{"id":651651,"date":"2013-04-10T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T16:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ted.com\/?p=74599"},"modified":"2013-04-10T11:41:19","modified_gmt":"2013-04-10T15:41:19","slug":"what-motivates-us-at-work-7-fascinating-studies-that-give-insights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/651651","title":{"rendered":"What motivates us at work? 7 fascinating studies that give insights"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dan-Ariely\"\u201cWhen we think about how people work, the na\u00efve intuition we have is that people are like rats in a maze,\u201d says behavioral economist Dan Ariely in today\u2019s talk<\/a>, given at TEDxRiodelaPlata<\/a>. \u201cWe really have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work and what the labor market looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DanDan Ariely: What makes us feel good about our work?<\/span><\/a>When you look carefully at the way people work, he says, you find out there\u2019s a lot more at play\u2014and a lot more at stake\u2014than money. In his talk, Ariely provides evidence that we are also driven by meaningful work, by others\u2019 acknowledgement and by the amount of effort we\u2019ve put in: the harder the task is, the prouder we are.<\/p>\n

During the Industrial Revolution, Ariely points out, Adam Smith\u2019s efficiency-oriented, assembly-line approach made sense. But it doesn\u2019t work as well in today\u2019s knowledge economy. Instead, Ariely upholds Karl Marx\u2019s concept that we care much more about a product if we\u2019ve participated from start to finish rather than producing a single part over and over. In other words, in the knowledge economy, efficiency is no longer more important than meaning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we think about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing, but the reality is that we should probably add all kinds of things to it: meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.,\u201d Ariely explains.<\/p>\n

To hear more on Ariely\u2019s thoughts about what makes people more productive \u2013 and happier \u2013 at work, watch this fascinating talk<\/a>. Below, a look at some of Ariely\u2019s studies, as well as a few from other researchers, with interesting implications for what makes us feel good about our work.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Seeing the fruits of our labor may make us more productive
    \n.<\/span>
    \n<\/b>The Study:<\/b> In a study conducted at Harvard University, Ariely asked participants to build characters from Lego\u2019s\u00a0    Bionicles<\/a> series. In both conditions, participants were paid decreasing amounts for each subsequent Bionicle: $3 for the first one, $2.70 for the next one, and so on. But while one group\u2019s creations were stored under the table, to be disassembled at the end of the experiment, the other group\u2019s Bionicles were disassembled as soon as they\u2019d been built. \u201cThis was an endless cycle of them building and we destroying in front of their eyes,\u201d Ariely says.
    \n.<\/span>
    \nThe Results: <\/b>The first group made 11 Bionicles, on average, while the second group made only seven before they quit.
    \n.<\/span>
    \nThe Upshot: <\/b>Even though there wasn\u2019t huge meaning at stake, and even though the first group knew their work would be destroyed at the end of the experiment, seeing the results of their labor for even a short time was enough to dramatically improve performance.
    \n.<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. The less appreciated we feel our work is, the more money we want to do it
    \n<\/b>.<\/span>
    \nThe Study:<\/b> Ariely gave study participants — students at MIT — a piece of paper filled with random letters, and asked them to find pairs of identical letters. Each round, they were offered less money than the previous round. People in the first group wrote their names on their sheets and handed them to the experimenter, who looked it over and said \u201cUh huh\u201d before putting it in a pile. People in the second group didn\u2019t write down their names, and the experimenter put their sheets in a pile without looking at them. People in the third group had their work shredded immediately upon completion.
    \n.<\/span>
    \nThe Results:<\/b> People whose work was shredded needed twice as much money as those whose work was acknowledged in order to keep doing the task. People in the second group, whose work was saved but ignored, needed almost as much money as people whose work was shredded.
    \n.<\/span>
    \nThe Upshot:<\/b> \u201cIgnoring the performance of people is almost as bad as shredding their effort before their eyes,\u201d Ariely says. \u201cThe good news is that adding motivation doesn\u2019t seem to be so difficult. The bad news is that eliminating motivation seems to be incredibly easy, and if we don\u2019t think about it carefully, we might overdo it.\u201d
    \n.<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. The harder a project is, the prouder we feel of it
    \n.<\/span>
    \n<\/b>The Study: <\/b>In another study, Ariely gave origami novices paper and instructions to build a (pretty ugly) form. Those who did the origami project, as well as bystanders, were asked at the end how much they\u2019d pay for the product. In a second trial, Ariely hid the instructions from some participants, resulting in a harder process — and an uglier product.
    \n.<\/span>
    \nThe Results: <\/b>In the first experiment, the builders paid five times as much as those who just evaluated the product. In the second experiment, the lack of instructions exaggerated this difference: builders valued the ugly-but-difficult products even more highly than the easier, prettier ones, while observers valued them even less.
    \n.<\/span>
    \nThe Upshot: <\/b>Our valuation of our own work is directly tied to the effort we\u2019ve expended. (Plus, we erroneously think that other people will ascribe the same value to our own work as we do.)
    \n.<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Knowing that our work helps others may increase our unconscious motivation
    \n.<\/span>
    \n<\/b>The Study:<\/b> As     described<\/a> in a recent New York Times Magazine<\/i> profile, psychologist Adam Grant led a study at a University of Michigan fundraising call center in which\u00a0 student who had benefited from the center\u2019s scholarship fundraising efforts spoke to the callers for 10 minutes.
    \n.<\/span>
    \nThe Results: <\/b>A month later, the callers were spending 142 percent more time on the phone than before, and revenues had increased by 171 percent, according to the Times<\/i>. But the callers denied the scholarship students\u2019 visit had impacted them.
    \n.<\/span>
    \nThe Upshot:<\/b> \u201cIt was almost as if the good feelings had bypassed the callers\u2019 conscious cognitive processes and gone straight to a more subconscious source of motivation,\u201d the Times <\/i>reports. \u201cThey were more driven to succeed, even if they could not pinpoint the trigger for that drive.\u201d
    \n.<\/span><\/li>\n
  5. The promise of helping others makes us more likely to follow rules
    \n.<\/span>
    \n<\/b>The Study: <\/b>Grant ran another study (also described in the Times<\/i> profile) in which he put up signs at a hospital\u2019s hand-washing stations, reading either \u201cHand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases\u201d or \u201cHand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases.\u201d
    \n.<\/span>
    \nThe Results: <\/b>Doctors and nurses used 45 percent more soap or hand sanitizer in the stations with signs that mentioned patients.
    \n.<\/span>
    \nThe Upshot: <\/b>Helping others through what\u2019s called \u201cprosocial behavior\u201d motivates us.
    \n.<\/span><\/li>\n
  6. Positive reinforcement about our abilities may increase performance
    \n.<\/span>
    \n<\/b>The Study: <\/b>Undergraduates at Harvard University     gave speeches and did mock interviews<\/a> with experimenters who were either nodding and smiling or shaking their heads, furrowing their eyebrows, and crossing their arms.
    \n.<\/span>
    \nThe Results: <\/b>The participants in the first group later answered a series of numerical questions more accurately than those in the second group.
    \n.<\/span>
    \nThe Upshot: <\/b>Stressful situations can <\/i>be manageable\u2014it all depends on how we feel. We find ourselves in a \u201cchallenge state\u201d when we think we can handle the task (as the first group did); when we\u2019re in a \u201cthreat state,\u201d on the other hand, the difficulty of the task is overwhelming, and we become discouraged. We\u2019re more motivated and perform better in a challenge state, when we have confidence in our abilities.
    \n.<\/span><\/li>\n
  7. Images that trigger positive emotions may actually help us focus
    \n.<\/span>
    \n<\/b>The Study: <\/b>Researchers at Hiroshima University     had university students<\/a> perform a dexterity task before and after looking at pictures of either baby or adult animals.
    \n.<\/span>
    \nThe Results: <\/b>Performance improved in both cases, but more so (10 percent improvement!) when participants looked at the cute pictures of puppies and kittens.
    \n.<\/span>
    \nThe Upshot: <\/b>The researchers suggest that \u201cthe cuteness-triggered positive emotion\u201d helps us narrow our focus, upping our performance on a task that requires close attention. Yes, this study may just validate your baby panda obsession.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    What have you noticed makes you work harder \u2013 and better?<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u201cWhen we think about how people work, the na\u00efve intuition we have is that people are like rats in a maze,\u201d says behavioral economist Dan Ariely in today\u2019s talk, given at TEDxRiodelaPlata. \u201cWe really have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work and what the labor market looks like.\u201d Dan Ariely: What makes us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7342,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-651651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7342"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}