Promises
of better pay gives better performance even for jobs that aren’t eligible for
the higher rate. At least that’s the story that some social psychologists from
the Netherlands have for us. We’d better keep this information out of the hands
of the Business Schools or we’ll be seeing even more jam tomorrow, but not
today, than we have at present.
The
Utrechies who did this study were Zedelius et
al and their paper is in the Public Library of Science this week (1). They bribed 91 undergraduates with promises of big bucks if they listened to tones
in one ear or the other and pressed a button to say if it was on the right or
left. Speed and accuracy was the way to rewards, but only every other tone was
eligible for a reward.
Everywhere
speed on the line was of the essence. The reward value of the task was flashed
briefly – it could be a 1-cent job or a 50-cent job. Then a brief tone was
played and there was a short time to press a right or left button to indicate
which ear it was played in. This was then repeated, but only this second tone
counted for payment of a job well done. If the button press was wrong or it was
pressed to late, there was no payout.
Results,
results are all that matter, of course. And there was a trade off between speedy
button pressing and thinking time to ensure accuracy, but remember too much
thinking would result in time out and nothing to take home to feed the kids.
Well,
bigger promises improved performance. The participants were geared up and
concentrating. As a result they performed better with the non-scoring
intermediate task as well as the one that would deliver a 50-cent payout. They
relaxed and became shirkers not workers for a 1-cent job.
At
1 cent a time there’s not a lot of trickling down going on. They would have
sore thumbs before they earned one beer.
