Z-Day 2014 London - Melissa Saviste - Rewards and Motivation

Lost Hobbit

Z-Day London 2014
The Zeitgeist Movement

On Rewards and Motivation
Zeitgeist Day 2014

[inaudible conversation]

Melissa Saviste

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

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

of the world's 85 richest people

is equal to the 3.5 billion
poorest people.

(Kevin O’Leary) It’s fantastic.

And this is a great thing
because it inspires everybody,

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

“I wanna become one of those people,

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

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

[awkward silence]

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

(Lang) Really?

(O’Leary) Yes, really.

(Lang) So, somebody living on...

(O'Leary) I celebrate capitalism.

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

and saying “I’m gonna be Bill Gates”?

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

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

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

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

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

That's never gonna happen, ok?

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

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

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

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

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

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

...in extreme abject poverty.

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

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

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

That was Kevin O'Leary,
a Canadian businessman

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

Those were his ideas on human motivation.

He claims that
money is what motivates people

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

which unfortunately seems to be
quite a common worldview today.

But is that true?

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

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

sometimes turns out to be incorrect.

First, some psychological experiments

which actually say that
rewards can reduce already existing motivation.

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

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

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

and he noticed that, in their free time

they would happily play with the puzzle cubes

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

they would work on the puzzles less,

they suddenly had less motivation
to work on puzzles.

Another similar experiment
was done with children

who had an intrinsic interest in drawing.

This means that they liked to draw
for its own sake

just for the fun of it.

Not because of any external motivation.

Then, some of the children
were given a reward certificate

on the condition of
continuing to draw

and afterwards,
they showed less interest in drawing

than those who never got any rewards

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

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

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

that makes people think

that the task is not worth doing
without the rewards.

So, in other words,

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

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

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

And obviously offering rewards
should make people try harder

and get better results.

So, Sam Glucksberg tested this
with a simple puzzle.

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

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

Can you think of how you would do this?

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

if they were among the quickest
to solve the problem.

This is a simplified version of the puzzle

that was given to another group of participants.

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

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

The results showed that for the first task,

which is more difficult and requires some creative thinking,

performance suffers if rewards are involved.

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

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

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

in the simple one,

when they were offered rewards,

because the task was really easy.

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

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

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

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

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

such as building and maintaining those robots.

These are the sort of tasks that

Glucksberg showed are hindered
by the promise of rewards.

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

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

where they could offer the participants money

that to them was worth a year's salary.

They found that performance suffered most

when they were offered the biggest amount.

So, perhaps, when all you can think about is

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

you might not get much actual work done.

One thing that all these experiments had in common

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

was offered on condition
of the participant doing something

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

this is one condition where performance does suffer.

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

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

well and unconditionally,

so the the issue of money would be off the table

and they could focus on their work.

The same idea could be applied to whole countries,

which is what the proponents of Basic Income are suggesting.

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

then people would still continue to work.

They would work on what they love doing

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

while being stuck in a non-rewarding job,

just for the sake of being alive,

more often hinders their ability to do so.

This is similar to Maslow's Hierarchy of
Needs idea

that there are some basic needs

but once they're taken care of

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

they can focus on higher needs

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

But if there's uncertainty about the future,

then that prevents the individuals from achieving
their true potential.

On top of this pyramid of needs is
self-actualization

which essentially means contributing
something useful and lasting to society

which is quite a different view

from those who think that
people only want to work

when externally incentivized.

Back to the idea of Basic Income.

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

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

Here is an early example from Canada.

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

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

This pilot project was run from 1974 to '79,

but, unfortunately, it stopped due to the recession,

and all the data from the project was archived

because the government thought it had failed.

They were finally discovered and analyzed in 2009

and the results were quite interesting.

They showed minimal effects on employment.

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

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

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

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

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

which actually saves the country some money.

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

in the years 2008-09.

The results were very dramatic.

When at the start of the experiment,

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

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

They could have stopped working at all,

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

because people now had money
to start their own businesses

and they had money to buy from those businesses.

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

rather than increasing dependency on the free money

which the critics were predicting.

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

so school attendance doubled,

and drop out rates went to almost zero,

which is largely because the children
were no longer malnourished.

Also crime rates went down by 42%

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

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

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

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

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

and they hold regular referenda on major issues.

To propose a referendum, you need 100 000 signatures

which is what the proponents of Basic Income have done.

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

and it will be an interesting experiment to see.

Will the Swiss people become desensitized and stop working?

The evidence so far is just probably not,

but if the evidence so far has not been enough,

there are plenty of more examples.

[different open-source projects shown on screen]

And in addition to all of these,

various statistics show that

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

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

So, after all these examples, you might be wondering

what is it then that motivates people?

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

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

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

which lists the elements as competence,
autonomy and relatedness,

a large emphasis is on autonomy,

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

when to do it and who to do it with.

They say that this also explains the previous experiments

because getting someone to do something for a reward

is essentially a form of control,

it's trying to control the people's behavior

by offering them something
that they really need.

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

'cause you don't often have a choice

of what sort of work you do
or how.

However, in some more progressive work places,

they do try to increase autonomy, for example,

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

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

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

by letting the employees come up
with whatever they wanted.

Dan Pink slightly modified the three words

and his version is autonomy,
mastery and purpose.

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

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

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

to which you could possibly add challenge.

He also quotes this fellow name Herzberg, who said:

"If you want people to do a good job,

"give them a good job to do", and

"Idleness, indifference and irresponsibility

are a perfectly valid responses to absurd work".

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

This is from the film "Office Space".

Coming back to mastery.

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

which I'm not going to pronounce,

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

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

you almost loose sense of the passing of time,

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

Kinda of like the quote by Isaac Asimov:

"Nothing interferes with my concentration.

"You could put an orgy in my office

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

than in leisure activities that
do not produce a flow state

such as watching TV,

which creates a quite odd paradox

because people still spend
an awful lot of time watching TV

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

how much they can enjoy work.

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

which is an attitude worth challenging.

The importance of purpose is
pretty much self-evident.

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

and then you must have motivation to do it.

As we said about common sense before,

it's still worth looking at it scientifically.

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

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

and they were paid
decreasing amounts of money to do it

but everyone was paid the same.

However, there were two conditions.

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

the experimenter would take it apart again;

In the second condition, the Bionicles would stay there

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

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

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

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

scan it in, and put in a pile.

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

and just put it in a pile;

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

As you can guess, in the third condition,

the participants lost their motivation quite quickly,

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

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

that has actually been used as a punishment.

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

but as soon as he almost reached the top,

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

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

and fill them up again.

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

by making them do real work.

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

and hate going to work every day,

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

sometimes jobs we could even do without

such as sandwich board advertisements.

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

just because of the way the monetary system works

...or malfunctions, more like.

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

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

But on the bright side,
people do them anyway.

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

First , obviously, you can use all these examples

whenever someone claims that
without money nothing would get done

which is something we all probably hear a lot.

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

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

that fulfills you, that challenges you?

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

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

and you could also be
yet another contribution

to the growing evidence that
people do things

just because of intrinsic motivation,

not because of money.

And finally you could ask your friends the same questions:

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

or if they received a Basic Income?

Or would they just sit on their couch all day?

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

(There should be a picture here...)

(There we go.)

Even Kevin from the beginning video is
occasionally intrinsically motivated.

[Screen: Kevin O'Leary playing guitar]

Thank you.