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]