On the Social Psychology of Agency Relationships: Lay Theories of Motivation Overemphasize Extrinsic Incentives

The Interactive Effect of Incentive Salience and Prosocial Motivation on Prosocial Behavior

Charities often use incentives to increase prosocial action. However, charities sometimes downplay these incentives in their messaging (pilot study), possibly to avoid demotivating donors. We challenge this strategy, examining whether increasing the salience of incentives for prosocial action can in fact motivate charitable behavior. Three controlled experiments (N = 2,203 adults) and a field study with an alumni-donation campaign (N = 22,468 adults) found that more (vs. less) salient incentives are more effective at increasing prosocial behavior when prosocial motivation is low (vs. high). This is because more (vs. less) salient incentives increase relative consideration of self-interest (vs. other-regarding) benefits, which is a stronger driver of behavior at low (vs. high) levels of prosocial motivation. By identifying that prosocial motivation moderates the effect of incentive salience on charitable behavior, and by detailing the underlying mechanism, we advance theory and practice on incentive salience, motivation, and charitable giving.

The motivating effect of monetary over psychological incentives is stronger in WEIRD cultures

Motivating effortful behaviour is a problem employers, governments and nonprofits face globally. However, most studies on motivation are done in Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) cultures. We compared how hard people in six countries worked in response to monetary incentives versus psychological motivators, such as competing with or helping others. The advantage money had over psychological interventions was larger in the United States and the United Kingdom than in China, India, Mexico and South Africa (N = 8,133). In our last study, we randomly assigned cultural frames through language in bilingual Facebook users in India (N = 2,065). Money increased effort over a psychological treatment by 27% in Hindi and 52% in English. These findings contradict the standard economic intuition that people from poorer countries should be more driven by money. Instead, they suggest that the market mentality of exchanging time and effort for material benefits is most prominent in WEIRD cultures.

Metacognition of curiosity: People underestimate the seductive lure of non-instrumental information

Curiosity - the desire to seek information - is fundamental for learning and performance. Studies on curiosity have shown that people are intrinsically motivated to seek information even if it does not bring an immediate tangible benefit (i.e., non-instrumental information), but little is known as to whether people have the metacognitive capability to accurately monitor their motivation for seeking information. We examined whether people can accurately predict their own non-instrumental information-seeking behavior. Across six experiments (Experiments 1A-1E and 2, total N = 579), participants predicted that they would engage in information-seeking behavior less frequently than they actually did, suggesting that people tend to underestimate the motivational lure of curiosity. Overall, there was no consistent statistical evidence that this underestimation was altered by contextual factors (e.g., the cost to seek information). These results were consistent with the theoretical account that it is difficult for people to make sense of the internally rewarding value of information in advance.

People underestimate their capability to motivate themselves without performance-based extrinsic incentives

Research has shown that we are endowed with a remarkable capacity to motivate ourselves in the absence of extrinsic incentives (i.e. intrinsic motivation). However, little research has been conducted to investigate whether we accurately appreciate the power of intrinsic motivation. The current research aimed to examine the metacognitive accuracy of the extent to which people can motivate themselves without performance-based extrinsic incentives. Participants were presented with a relatively long and repetitive task without extrinsic incentives, and before doing the task, they were asked to predict their motivation on completion of the task. Across seven experiments using a variety of tasks with different populations from different countries, participants were consistently engaged in the task more actively than they predicted. When participants were provided with performance-based monetary rewards, however, this bias was diminished. These results indicate that we tend to underappreciate our capability to sustain our motivation without extrinsic incentives.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11031-022-09996-5.

Talking with strangers is surprisingly informative

A meaningful amount of people's knowledge comes from their conversations with others. The amount people expect to learn predicts their interest in having a conversation (pretests 1 and 2), suggesting that the presumed information value of conversations guides decisions of whom to talk with. The results of seven experiments, however, suggest that people may systematically underestimate the informational benefit of conversation, creating a barrier to talking with-and hence learning from-others in daily life. Participants who were asked to talk with another person expected to learn significantly less from the conversation than they actually reported learning afterward, regardless of whether they had conversation prompts and whether they had the goal to learn (experiments 1 and 2). Undervaluing conversation does not stem from having systematically poor opinions of how much others know (experiment 3) but is instead related to the inherent uncertainty involved in conversation itself. Consequently, people underestimate learning to a lesser extent when uncertainty is reduced, as in a nonsocial context (surfing the web, experiment 4); when talking to an acquainted conversation partner (experiment 5); and after knowing the content of the conversation (experiment 6). Underestimating learning in conversation is distinct from underestimating other positive qualities in conversation, such as enjoyment (experiment 7). Misunderstanding how much can be learned in conversation could keep people from learning from others in daily life.

The Structure of Intrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation (IM) is key for persistence at work. When they are intrinsically motivated, people experience work activities as an end in itself, such that the activity and its goal collide. The result is increased interest and enjoyment of work activities. In this article, we review the current state of knowledge on IM, including studies within organizational, cognitive, and social psychology. We distinguish our structural perspective, which defines IM as the overlap between means and ends (e.g., the means-ends fusion model), from content-based approaches to study IM. We specifically discuss three questions: ( a) What is IM and why does it matter, ( b) how can individuals and organizations increase IM, and ( c) what biases and misconceptions do employees and managers hold about IM?

Idea Technology and Ideology

Although we are accustomed to thinking about technology as involving things-objects and processes-derived from scientific discoveries, science also creates a technology of ideas, ways of thinking both about the world and about human beings. And unlike "thing technology," "idea technology" can have powerful effects even when the ideas are false. This paper discusses false idea technology, or ideology, and suggests mechanisms by which it can have effects on both individuals and societies. It discusses neuroscience as the "next frontier" of ideology that may change our conceptions of human nature.

A Task-Based Taxonomy of Cognitive Biases for Information Visualization

Information visualization designers strive to design data displays that allow for efficient exploration, analysis, and communication of patterns in data, leading to informed decisions. Unfortunately, human judgment and decision making are imperfect and often plagued by cognitive biases. There is limited empirical research documenting how these biases affect visual data analysis activities. Existing taxonomies are organized by cognitive theories that are hard to associate with visualization tasks. Based on a survey of the literature we propose a task-based taxonomy of 154 cognitive biases organized in 7 main categories. We hope the taxonomy will help visualization researchers relate their design to the corresponding possible biases, and lead to new research that detects and addresses biased judgment and decision making in data visualization.

Self-esteem, motivation and school attendance among sub-Saharan African girls: A self-determination theory perspective

Sub-Saharan samples are severely under-represented in the psychological literature. Taking an ecological approach, the current study examines key propositions derived from self-determination theory in a sample of adolescent girls in Mozambique. As a framework theory, self-determination theory consists of six sub-theories. We test the main premises of two of these theories: organismic integration theory and basic psychological need theory. In line with organismic integration theory, we assess the role of intrinsic, extrinsic, introjected and identified motivation for school attendance. We also test the possible moderating role of the ecological variable resource scarcity. The second part of the study focuses on the main premise of the basic psychological need sub-theory, which states that satisfaction of the needs for relatedness, competence and autonomy underlies intrinsic motivation, goal-directed behaviour (school attendance) and well-being (self-esteem). The study also assesses the moderation of resource scarcity in these relationships. Results provide support for both sub-theories of self-determination theory. Resource scarcity is not found to moderate the relationships between motivation and attendance or between need satisfaction and well-being, motivation and attendance. Implications for the universality claim of self-determination theory, as well as for the field of international development aid, are discussed.

Immediate Rewards Predict Adherence to Long-Term Goals

People primarily pursue long-term goals, such as exercising, to receive delayed rewards (e.g., improved health). However, we find that the presence of immediate rewards is a stronger predictor of persistence in goal-related activities than the presence of delayed rewards. Specifically, immediate rewards (e.g., enjoyment) predicted current persistence at New Year's resolutions whereas delayed rewards did not (Study 1). Furthermore, immediate rewards predicted persistence in a single session of studying and exercising whereas delayed rewards did not, even though people report primarily pursuing these activities for delayed rewards (Studies 2 and 3). This is true for both short (1 week) and long (3 month) time frames (Study 4), and regardless of whether anticipated or materialized rewards are assessed (Study 5). Overall, whereas delayed rewards may motivate goal setting and the intentions to pursue long-term goals, a meta-analysis of our studies finds that immediate rewards are more strongly associated with actual persistence in a long-term goal.

Default neglect in attempts at social influence

Current theories suggest that people understand how to exploit common biases to influence others. However, these predictions have received little empirical attention. We consider a widely studied bias with special policy relevance: the default effect, which is the tendency to choose whichever option is the status quo. We asked participants (including managers, law/business/medical students, and US adults) to nudge others toward selecting a target option by choosing whether to present that target option as the default. In contrast to theoretical predictions, we find that people often fail to understand and/or use defaults to influence others, i.e., they show "default neglect." First, in one-shot default-setting games, we find that only 50.8% of participants set the target option as the default across 11 samples (n = 2,844), consistent with people not systematically using defaults at all. Second, when participants have multiple opportunities for experience and feedback, they still do not systematically use defaults. Third, we investigate beliefs related to the default effect. People seem to anticipate some mechanisms that drive default effects, yet most people do not believe in the default effect on average, even in cases where they do use defaults. We discuss implications of default neglect for decision making, social influence, and evidence-based policy.

Less Evil Than You: Bounded Self-Righteousness in Character Inferences, Emotional Reactions, and Behavioral Extremes

Recent research suggests that self-righteousness is bounded, arising more reliably in evaluations of immoral actions than in evaluations of moral actions. Here, we test four implications of this asymmetry in self-righteousness and the mechanism explaining it. We find that people are less likely to make negative character inferences from their own unethical behavior than from others' unethical behavior (Experiment 1), believe they would feel worse after an unethical action than others (Experiment 2), and believe they are less capable of extreme unethical behavior than others (Experiment 3). We observe weaker self-other differences in evaluations of ethical actions. This occurs partly because people base evaluations of themselves on their own moral intentions, leading to predictable individual differences. People more likely to ascribe cynical motives to their own behavior exhibit a smaller asymmetry in self-righteousness (Experiment 4). Self-righteousness seems better characterized as feeling "less evil than thou" than feeling "holier than thou."

The Role of Intrinsic Motivation and the Satisfaction of Basic Psychological Needs Under Conditions of Severe Resource Scarcity

An emerging field of research is beginning to examine the ways in which socioeconomic disparities affect emotional, cognitive, and social processes. In this study, we took a two-step approach to examining the role that resource scarcity plays in the predictive power of intrinsic motivation on school attendance, as well as its influence on the precursors of intrinsic motivation: the psychological needs of relatedness, autonomy, and competence. Results revealed that intrinsic motivation predicts school attendance even under conditions of extreme adversity. The satisfaction of the basic needs is more important for participants who are exposed to severe rather than mild levels of deprivation. Our findings illustrate ecological effects on the mechanism underlying goal-directed behavior. They provide evidence in favor of self-determination theory's depiction of humans as active, growth-oriented organisms and for the potential of psychological interventions to reduce poverty.

Consumer Participation in Co-creation: An Enlightening Model of Causes and Effects Based on Ethical Values and Transcendent Motives

In the current highly interconnected modern world, the role of consumers has changed substantially due to their active collaboration with companies in product and process innovation. Specifically, consumer participation has become key to the development of successful products and services, as companies have come to rely more and more on consumers' opinion as a source of innovative ideas and brand value. However, whereas existing research has focused on identifying the different elements involved in consumers' co-creation, there is still the need to comprehend better this complex mechanism by integrating distinct dimensional insights. With an integrative review of research into three important perspectives, one nurturing from the Service-Dominant logic, another one based on the information and communication technologies (ICTs) platforms, and (the ethical values-driven) Marketing 3.0 paradigm, this article proposes a conceptual framework in which consumers' ethical values and transcendent motivations play an important role in encouraging their engagement in co-creation activities. In this connection, and with consumers increasingly embracing the need to fulfill a social and ethical function in society, the co-creation process is here comprehended as a means to emphasize the social and moral aspects of co-creation. This article also identifies the important, supportive role of the Marketing 3.0 paradigm and Web 3.0 tools to initiate the co-creation process, as well as the important valuable benefits attained by both companies and consumers after consumers engage in this process. Importantly, these benefits are highlighted to increase when ethical products are the object of these co-creation activities. All these insights have notable implications for both research and managerial practice.

Performance-related-pay in the UK public sector

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to provide an up-to-date, comprehensive, independent and credible assessment of relevant academic and other literature since 2007, on the effectiveness and value for money of performance-related-pay (PRP) in the public sector.

Design/methodology/approach

– PRP was studied using both economics-based literature and literature from the organisational and management field (including human resources, management sociology and psychology). An initial search of databases identified 7,401 documents regarding PRP in the public sector, which was reduced to 57 final papers included in the study (27 in the health sector, 16 in the education sector and 16 in the civil service) after abstract and full paper screening.

Findings

– The review found some evidence that PRP schemes can be effective across the three domains of the public sector for which there was evidence available (health, education and the civil service), but findings within and between the sectors are mixed, with scheme effectiveness often dependent on scheme design and organisational context.

Research limitations/implications

– The research highlights the importance of considering both economics-based and organisational literature when discussing PRP in the public sector, and the implications for motivation and PRP design.

Practical implications

– The results indicated that the design of PRP schemes could influence their effectiveness and outcomes, and the research suggests how the challenges of designing and implementing PRP schemes can be overcome in the public sector.

Social implications

– The review highlights that when implementing PRP schemes there may be gender differences in their overall effectiveness (especially in education) and there must be consideration for how fairly the PRP scheme is perceived.

Originality/value

– The paper uses literature from economics and behavioural sciences when looking at the motivational implications for PRP in the public sector.

Management lore continues alive and well in the organizational sciences

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper was to identify examples of management lore currently in the organizational sciences.

Design/methodology/approach

– The authors deliberated and developed a series of examples of management lore in the organizational sciences and surveyed management practitioners concerning their beliefs in the lore hypothesized.

Findings

– Pervasive beliefs that conflict with academic research exist in management practices. Although many of these ideas are commonly accepted as immutable facts, they may be based upon faulty logic, insufficient understanding of academic research, anecdotal evidence and an overdependence upon common sense. Buckley and Eder (1988) called these as examples of management lore. In this conceptual paper, we identify and discuss 12 examples of management lore that persist in day-to-day management practices. Topics we explore include personality, emotional intelligence, teams, compensation, goals, performance, work ethic, creativity and organizational citizenship behaviors.

Originality/value

– A number of areas in which academic research gainsays what we believe to be an immutable fact.

Status Is a Four-Letter Word

The notion that striving for status is a fundamental human motivation is a largely taken-for-granted assumption across a number of literatures (e.g., anthropology, economics, evolutionary and social psychology, management, marketing, and sociology). In six studies, we show that—despite the ubiquity of status-striving in everyday life—people are reluctant to admit to such behavior. Specifically, participants consistently reported that they strive for status less than others, and this discrepancy was partially reduced only among participants who were less concerned about impression management or whose ability to engage in impression management was compromised. Although high status is clearly valuable and pursuing greater status is a basic human drive, we interpret these findings to mean that status-striving is a stigmatized behavior that people actively conceal. The theoretical implications and potential functional basis for our results are discussed.

Public policy for thee, but not for me: Varying the grammatical person of public policy justifications influences their support

Past research has shown that people consistently believe that others are more easily manipulated by external influences than they themselves are—a phenomenon called the “third-person effect” (Davison, 1983). The present research investigates whether support for public policies aimed at changing behavior using incentives and other decision “nudges” is affected by this bias. Across two studies, we phrased justification for public policy initiatives using either the second- or third-person plural. In Study 1, we found that support for policies is higher when their justification points to people in general rather than the general “you”, and in Study 2 we found that this former phrasing also improves support compared to a no-justification control condition. Policy support is mediated by beliefs about the likelihood of success of the policies (as opposed to beliefs about the policies’ unintended consequences), and, in the second-person condition, is inversely related to a sense of personal agency. These effects suggest that the third-person effect holds true for nudge-type and incentive-based public policies, with implications for their popular support.

Organizational Control Systems and Pay-for-Performance in the Public Service

Under certain conditions, output related performance measurement and pay-for-performance produce negative outcomes. We argue that in public service, these negative effects are stronger than in the private sector. We combine Behavioural Economics and Management Control Theory to determine under which conditions this is the case. We suggest as alternatives to the dominant output related pay-for-performance systems selection and socialization, exploratory use of output performance measures, and awards.

The Martyrdom Effect: When Pain and Effort Increase Prosocial Contributions

Most theories of motivation and behavior (and lay intuitions alike) consider pain and effort to be deterrents. In contrast to this widely held view, we provide evidence that the prospect of enduring pain and exerting effort for a prosocial cause can promote contributions to the cause. Specifically, we show that willingness to contribute to a charitable or collective cause increases when the contribution process is expected to be painful and effortful rather than easy and enjoyable. Across five experiments, we document this "martyrdom effect," show that the observed patterns defy standard economic and psychological accounts, and identify a mediator and moderator of the effect. Experiment 1 showed that people are willing to donate more to charity when they anticipate having to suffer to raise money. Experiment 2 extended these findings to a non-charity laboratory context that involved real money and actual pain. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the martyrdom effect is not the result of an attribute substitution strategy (whereby people use the amount of pain and effort involved in fundraising to determine donation worthiness). Experiment 4 showed that perceptions of meaningfulness partially mediate the martyrdom effect. Finally, Experiment 5 demonstrated that the nature of the prosocial cause moderates the martyrdom effect: the effect is strongest for causes associated with human suffering. We propose that anticipated pain and effort lead people to ascribe greater meaning to their contributions and to the experience of contributing, thereby motivating higher prosocial contributions. We conclude by considering some implications of this puzzling phenomenon. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Physician practice responses to financial incentive programs: exploring the concept of implementation mechanisms

PURPOSE

To develop a framework for studying financial incentive program implementation mechanisms, the means by which physician practices and physicians translate incentive program goals into their specific office setting. Understanding how new financial incentives fit with the structure of physician practices and individual providers' work may shed some insight on the variable effects of physician incentives documented in numerous reviews and meta-analyses.

DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH

Reviewing select articles on pay-for-performance evaluations to identify and characterize the presence of implementation mechanisms for designing, communicating, implementing, and maintaining financial incentive programs as well as recognizing participants' success and effects on patient care.

FINDINGS

Although uncommonly included in evaluations, evidence from 26 articles reveals financial incentive program sponsors and participants utilized a variety of strategies to facilitate communication about program goals and intentions, to provide feedback about participants' progress, and to assist-practices in providing recommended services. Despite diversity in programs' geographic locations, clinical targets, scope, and market context, sponsors and participants deployed common strategies. While these methods largely pertained to communication between program sponsors and participants and the provision of information about performance through reports and registries, they also included other activities such as efforts to engage patients and ways to change staff roles.

LIMITATIONS

This review covers a limited body of research to develop a conceptual framework for future research; it did not exhaustively search for new articles and cannot definitively link particular implementation mechanisms to outcomes.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Our results underscore the effects implementation mechanisms may have on how practices incorporate new programs into existing systems of care which implicates both the potential rewards from small changes as well as the resources which may be required to obtain buy-in and support.

ORIGINALITY/VALUE

We identify gaps in previous research regarding actual changes occurring in physician practices in response to physician incentive programs. We offer suggestions for future evaluation by proposing a framework for understanding implementation. Our model will assist future scholars in translating site-specific experiences with incentive programs into more broadly relevant guidance for practices by facilitating comparisons across seemingly disparate programs.

Decisions for others are more creative than decisions for the self

Four studies investigate whether decisions for others produce more creative solutions than do decisions for the self and if construal level explains this relation. In Study 1, participants carried out a structured imagination task by drawing an alien for a story that they would write, or alternatively for a story that someone else would write. As expected, drawing an alien for someone else produced a more creative alien. In Studies 2a and 2b, construal level (i.e., psychological distance) was independently manipulated. Participants generated more creative ideas on behalf of distant others than on behalf of either close others or themselves. Finally, in Study 3, a classic insight problem was investigated. Participants deciding for others were more likely to solve the problem; furthermore, this result was mediated by psychological distance. These findings demonstrate that people are more creative for others than for themselves and shed light on differences in self-other decision making.

Hofmann D. Role expansion as a persuasion process

Evidence establishes that employees often expand their roles to take on broader responsibilities in response to direct requests from others. However, surprisingly little research has investigated the interpersonal influence processes through which individuals convince others to expand their roles. We develop a conceptual framework to explain how senders persuade receivers to accept role expansion requests. Our framework describes why senders often fail to tailor their requests to receivers’ values, identifies the conditions under which this systematic bias is eliminated, and suggests strategies for senders to tailor their requests more effectively. Our perspective highlights how role expansion is often a reactive—rather than proactive—process in which interpersonal influence is a key building block.

Giver-receiver asymmetries in gift preferences

When people are asked to choose between gift items, givers and receivers sometimes show different patterns of preferences. The article reports four experimental studies exploring these giver-receiver asymmetries. Whereas givers tend to prefer exclusive, but smaller gift items, receivers appear to prefer less luxurious, and more useful gifts (Experiment 1). Givers prefer gift vouchers to cash, and are concerned about timing, whereas more receivers accept cash gifts, and claim that it does not matter if the gift arrives late (Experiment 2). One interpretation of the results could be that givers conform more strongly to gift conventions (cultural norms for gift exchange). It is further argued that these differences are not due to a perceived difference between self and others (Experiment 3), but rather because of situational differences. When receivers perform separate evaluations of gifts rather than joint evaluations (pairwise comparisons), they tend to change their preference pattern towards a higher rating of exclusive gift items (Experiment 4).