A long history of research has demonstrated that rewards can decrease motivation and attitudes (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959), alter self-perception (Bem, 1965), increase overjustification (Lepper et al., 1973), and turn feelings of competence into feelings of being controlled (Deci & Ryan, 1985). The debate over these findings (Eisenberger & Cameron, 1996; Ryan & Deci, 2000) has generally shifted to the question of what specific circumstances give rise to these counterintuitive effects.
Their proposal is that there are two kinds of markets: monetary markets and social markets. Different kinds of goods and services may be associated with each market, but more to the point, the form of compensation offered differs as well. When you offer to pay someone, you signal that you want to situate the transaction in the economic modality. If you offer to pay friends for helping you move apartments, they may get royally and truly offended! However, stocking your new fridge full of beer and ordering in pizzas will be gladly accepted - unless you mention the price! If you do that, you are trying to put a money-value on the asset of having friends who will help you. You will, in a sense, be rejecting them from the social market, driven by reciprocal altruism, esteem, social standing/reputation, social network position, and all the rest.
They continue:
[This h]ypothesis...1 also predicts a distinction between exchanges in which payment is not mentioned (‘‘not paying at all’’) and those in which individuals are told explicitly that they will not be paid (‘‘paying nothing’’). Whereas not mentioning payment is likely to cause individuals to consider themselves to be in a social-market relationship, telling individuals explicitly that they are not getting paid is likely to cause them to consider themselves to be in a money-market relationship. Our framework predicts that not paying at all in the context of social market relationships can create higher levels of incentives than low levels of compensation in the context of money-market relationships, a prediction that is shared by many other accounts (Bem, 1965; Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999; Festinger, 1957; Gneezy & Rustichini, 2000b; Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973).
This means, they point out, that "Effort in exchange for no payment can be higher than effort in exchange for low monetary payment." Strictly economic rationality would not predict this, but strictly economic rationality has been slow to pick up on the impact of social exchange behavior on economic exchange behavior. I remember when I was in Fiji for awhile, and in some of the marketplaces where native Fijian businesses were predominant, there were signs all over the place telling vendors not to sell good on verbal credit! (I.e., a vague promise to repay the vendor later, somehow.) In the traditional Fijian village economy, the social exchange market dominates material exchange, and so a lot of the culture gives expression to social exchange values. In a modern cash economy, however, people had to learn to insist that business be business, and that payment be made.
I think some of us are biologically more sensitive to different kinds of signals of gain or loss. I for one basically don't notice money, don't think of it, would rather not think of it, etc. I care what my salary is, but mainly as an indicator of social status, and of how valuable my employer considers me as a resource. I love doing a good job, though. I love the recognition that comes from it, but I would far rather professionalize my work. I prefer to make my salary a background indicator of my social standing and status, and to then ignore it. When I do good work, I want it to be for intrinsic reasons - because I value good work, and because I have a will to constantly improve things, etc. I want to present my work to others, to discuss it with them, to gain recognition and to thereby gain social sanction to continue my apparently valuable work. However, getting paid for every product I deliver is profoundly de-motivating. I'd almost rather not work at all.
Weird but true.
1 comment:
Stephen Downes - the Canadian online education expert who authors "Stephen's Web" and the "OLDaily" newsletter, has written a comment on his own blog about a blog entry I wrote about this same subject - at Educause Connect.
He had an interesting point to make. He noted that besides social and economic markets, there are also "personal" markets - of people who do things just because they need to be done.
I suggested that the "market" concept is social in nature, emphasizing exchanges between people. A better economic metaphor for personal expenditures of time and energy is the "budget" concept. We are willing to budget time, effort and resources for things that have intrinsic value for us even if these costs are not compensated by extrinsic gain of any kind.
Some of us are more willing to do this than others, of course. Some of us strongly prefer to spend our energies on things that have high intrinsic value and no immediate extrinsic value, and we resent the various necessities of work which force us to do the opposite sorts of tasks - ones with low intrinsic value for us, but high extrinsic value in social or economic exchanges.
I agreed with Stephen that this is different from social or economic exchange, so he did rightly point out a different aspect of our human economy. Intrinsically motivated tasks are very important for our personal time/energy budgeting, but in terms of exchange value they represents cost instead of gain. Or perhaps we may hope for some kind of vague, future social good to come out of it all - without worrying too much in the present about what form that future benefit will take. In that case our short-term costs dovetail with some long-term, uncertain social market potential, but that need not be what really motivates us to do them.
It was certainly interesting to develop this idea further with somebody else!
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