{"id":59757,"date":"2022-02-14T09:46:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T13:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=59757"},"modified":"2022-02-14T12:02:33","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T16:02:33","slug":"incentives-psychology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/incentives-psychology\/","title":{"rendered":"Incentives: The Psychology of Motivation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How do incentives change behavior? What is the danger in offering incentives to encourage better performance?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incentives inspire hard work and better cooperation. But there is also a dark side to incentivizing the desired behavior: People will perform the behavior, but they’ll strive for those incentives however suits them best, even if their actions contradict the principle behind the incentive<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep reading to learn about the psychology of incentive manipulation and how to set effective incentives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Incentive Manipulation<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

People offer incentives to inspire hard work. However, they don\u2019t always consider the unintended consequences<\/a> of incentives: Others will work hard for incentives, but they\u2019ll also strive for those incentives however suits them best, which may go against the cause behind the incentive. Thus, <\/strong>the people setting the incentives can hurt their own cause if they\u2019re not careful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, a mother tells her son that when he cleans up his toys, he can have a cookie. She wants to encourage responsible behavior and sees the cookie as a reward that will encourage that responsible behavior. However, the son doesn\u2019t care about learning responsibility<\/a>: He just wants more cookies. Thus, the son manipulates the situation and makes more messes so that he can tidy up more often and earn more cookies, contradicting his mother\u2019s original goal of teaching responsibility. The mother\u2019s incentive didn\u2019t consider the potential for manipulation, so it ultimately harmed her attempts at teaching responsibility.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forming Good Incentives<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

How can you avoid manipulation<\/a> and set effective incentives? According to psychology, incentives should pull on people’s intrinsic motivation<\/a>.<\/em> Having intrinsic motivation means you do things because they\u2019re personally rewarding, in contrast to having extrinsic motivation, which means you do things because of an outside incentive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some tips for using people\u2019s intrinsic motivation in incentives:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Give them tasks they\u2019re passionate about.<\/strong> The extrinsic motivation of an incentive can encourage people to work on tasks they dislike, but this leads to burnout and loses effectiveness over time. On the other hand, the intrinsic motivation of a task someone\u2019s passionate about is fulfilling and long-lasting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Provide positive feedback<\/strong>. Positive feedback encourages people and increases their pride in their tasks, which in turn increases intrinsic motivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Give them tools to complete their tasks.<\/strong> The more prepared people are for a task, the more confident and willing they are to complete that task, improving intrinsic motivation. For our example, the mother might make her son more excited about cleaning by turning it into a game, providing plenty of praise, and making sure he knows where everything belongs. If she encourages this intrinsic motivation, she soon won\u2019t have to provide any incentives at all, as her son will clean his toys unprompted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do incentives change behavior? What is the danger in offering incentives to encourage better performance? Incentives inspire hard work and better cooperation. But there is also a dark side to incentivizing the desired behavior: People will perform the behavior, but they’ll strive for those incentives however suits them best, even if their actions contradict the principle behind the incentive. Keep reading to learn about the psychology of incentive manipulation and how to set effective incentives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":7947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,9,160],"tags":[576],"class_list":["post-59757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-motivation","category-psychology","category-science","tag-the-art-of-thinking-clearly","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nIncentives: The Psychology of Motivation - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Psychology says that incentives inspire hard work and better cooperation. 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