What do you think? Do humans, in general, exhibit contrafreeloading, or are they more rational? What about you?
“Small-M” Motivations
After David left my office, I started thinking about his and Devra’s disappointments. The lack of an audience for their work had made a big difference in their motivation. What is it aside from a paycheck, I wondered, that confers meaning on work? Is it the small satisfaction of focused engagement? Is it that, like Jean Paul, we enjoy feeling challenged by whatever it is we’re doing and satisfactorily completing a task (which creates a small level of meaning with a small m)? Or maybe we feel meaning only when we deal with something bigger. Perhaps we hope that someone else, especially someone important to us, will ascribe value to what we’ve produced? Maybe we need the illusion that our work might one day matter to many people. That it might be of some value in the big, broad world out there (we might call this Meaning with a large M)? Most likely it is all of these. But fundamentally, I think that almost any aspect of meaning (even small-m meaning) can be sufficient to drive our behavior. As long as we are doing something that is somewhat connected to our self-image, it can fuel our motivation and get us to work much harder.
Consider the work of writing, for example. Once upon a time, I wrote academic papers with an eye on promotion. But I also hoped—and still hope—that they might actually influence something in the world. How hard would I work on an academic paper if I knew for sure that only a few people would ever read it? What if I knew for sure that no one would ever read my work? Would I still do it?
I truly enjoy the research I do; I think it’s fun. I’m excited to tell you, dear reader, about how I have spent the last twenty years of my life. I’m almost sure my mother will read this book,* and I’m hoping that at least a few others will as well. But what if I knew for sure that no one would ever read it? That Claire Wachtel, my editor at HarperCollins, would decide to put this book in a drawer, pay me for it, and never publish it? Would I still be sitting here late at night working on this chapter? No way. Much of what I do in life, including writing my blog posts, articles, and these pages, is driven by ego motivations that link my effort to the meaning that I hope the readers of these words will find in them. Without an audience, I would have very little motivation to work as hard as I do.
BLOGGING FOR TREATS
Now think about blogging. The number of blogs out there is astounding, and it seems that almost everyone has a blog or is thinking about starting one. Why are blogs so popular? Not only is it because so many people have the desire to write; after all, people wrote before blogs were invented. It is also because blogs have two features that distinguish them from other forms of writing. First, they provide the hope or the illusion that someone else will read one’s writing. After all, the moment a blogger presses the “publish” button, the blog can be consumed by anybody in the world, and with so many people connected, somebody, or at least a few people, should stumble upon the blog. Indeed, the “number of views” statistic is a highly motivating feature in the blogosphere because it lets the blogger know exactly how many people have at least seen the posting. Blogs also provide readers with the ability to leave their reactions and comments—gratifying for both the blogger, who now has a verifiable audience, and the reader-cum-writer. Most blogs have very low readership—perhaps only the blogger’s mother or best friend reads them—but even writing for one person, compared to writing for nobody, seems to be enough to compel millions of people to blog.
Building Bionicles
A few weeks after my conversation with David, I met with Emir Kamenica (a professor at the University of Chicago), and Dražen Prelec (a professor at MIT) at a local coffee shop. After discussing a few different research topics, we decided to explore the effect of devaluation on motivation for work. We could have examined Large-M Meaning—that is, we could have measured the value that people who are developing a cure for cancer, helping the poor, building bridges, and otherwise saving the world every day place on their jobs. But instead, and maybe because the three of us are academics, we decided to set up experiments that would examine the effects of small-m meaning—effects that I suspect are more common in everyday life and in the workplace. We wanted to explore how small changes in the work of people like David the banker and Devra the editor affected their desire to work. And so we came up with an idea for an experiment that would test people’s reactions to small reductions in meaning for a task that did not have much meaning to start with.
ONE FALL DAY in Boston, a tall mechanical engineering student named Joe entered the student union at Harvard University. He was all ambition and acne. On a crowded bulletin board boasting flyers about upcoming concerts, lectures, political events, and roommates wanted, he caught sight of a sign reading “Get paid to build Legos!”
As an aspiring engineer, Joe had always loved building things. Drawn to anything that required assembling, Joe had naturally played with Legos throughout his childhood. When he was six years old, he had taken his father’s computer apart, and a year later, he had disassembled the living room stereo system. By the time he was fifteen, his penchant for taking objects apart and putting them back together again had cost his family a small fortune. Fortunately, he had found an outlet for his passion in college, and now he had the opportunity to build with Legos to his heart’s content—and get paid for it.
A few days later, at the agreed-upon time, Joe showed up to take part in our experiment. As luck would have it, he was assigned to the meaningful condition. Sean, the research assistant, greeted Joe as he entered the room, directed him to a chair, and explained the procedure to him. Sean showed Joe a Lego Bionicle—a small fighting robot—and then told Joe that his task would involve constructing this exact type of Bionicle, made up of forty pieces that had to be assembled in a precise way. Next, Sean told Joe the rules for payment. “The basic setup,” he said, “is that you will get paid on a diminishing scale for each Bionicle you assemble. For the first Bionicle, you will receive two dollars. After you finish the first one, I will ask you if you want to build another one, this time for eleven cents less, which is a dollar eighty-nine. If you say that you want to build another one, I will hand you the next one. This same process will continue in the same way, and for each additional Bionicle you build, you will get eleven cents less, until you decide that you don’t want to build any more Bionicles. At that point, you will receive the total amount of money for all the robots you’ve created. There is no time limit, and you can build Bionicles until the benefits you get no longer outweigh the costs.”
Joe nodded, eager to get started. “And one last thing,” Sean warned. “We use the same Bionicles for all of our participants, so at some point before the next participant shows up, I will have to disassemble all the Bionicles you build and place the parts back in their boxes for the next participant. Everything clear?”
Joe quickly opened the first box of plastic parts, scanned the assembly instructions, and began building his first Bionicle. He obviously enjoyed assembling the pieces and seeing the weird robotic form take shape. Once finished, he arranged the robot in a battle position and asked for the next one. Sean reminded him how much he would make for the next Bionicle ($1.89) and handed him the next box of pieces. Once Joe started working on the next Bionicle, Sean took the construction that Joe had just finished and placed it in a box below the desk where it was destined to be disassembled for the next participant.
Like a man on a mission, Joe continued building one Bionicle after another, while Sean continued storing them in the box below the table. After he’d finished assembling ten robots, Joe announced that he’d had his fill and collected his pay of $15.05. Before Joe took off, Sean asked him to answer a few questions about how much he liked Legos in general and how much he had enjoyed the task. Joe responded that he was a Lego fan, that he had really enjoyed the task, and that he would recommend it to his friends.
The next person in line turned out to be a young man named Chad, an exuberant—or perhaps overcaffeinated—premed student. Unlike Joe, Chad was assigned to a procedure that among ourselves we fondly called the “Sisyphean”