labor shortage that a lot of businesses are experiencing, we feel as though bells and whistles are what will entice people to work, things like salary, bonuses, benefits, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, this does work to a point. But beyond that, we are all looking at this very well entrenched bias.
(04:07):
Years ago, I took a course from Dan Ariely on Coursera when the platform was new, and I got to be able to take things withouta cost. And he talked about research he did on clutch basketball players. These are players who can pull off amazing results when the stakes are high. And being such players, they make more money. However, as a researcher, Dan Ariely was interested in collecting data over the clutch player's career, not just the high powered games, and sure enough, when he looked at the data in its entirety, the clutch players had a similar record to any other professional basketball player. They miss plenty of baskets. And importantly, when the stakes were very high, the clutch players weren't superhuman, and some made critical shots at critical times, and others miss them. In fact, he focused on a correlation not a causation, just a correlation, just a reminder, they're not the same with high stakes. And often, high stakes are correlated with poor performance.
(05:28):
There's a wonderful MADTV parody of this. I will put this in the show notes. I have used parts of this video in talksdemonstrating that when the stakes are high, performance can suffer. It's wild because we think that the higher the incentive, the better we perform, justifying the incentive.
(05:51):
I remember reading a book of Daniel realities, I believe it was predictably irrational, where he described experiments he didwith participants doing various puzzles, and the score on the puzzles was inversely related to the reward they would get, which seems completely opposite to the way that most people think. Dan Ariely has a series of videos on motivation where he talks about our poor predictive capacity concerning how we will feel during the execution of a task. While in the task, we may be fulfilled, experiencing flow, but when we're not in the task, we often overweight the extrinsic incentives and underweight the intrinsic.
(06:39):
Years ago, I heard Peter Pronovost talk about being in Germany, typically a law abiding country having a horrible publichealth problem. Men's public washrooms were a mess. There was urine everywhere. And with the extrinsic incentives bias, radio ads were taken out. There were advertisements on buildings, buses and bus shelters, pleading with men to use the urinal in public washrooms. This went on for months. A urinal designer, designed a urinal with a fly near the drain. These urinals were installed in a few particularly nasty public washrooms. And overnight, the problem was solved. Men now had something to aim at pulling on their intrinsic motivation over the public health instructions to use the urinals. being lectured at didn't work, making it more of a game did.
(07:49):
On Hidden Brain, Ken Sheldon talked about how a previous researcher had talked about not only the importance of intrinsicmotivation, but how fragile it is. I will put this link to this podcast in the show notes. If someone is intrinsically motivated in something, and is compensated for this with money, this can destroy the intrinsic motivation. This can happen over the short term, but can also lead to long term consequences over decades. Ken himself did a study of scholarship varsity athletes who were paid to play. Those that did not become professional not only stopped playing, they stopped following the sport altogether, which was different from other athletes who weren't paid to play in their university days. They played recreationally and followed the sport for many years. Both groups were great athletes in their late teens, and those who are paid to play lost interest in the sport in the long term. This was interpreted as the control they had over their lives being minimal. They could not walk away while they were under scholarship. And when they finish their studies and regain control. They turned on their varsity years and the whole sport entirely. Whereas those who were playing recreationally had full
(09:39):
control over their ability to leave at any time. And that then precipitated a love for the sport later on, that they kept upeven though they weren't bound to it in university. I have heard Do not make your passion your career for exactly this reason. Orchestra players can learn to resent the instrument they once loved. Because extrinsic motivation, quashed their drive and replaced it with money. It's wild, but it happens. And it's tragic to hear.
(10:26):
We all need a basic amount of money to live. But beyond that, this default extrinsic motivation bias is more of just asocietal bias that we have bought into, rather than allowing people to use some of their internal intrinsic motivations to be able to propel them for performance, and fulfillment.
(10:54):
I thank you for listening. I don't know if this is your first episode, or if you are a regular listener, having reallyappreciated some of this content. I just wanted to tell you that I really do appreciate you for listening. If you would like to express your gratitude for this podcast, I would encourage you to buy me a coffee, head on over to buy me a coffee.com/tanyah that's buy b-u-y me m-e a coffee c-o-f-f-e-e all one word.com/t-a-n-y-a-h tanyah. I will put this in the show notes. And I would really sincerely appreciate your support. In addition to that, you can rate and review this podcast and I really, really appreciate that you are here listening to what I am sending out to you guys. Thanks so much.
Adam Johns (12:09):
Thank you so much for listening to Beyond the Minimum with Tanya Hewitt. We hope this episode aligned with you. Maybe it was diametrically opposed to us, at any rate, we trust it made you think. The more we can think about our workplaces and start talking about them, the more we can collectively make a real difference. If you're living in Canada, please find out the Indigenous territory in which you reside. Begin using it to introduce yourself. Please reach out to Tanya through her email Tanya@beyondsafetycompliance.ca. Connect and chat with her on LinkedIn. Follow her company Beyond Safety Compliance. And remember to ask yourself the question, How does your work look? Because we can always go Beyond the Minimum.
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