Meme Weaving

“A hard-headed, evidence-based, dare I say LAWYERLY case for rethinking how we run businesses.”

Do hefty bonuses and stringent punishments produce better behavior? Dan Pink wants business to understand that in almost all cases, the traditional motivators certainly don’t — not according to the work of pioneering behavioral economists like Dan Ariely and Steven Levitt.

“There’s a mismatch between what science knows, and what business does,” says Pink, and it boils down to this: autonomy, mastery, and purpose motivate, while traditional motivators like bonuses and punishments tend to destroy both creativity and productivity. These results have been seen, repeated, and studied for 40+ years by science, while in pedagogy and business they have been completely ignored.

Why the decrease in creativity? According to the research Pink has assembled, having a reward in sight literally narrows our focus. This blinding of peripheral vision reduces the number of possibilities the mind can reach for.

Addendum: Dan Pink offered this clarification on the TEDtalks page under his video:

Dan Pink Aug 26 2009:It’s not the people. It’s the tasks. Some require what psychologists call “algorithmic” — that is, routine, rule-based thinking. Others require “heuristic” thinking — nonroutine, conceptual thinking. For one, If-then rewards work; for the other, they don’t. But, of course, people — all people — can do either kind of task.

Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, presents examples of cognitive illusions that help illustrate why humans make predictably irrational decisions.

Little-known fact! As Dan Ariely reveals in this lecture, he originally wanted to write a book about cooking and lifestyle. For a good chuckle, watch the video to find out what his first book title might have been.

“expensive painkillers work better than cheap [ones]“

…it’s because placebos are so amazing that medical science has a very hard time catching up to the quality of the body in healing itself.”