What makes us feel good about our work Dan Ariely

I want to talk a little bit today about

labor and work when we think about how

people work

the naive intuition we have is that

people are like rats in a maze that all

people care about is money

in the moment we give people money we

can direct them to work one way we can

direct them to work another way this is

why we give bonuses to bankers and paint

all kinds of ways and we really have

this incredibly simplistic view of why

people work and what the labor market

looks like at the same time if you think

about it there’s all kinds of strange

behaviors in the world around us think

about something like mountaineering and

mountain climbing if you read books of

people who climb mountains difficult

mountains do you think that those books

are full of moments of joy and happiness

no they’re full of misery in fact it’s

all about frostbites and difficulty to

walk and difficulty of breathing cold

challenging circumstances and if people

were just trying to be happy the moment

they would get to the top they would say

this was a terrible mistake I’ll never

do it again instead let me sit on the

beach somewhere drinking mojitos but

instead people go down and after they

recover they go up again and if you

think about mountain climbing is an

example it suggests all kinds of things

it suggests that we care about reaching

the end a peak it suggests that we care

about the fight about the challenge it

suggests that there’s all kinds of other

things that motivate us to work or

behave in all kinds of ways and for me

personally I started thinking about this

after a student came to visit me this

was a student that was one of my

students a few years earlier and he came

one day back to campus and he told me

the following story he said that for

more than two weeks he was working on a

PowerPoint presentation

he was working in a big bank and this

was in preparation for a merger and

acquisition and he was working very hard

on this presentation graphs tables

information he stayed late at night

every day and the day before it was due

he sent his PowerPoint presentation to

his boss and his boss wrote him back and

said nice presentation but the merger is

canceled and the guy was deeply

depressed now at the moment when he was

working he was actually quite happy

every night he was enjoying his work he

was staying late he was perfecting this

PowerPoint presentation but knowing that

nobody would ever watch that made him

quite depressed so I thought I think

about how do we experiment with this

idea of the fruits of our labor and to

start with we created a little

experiment in which we gave people Legos

and we asked them to build Legos and for

some people we gave them a Lego and we

said hey would you like to build this

Bionicle for three dollars we’ll pay you

three dollars for it and people said yes

and they build this Lego and when they

finished we took it we put it under the

table and we said would you like to

build another one this time for 270 if

they said yes we gave them another one

and when they finished we asked them do

you want to build another one for 240

210 and so on until at some point people

said no more it’s not worth it for me

this was what we called the meaningful

condition people build one Bionicle

after another after they finished every

one of them we put them under the table

and we told them that at the end of the

experiment we will take all these

Bionicles we will unassembled them we

will put them back in the boxes and we

will use it for the next participant

there was another condition this other

condition was inspired by David my

student and this other condition

recalled the sisyphic condition and if

you remember the story about Sisyphus

Sisyphus was punished by the gods to put

this to push the same rock

up a hill and when he almost got to the

end the rock will roll over and he would

have to start again and you can think

about this is the essence of doing

futile work you can imagine it if he

pushed the rock on different hills at

least it would have some sense of

progress also if you look at a prison

movies sometimes the way that the guards

torture the prisoners is to get them to

dig a hole and when the prisoners finish

they ask them to fill the hole back up

and then dig again there’s something

about this cyclical version of doing

something over and over and over this

seems to be particularly motivating so

in the second condition of this

experiment that’s exactly what we did we

asked people would you like to build one

Bionicle for three dollars and if they

said yes they build it and then we ask

them do you want to build another one

for 270 and if they said yes we gave

them a new one and as they were building

it we took apart the one that they just

finished and when they finish that we

said would you like to build another one

this time for 30 cents less and if they

said yes we gave him the one that they

built and we broke so this was an

endless cycle of them building and we’re

destroying in front of their eyes now

what happens when you compare these two

conditions the first thing that happened

was that people build many more

Bionicles they build 11 versus seven in

the meaningful condition versus the

Sisyphus condition and by the way we

should point out that this was not big

meaning people were not curing cancer or

building bridges people were building

Bionicles for a few a few cents and not

only that everybody knew that the

Bionicles will be destroyed sooner quite

soon right so there was not a real

opportunity for big meaning but even the

small meaning made a difference now we

had another version of this experiment

in this other version of the experiment

we didn’t put people in this situation

we just described to them the situation

much I’m describing to you now and we

asked them to predict what the result

would be what happened people predicted

the right direction but not the right

magnitude people who were just given the

description of the experiment

selecting the meaningful condition

people would probably build one more

Bionicle so people understand that

meaning is important they just

understand the magnitude of the

importance they extend to which it’s

important there was one other piece of

data we looked at if you think about it

there are some people who love Legos and

some people who don’t and you would

speculate that the people who love Lego

will build more Legos even for less

money because after all they get more

internal joy from it and the people who

love Legos less will build less logos

because the enjoyment that they derive

from it is lower and that’s actually

what we found in the meaningful

condition there was a very nice

correlation between love of Lego and the

amount of Legos people built what

happens the sisyphic condition in that

condition the correlation was zero there

was no relationship between the love of

Lego and how much people built which

suggests to me that with this

manipulation of breaking things in front

of people eyes we basically crushed any

joy that they could get out of this

activity we basically eliminated that

soon after I finished running this

experiment I went to talk to a big

software company in Seattle can’t tell

you who they were but there were big

companies in Seattle and this was a

group within the software company that

was put in a different building and they

asked them to innovate and create the

next big product for this company and a

week before I showed up the CEO of this

big software company went to that group

200 engineers and cancelled the project

and I stood there in front of 200 of the

most depressed people I’ve ever talked

to and I described to them some of these

Lego experiments and they said they have

felt like they have just been through

this experiment and I asked them I said

how many of you now show to work later

than you used to and everybody raised

their hand I said how many of you could

now go home earlier than you used to and

everybody raised their hand I asked him

how many of you now add not so kosher

thing to your expense reports and they

didn’t really raise their hand but he

took me out to dinner and showed me what

they could do with the expense reports

and then I asked them I said what could

you see or have done to make you not as

depressed and they came up with all

kinds of ideas they said the CEO could

have asked him to present to the whole

company about the journey over the last

two years and why they decided to do he

could have asked him to think about

which aspect of their technology could

fit with other parts of the organization

he could have asked him to build some

prototype some next-generation prototype

and see how they would work but the

thing is that any one of those would

require some effort and motivation and I

think the CEO basically did not

understand the importance of meaning if

the CEO just like our participants

thought that the essence of meaning is

unimportant then he would care and he

would tell well the moment you I

directed you in this way and I’m now I’m

standing you in this way

everything would be okay but if you

understood how important meaning is then

you would figure out that it’s actually

important to spend some time energy and

effort and getting people to care more

about what they’re doing the next

experiment was slightly different

we took a sheet of paper with random

letters and we asked people to find

pairs of letters that were identical

next to each other that was the task and

people did the first sheet and then we

asked them if they want to do the next

sheet for a little bit less money in the

next sheet for a little bit less money

and so on and so forth

and we had three conditions in the first

condition people wrote the name on the

sheet found all the pairs of letters

gave it to the experimenter the

experimenter would look at it scan it

from top to bottom say aha and put it on

the pile next to them in the second

condition people did not write their

name on it the experiment looked at it

took the sheet of paper did not look at

it did not scan it and simply put it on

the pile of pages right so you take a

piece you just put it on the side in a

third condition the experimenter got the

sheet of paper and directly put it into

a shredder what happened in those three

conditions in this plot I’m showing you

it’s what pay rates people stopped so

low numbers means that people worked

harder they work so much long

in the acknowledged condition people

worked all the way down to 15 cents at

15 cents per page they basically stopped

this effort in the shredder condition it

was twice as much 30 cents per sheet and

this is basically the results we had

before you shred people’s efforts output

you get them not to be as happy with

what they’re doing but I should point by

the way that in the shredder condition

people could have cheated they could

have done not so good work because they

realized that people were just shredding

it so maybe the first sheet you would do

a good work but then you see nobody is

really testing it so you would do more

and more and more so in fact in the

shredder condition people could have

submitted more work and get more money

and put less effort into it

but what about the ignored condition

would the ignored condition be more like

the acknowledged or more like the

shredder or somewhere in the middle it

turns out it was almost like the

shredder now this good news and bad news

here the bad news is that ignoring the

performance of people is almost as bad

as shredding the referent in front of

their eyes ignoring get you a hallway

are out there the good news is that by

simply looking at something that

somebody is done scanning it and say AHA

that seems to be quite sufficient to

dramatically improve people’s

motivations so the good news is that

adding motivation doesn’t seem to be so

difficult the bad news is that

eliminating motivation seem to be

incredibly easy and if we don’t think

about it carefully

we might overdo it so this is all in

terms of kind of negative motivation or

eliminating negative motivation the next

part I want to show you something about

the positive motivation so there is a

store in the u.s. called the akia and a

Kia is a store with kind of okay

furniture that takes a long time to

assemble and I don’t know about you but

every time I assemble one of those it

takes me much longer it’s much more

effortful it’s much more confusing I put

things in the wrong way I can’t say I

enjoy those pieces

I can t say enjoy the process but when I

finish it I seem to like those are clear

pieces of furniture more than I like

other ones and there’s an old story

about cake mixes so when they started

cake mixes in the 40s they would take

this powder and they would put it in a

box and they would ask housewives to

basically pour it in stir some water in

it mix it put it in the oven and voila

you had cake but it turns out they were

very unpopular people did not want them

and they thought about all kinds of

reasons for that maybe the taste was not

good now the taste was great what they

figured out was that there was not

enough effort involved it was so easy

that nobody could serve cake to their

guests and say here is my cake no no it

was somebody else’s cake it’s as if you

bought it in the store we didn’t really

feel like your own so what did they do

they took the eggs and the milk out of

the powder now you had to break the eggs

and add them you had to measure the milk

and edit mixing it now it was your cake

now everything was fine

now I think a little bit like the key

effect by getting people to work harder

they actually got them to love what

they’re doing to a higher degree so how

do we look at this question

experimentally we ask people to build

some origami we gave them instructions

to how to create origami and we gave

them a sheet of paper and these were all

novices and they built something that

was really quite ugly

nothing like a frog or a crane but then

we told them we said look this origami

really belongs to us you worked for us

but I’ll tell you what we’ll sell it to

you how much do you want to pay for it

and we measured how much they were

willing to pay for it and we had two

types of people we had the people who

build it and we had the people who did

not build it and just looked at it as

external observers and what we found

were the builders thought that these

were beautiful pieces of origami and

they were willing to pay for them five

times more than the people who just

evaluated them externally now you could

say if you were a builder do you think

that oh I love this origami but I know

that nobody else would love it

or do you think I love this origami and

everybody else would love it as well

which one of those two is correct turns

out the builders not only love the

origami more they thought that everybody

will see the world in their view they

thought everybody else would love it

more as well in the next version we try

to do the ickey effect we try to make it

more difficult so for some people we

gave the same task for some people we

made it harder by hiding the

instructions at the top of the sheet we

had little diagrams of how do you fold

origami for some people we just

eliminated that so now this was tougher

what happened well in an objective way

the origami now was uglier was more

difficult now when we looked at the easy

origami we saw the same thing builder

loved it more evaluators loved it less

when you looked at the hard instructions

the effect was larger why because now

the builders loved it even more

they put all this extra effort into it

and evaluators they loved it even less

because in reality it was even uglier

than the first version of course this

tells you about something about how we

evaluate things now think about kids

imagine I asked you how much would you

sell your kids for write your memories

and Association and so most people would

say for a lot a lot of money on good

days but imagine this was slightly

different imagine you did not have your

kids and one day you went to the park

and you played you met some kids and

they were just like your kids and you

played with in for a few hours and when

you’re about to leave the parent said

hey babe by the way just before you

leave if you’re interested you’re for

sale how much would you pay for them now

most people say not that much now and

this is because our kids are so valuable

not just because of who they are but

because of us because they are so

connected to us and because of the time

and connection and by the way if you

think that akia instructions are not

good think about the instructions that

come with kids those are really tough by

the way these are these are my kids

which of course are wonderful and so on

which counts to tell you one more thing

which is much like our builders when

they look at the creature of their

creation we don’t see that other people

don’t see things our way let me say one

last comment if you think about Adam

Smith versus Karl Marx anam Smith had

the very important notion of efficiency

he gave an example of a pin Factory he

said pins have 12 different steps and if

one person does all 12 steps production

is very low but if you get one person to

do step one and one person to do step

two and step three and so on

production can increase tremendously and

indeed this is a great example and the

reason for the Industrial Revolution and

the efficiency Karl Marx on the other

hand said that the alienation of Labor

is incredibly important

and how people think about the

connection to what they’re doing and if

you make all 12 steps you care about the

pin but if you make one step every time

maybe you don’t care as much and I think

that in the Industrial Revolution

Adam Smith was more correct than Karl

Marx but the reality that we’ve switched

and now in the knowledge economy and you

can ask yourself what happens in the

knowledge economy is is efficiency still

more important and meaning I think the

answer is no I think that as we move to

situation in which people have to decide

on their own about how much effort

attention caring how connected they feel

to it are they thinking about labor on

the way to work and in the shower and so

on all of a sudden mark has more things

to say to us so when we think about

labor we usually think about motivation

and payment is the same thing but the

reality is that you should probably add

all kinds of things to it meaning

creation challenges ownership identity

pride etc and the good news is that if

we added all of those components and

thought about them how do we create our

own meaning pride motivation and how do

we do it for in our workplace and for

the employees I think we could get

people to both be more productive and

happier and thank you very much

[Applause]