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Lost Hobbit

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Z-Day London 2014
The Zeitgeist Movement

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On Rewards and Motivation
Zeitgeist Day 2014

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[inaudible conversation]

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Melissa Saviste

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[plays clip from the talk show
"The Lang and O'Leary Exchange"]

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(Amanda Lang) The combined wealth
- this according to Oxfam -

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of the world's 85 richest people

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is equal to the 3.5 billion
poorest people.

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(Kevin O’Leary) It’s fantastic.

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And this is a great thing
because it inspires everybody,

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gets them motivation
to look up to the 1% and say:

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“I wanna become one of those people,

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"I’m gonna fight hard to get up to the top.”

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This is fantastic news,
and of course I applaud it.

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[awkward silence]

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(O'Leary) What can be wrong with this?

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(Lang) Really?

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(O’Leary) Yes, really.

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(Lang) So, somebody living on...

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(O'Leary) I celebrate capitalism.

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(Lang) ...a dollar a day in Africa
is getting up in the morning

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and saying “I’m gonna be Bill Gates”?

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- O'Leary: That’s the motivation everybody needs.
- Lang: The only thing...

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- Lang: ...between me and that guy is 'motivation',
- O'Leary: I'm not against charity!

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- Lang: ... I just need to pull up my socks…
- O'Leary: I am not against...

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- Lang: ...oh wait, I don’t have socks!"

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(O'Leary) Look. Don't tell me that you want to
redistribute wealth again.

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That's never gonna happen, ok?

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(Lang) You know what, you take a simple stat like this
which is neither good nor bad. It's just a fact...

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(O'Leary) It's a celebratory stat. I'm very excited about it.
I'm wonderful to see it happen.

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I tell kids everyday: "if you"...

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- O'Leary: What's wrong with this?
- Lang: If this comes up at a cocktail party...

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- O'Leary: No, no. Amanda: What's wrong with this statement?
- Lang: ...what possible response to it...

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- O'Leary: If you work hard, you might be stinking rich someday.
- Lang: We're talking about people...

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...in extreme abject poverty.

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- Lang: ...that's how you get 3.5 billion...
- O'Leary: No we're not!

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- O'Leary: You were just talking...
- Lang: ...in this category.

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- O'Leary: ...about really rich people.
- Lang: No.

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That was Kevin O'Leary,
a Canadian businessman

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and probably someone
you would not want in charge of the world.

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Those were his ideas on human motivation.

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He claims that
money is what motivates people

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and especially the prospect of being among
the world's top percent richest

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which unfortunately seems to be
quite a common worldview today.

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But is that true?

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In Zeitgeist spirit, we're going to
look at what the actual evidence says

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because, as we obviously know,
majority opinion or common sense

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sometimes turns out to be incorrect.

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First, some psychological experiments

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which actually say that
rewards can reduce already existing motivation.

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In a 1971 experiment, Edward Deci
had students assembling puzzle cubes

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first without rewards, then for money
and finally without rewards again.

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He observed them secretly,
what they were doing in their free time

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and he noticed that, in their free time

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they would happily play with the puzzle cubes

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however, after the reward condition,
and when rewards were removed,

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they would work on the puzzles less,

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they suddenly had less motivation
to work on puzzles.

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Another similar experiment
was done with children

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who had an intrinsic interest in drawing.

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This means that they liked to draw
for its own sake

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just for the fun of it.

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Not because of any external motivation.

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Then, some of the children
were given a reward certificate

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on the condition of
continuing to draw

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and afterwards,
they showed less interest in drawing

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than those who never got any rewards

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and also less interest
than they themselves have had at the beginning.

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The research has called this effect
"over-justification":

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if you give and additional reason
to do something that is already interesting,

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that makes people think

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that the task is not worth doing
without the rewards.

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So, in other words,

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the focus shifts from doing the task
to just getting the reward.

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Now, you might say that, well,
motivation isn't that important,

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as long as things get done,
and things get done well.

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And obviously offering rewards
should make people try harder

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and get better results.

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So, Sam Glucksberg tested this
with a simple puzzle.

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Participants were given
a box of tacks, a candle, a matchbox

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and they were told
to attach the candle to the wall.

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Can you think of how you would do this?

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Half of the participants were told
that they would receive a monetary reward

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if they were among the quickest
to solve the problem.

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This is a simplified version of the puzzle

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that was given to another group of participants.

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There is one crucial difference:
the box of tacks has already been emptied

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and in this version,
the puzzle is really easy to solve.

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The results showed that for the first task,

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which is more difficult and requires some creative thinking,

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performance suffers if rewards are involved.

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This could again be that the focus shifts 
from the task to getting the money

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or they might be getting too excited 
about the bonus reward.

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On the other hand, 
they did do better in this version, 


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in the simple one,

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when they were offered rewards,

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because the task was really easy.

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So, it would seem that is okay to keep paying people 
for simple manual tasks.

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However, as you all know, 
this is not very relevant anymore

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because you have things like self-checkouts 
and self-driving cars,

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and in some places in Asia, 
you even have robot restaurants.

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So what's left for humans to do
are the mentally demanding creative tasks,

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such as building and maintaining those robots.

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These are the sort of tasks that

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Glucksberg showed are hindered
by the promise of rewards.

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In case you're wondering whether
increasing the reward amount might work,

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there was an experiment done
by Dan Ariely and colleagues in rural India,

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where they could offer the participants money

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that to them was worth a year's salary.

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They found that performance suffered most

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when they were offered the biggest amount.

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So, perhaps, when all you can think about is

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what you're gonna do 
with your big bonus once you get it,

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you might not get much actual work done.

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One thing that all these experiments had in common

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was that a tangible reward such as
money or a reward certificate

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was offered on condition
of the participant doing something

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and even the biggest critics of this line of research agree that

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this is one condition where performance does suffer.

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So, what should we do while we're in a system
where we do need money to live?

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Dan Pink, in his book "Drive", 
suggest that companies should pay their employees

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well and unconditionally,

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so the the issue of money would be off the table

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and they could focus on their work.

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The same idea could be applied to whole countries,

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which is what the proponents of Basic Income are suggesting.

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They believe that, if you provide everyone 
with enough money to cover basic needs,

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then people would still continue to work.

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They would work on what they love doing

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because of people's natural desire
to make the world a better place,

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while being stuck in a non-rewarding job,

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just for the sake of being alive,

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more often hinders their ability to do so.

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This is similar to Maslow's Hierarchy of
Needs idea

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that there are some basic needs

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but once they're taken care of

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and people have security
about their job, house and so on,

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they can focus on higher needs

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which are relationships, self-esteem
and self-actualization.

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But if there's uncertainty about the future,

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then that prevents the individuals from achieving
their true potential.

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On top of this pyramid of needs is
self-actualization

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which essentially means contributing
something useful and lasting to society

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which is quite a different view

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from those who think that
people only want to work

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when externally incentivized.

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Back to the idea of Basic Income.

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So, what happens if people's
basic and security needs are taken care of?

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Thankfully this experiment has been
carried out a few times in the world.

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Here is an early example from Canada.

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At that time, North American governments were
quite enthusiastic about the idea.

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They were even thinking about expanding this 
all over the United States and Canada.

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This pilot project was run from 1974 to '79,

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but, unfortunately, it stopped due to the recession,

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and all the data from the project was archived

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because the government thought it had failed.

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They were finally discovered and analyzed in 2009

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and the results were quite interesting.

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They showed minimal effects on employment.

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The only groups that worked substantially less 
were new mothers and teenagers,

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because, well, taking care of children and
studying are very important

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and also, as a result, graduation rates went up,

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other people had more opportunities
to choose the sort of work they were doing

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and, very importantly, hospital visits went down
and mental health improved

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which actually saves the country some money.

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A more recent pilot study was carried
out in a small settlement in Namibia,

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in the years 2008-09.

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The results were very dramatic.

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When at the start of the experiment,

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food poverty levels were at 76%
then they went down to 16%.

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So, essentially, people didn't have to worry about food anymore.

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They could have stopped working at all,

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but, to the contrary,
employment actually went up by 10%

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because people now had money
to start their own businesses

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and they had money to buy from those businesses.

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This shows how even a small boost to resources 
helps people put them to good use

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rather than increasing dependency on the free money

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which the critics were predicting.

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In addition, parents could now pay their kids' school fees

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so school attendance doubled,

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and drop out rates went to almost zero,

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which is largely because the children
were no longer malnourished.

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Also crime rates went down by 42%

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'cause people no longer had to steal from each other.

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Unfortunately, though, the Namibian government
isn't planning to make this nationwide,

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even though the calculations show it would
only cost 3% of the GDP.

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However, there is a government somewhere
in the world where it might be possible.

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In Switzerland, there's still the old tradition
of direct democracy,

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and they hold regular referenda on major issues.

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To propose a referendum, you need 100 000 signatures

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which is what the proponents of Basic Income have done.

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The votes will be held in the next two or three years,

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and it will be an interesting experiment to see.

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Will the Swiss people become desensitized and stop working?

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The evidence so far is just probably not,

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but if the evidence so far has not been enough,

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there are plenty of more examples.

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[different open-source projects shown on screen]

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And in addition to all of these,

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various statistics show that

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between 30 to 50% of people 
volunteer at least once a month,

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and remember, all of this happens while they
still have day jobs.

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So, after all these examples, you might be wondering

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what is it then that motivates people?

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I'll give you four theories, which probably,
all have a lot of truth in it and they will overlap.

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First of all there's the Maslow theory mentioned before,

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then there's Deci and Ryan's Self-Determination theory

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which lists the elements as competence, 
autonomy and relatedness,

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a large emphasis is on autonomy,

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being able to choose what to do, how to do it,

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when to do it and who to do it with.

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They say that this also explains the previous experiments

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because getting someone to do something for a reward

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is essentially a form of control,

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it's trying to control the people's behavior

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by offering them something
that they really need.

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Often in workplaces,
the needs for autonomy are not covered,

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'cause you don't often have a choice

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of what sort of work you do
or how.

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However, in some more progressive work places,

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they do try to increase autonomy, for example,

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Google gives employees 20% of time 
to work on whatever they want,

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and from this you have things 
like Gmail and Google News.

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Also "Post-it notes" were developed by 
the stationery company 3M

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by letting the employees come up 
with whatever they wanted.

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Dan Pink slightly modified the three words

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and his version is autonomy, 
mastery and purpose.

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We'll come back to mastery and
purpose in the next few slides.

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Finally, Alfie Kohn in his book "Punished by Rewards",

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he uses 3 C's: 
collaboration, content and choice,

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to which you could possibly add challenge.

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He also quotes this fellow name Herzberg, who said:

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"If you want people to do a good job,


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"give them a good job to do", and

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"Idleness, indifference and irresponsibility

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are a perfectly valid responses to absurd work".

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[Screen: MOTIVATION
It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care]

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This is from the film "Office Space".


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Coming back to mastery.

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There's a theory by a Hungarian psychologist
with a ridiculously difficult name [screen: Csikszentmihalyi],

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which I'm not going to pronounce,


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he describes the state of optimal experience,
called "flow"

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which means that
you're completely immersed in your task,

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you almost loose sense of the passing of time,

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and you even forget if you're hungry or thirsty.

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Kinda of like the quote by Isaac Asimov:

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"Nothing interferes with my concentration. 


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"You could put an orgy in my office

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"and I wouldn't look up - well, maybe once".

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According to the theory,
the state of flow will be reached

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if the difficulty of the task
matches the person's skills.

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So if the task is just a little bit challenging,
as if it's too easy, then it will be boring;

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if it's too hard, it will produce more anxiety than anything.

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The study showed that this state is three times 
as likely to happen at work

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than in free time and also 
people are often happier in workflow

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than in leisure activities that 
do not produce a flow state

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such as watching TV,

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which creates a quite odd paradox

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because people still spend 
an awful lot of time watching TV

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and this brings up an important point 
that people often don't realize:

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how much they can enjoy work.

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And they think that work must be boring 
just because it's work,

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which is an attitude worth challenging.

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The importance of purpose is 
pretty much self-evident.

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If you have a purpose then you
have a reason to do something

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and then you must have motivation to do it.

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As we said about common sense before,

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it's still worth looking at it scientifically.

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Dan Ariely has tested this with experiments 
with Lego Bionicles and paper shredders.

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In the Bionicle experiment, participants
were instructed to put together Lego Bionicles,

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and they were paid
decreasing amounts of money to do it

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but everyone was paid the same.

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However, there were two conditions.

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In the first condition,
as soon as they built the Bionicle,

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the experimenter would take it apart again;

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In the second condition, the Bionicles would stay there

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and the participants could see all 
the previous Bionicoles they had built.

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In the second condition, they built on average
more Bionicles than in the other condition.

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Also, with paper shredders,
they did a task on paper

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and in the first condition, the experimenter
would acknowledge the work they had done,

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scan it in, and put in a pile.

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In the second condition, 
the experimenter ignored what they had done

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and just put it in a pile;

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and in a third condition,
they ran it through a paper shredder.

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As you can guess, in the third condition,

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the participants lost their motivation quite quickly,

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whereas if their work was acknowledged, 
then they had more motivation to do it.

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In fact, having to do an pointless job is so unpleasant

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that has actually been used as a punishment.


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First in the Greek myth of Sisyphus who, 
as a punishment, had to run a boulder up a hill,

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but as soon as he almost reached the top,

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the boulder come down again
and he had to start over.

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In the real world, it has been used in prisons 
where prisoners had to dig holes

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and fill them up again.

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That was before the institutions realized
that they could actually profit off the prisoners

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by making them do real work.

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So it's no wonder that too many people 
in today's jobs lack motivation

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and hate going to work every day,

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'cause there are so many jobs that 
simply don't seem to have a purpose,


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sometimes jobs we could even do without

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such as sandwich board advertisements.

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But often jobs are even created 
for the sake of creating jobs


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just because of the way the monetary system works

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...or malfunctions, more like.

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Sadly, though, sometimes the most purposeful jobs 
don't even pay you a single penny

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or if they do, then they pay you
much less than the other jobs.

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But on the bright side,
people do them anyway.

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So, what I would like to leave you with is a few ideas
on what to do with all of this info.

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First , obviously, you can use all these examples

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whenever someone claims that 
without money nothing would get done

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which is something we all probably hear a lot.

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Secondly, I would like you to ask yourself:
what motivates you?

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What is it that you do, in your free time,
that you feel has a purpose,

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that fulfills you, that challenges you?

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And if there isn't anything like that
right now, maybe you can think of something

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that you could be doing because often 
it's best to lead by example

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and you could also be
yet another contribution

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to the growing evidence that 
people do things

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just because of intrinsic motivation,

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not because of money.

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And finally you could ask your friends the same questions:


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What motivates them? Would they still be
working if a Resource-Based Economy happened

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or if they received a Basic Income?

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Or would they just sit on their couch all day?

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Well, after all,
even Kevin from the beginning video...

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(There should be a picture here...)

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(There we go.)

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Even Kevin from the beginning video is 
occasionally intrinsically motivated.

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[Screen: Kevin O'Leary playing guitar]

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Thank you.