Participants in a second group were presented with the same basic instructions and task; but for them the reward was much lower (50 cents in one experiment and 10 cents in the other). Again we expected the participants to apply market norms to this situation and act accordingly.
Finally, we had a third group, to whom we introduced the tasks as a social request. We didn’t offer the participants in this group anything concrete in return for their effort; nor did we mention money. It was merely a favor that we asked of them. We expected these participants to apply social norms to the situation and act accordingly.
How hard did the different groups work? In line with the ethos of market norms, those who received five dollars dragged on average 159 circles, and those who received 50 cents dragged on average 101 circles. As expected, more money caused our participants to be more motivated and work harder (by about 50 percent).
What about the condition with no money? Did these participants work less than the ones who got the low monetary payment—or, in the absence of money, did they apply social norms to the situation and work harder? The results showed that on average they dragged 168 circles, much more than those who were paid 50 cents, and just slightly more than those who were paid five dollars. In other words, our participants worked harder under the nonmonetary social norms than for the almighty buck (OK, 50 cents).
Perhaps we should have anticipated this. There are many examples to show that people will work more for a cause than for cash. A few years ago, for instance, the AARP asked some lawyers if they would offer less expensive services to needy retirees, at something like $30 an hour. The lawyers said no. Then the program manager from AARP had a brilliant idea: he asked the lawyers if they would offer free services to needy retirees. Overwhelmingly, the lawyers said yes.
What was going on here? How could zero dollars be more attractive than $30? When money was mentioned, the lawyers used market norms and found the offer lacking, relative to their market salary. When no money was mentioned they used social norms and were willing to volunteer their time. Why didn’t they just accept the $30, thinking of themselves as volunteers who received $30? Because once market norms enter our considerations, the social norms depart.
A similar lesson was learned by Nachum Sicherman, an economics professor at Columbia, who was taking martial arts lessons in Japan. The sensei (the master teacher) was not charging the group for the training. The students, feeling that this was unfair, approached the master one day and suggested that they pay him for his time and effort. Setting down his bamboo shinai, the master calmly replied that if he charged them, they would not be able to afford him.
IN THE PREVIOUS experiment, then, those who got paid 50 cents didn’t say to themselves, “Good for me; I get to do this favor for these researchers, and I am getting some money out of this,” and continue to work harder than those who were paid nothing. Instead they switched themselves over to the market norms, decided that 50 cents wasn’t much, and worked halfheartedly. In other words, when the market norms entered the lab, the social norms were pushed out.
But what would happen if we replaced the payments with a gift? Surely your mother-in-law would accept a good bottle of wine at dinner. Or how about a housewarming present (such as an eco-friendly plant) for a friend? Are gifts methods of exchange that keep us within the social exchange norms? Would participants receiving such gifts switch out of the social norms and into market norms, or would offering gifts as rewards maintain the participants in the social world?
To find out just where gifts fall on the line between social and market norms, James and I decided on a new experiment. This time, we didn’t offer our participants money for dragging circles across a computer screen; we offered them gifts instead. We replaced the 50-cent reward with a Snickers bar (worth about 50 cents), and the five-dollar incentive with a box of Godiva chocolates (worth about five dollars).
The participants came to the lab, got their reward, worked as much as they liked, and left. Then we looked at the results. As it turned out, all three experimental groups worked about equally hard during the task, regardless of whether they got a small Snickers bar (these participants dragged on average 162 circles), the Godiva chocolates (these participants dragged on average 169 circles), or nothing at all (these participants dragged on average 168 circles). The conclusion: no one is offended by a small gift, because even small gifts keep us in the social exchange world and away from market norms.
BUT WHAT WOULD HAPPEN if we mixed the signals for the two types of norms? What would happen if we blended the market norm with the social norm? In other words, if we said that we would give them a “50-cent Snickers bar” or a “five-dollar box of Godiva chocolates,” what would the participants do? Would a “50-cent Snickers bar” make our participants work as hard as a “Snickers bar” made them work; or would it make them work halfheartedly, as the 50-cents made them work? Or would it be somewhere in the middle? The next experiment tested these ideas.
As it turned out, the participants were not motivated to work at all when they got the 50-cent Snickers bar, and in fact the effort they invested was the same as when they got a payment of 50 cents. They reacted to the explicitly priced gift in exactly the way they reacted to cash, and the gift no longer invoked social norms—by the mention of its cost, the gift had passed into the realm of market norms.
By the way, we replicated the setup later when we asked passersby whether they would help us unload a sofa from a truck. We found the same results. People are willing to work free, and they are willing to work for a reasonable wage; but offer them just a small payment and they will walk away. Gifts are also effective for sofas, and offering people a gift, even a small one, is sufficient to get them to help; but mention what the gift cost you, and you will see the back of them faster than you can say market norms.
THESE RESULTS SHOW that for market norms to emerge, it is sufficient to mention money (even when no money changes hands). But, of course, market norms are not just about effort—they relate to a broad range of behaviors, including self-reliance, helping, and individualism. Would simply getting people to think about money influence them to behave differently in these respects? This premise was explored in a set of fantastic experiments by Kathleen Vohs (a professor at the University of Minnesota), Nicole Mead (a graduate student at Florida State University), and Miranda Goode (a graduate student at the University of British Columbia).
They asked the participants in their experiments to complete a “scrambled-sentence task,” that is, to rearrange sets of words to form sentences. For the participants in one group, the task was based on neutral sentences (for example, “It’s cold outside”); for the other group, the task was based on sentences or phrases related to money (for example, “High-paying salary”*). Would thinking about money in this manner be sufficient to change the way participants behave?
In one of the experiments, the participants finished the unscrambling task and were then given a difficult puzzle, in which they had to arrange 12 disks into a square. As the experimenter left the room, he told them that they could come to him if they needed any help. Who do you think asked for help sooner—those who had worked on the “salary” sentences, with their implicit suggestion of money; or those who had worked on the “neutral” sentences, about the weather and other such topics? As it turned out, the students who had first worked on the “salary” task struggled with the puzzle for about five and a half minutes before asking for help, whereas those who had first worked on the neutral task asked for help after about three minutes. Thinking about money, then, made the participants in the “salary” group more self-reliant and less willing to ask for help.
But these participants were also less willing to help others. In fact, after thinking about money these participants were less willing to help an experimenter enter data, less likely to assist another participant who seemed confused, and less likely to help a “stranger” (an experimenter in disguise) who “accidentally” spilled a box of pencils.
Overall, the participants in the “salary” group showed many of the characteristics of the market: they were more selfish and self-reliant; they wanted