There's bound to be a reason why individuals act in a certain way. Sometimes, in certain instances, you need to control these reasons to receive a particular outcome.
How do you persuade someone to do something?
Ahh, the question of incentives. Although I believe there's a time and a place for all forms of these incentives, there's a surprising amount of literature that advocates positive/negative incentives over the other the majority of the time.
I find a problem with this because it seems to overlook many facets of what's effective. Is it as simple as positive versus negative incentives? Either reward someone or penalize them to encourage a certain outcome?
When reading up on an incentive experiment that was employed on the trapped Chilean miners (found here) there was more manipulation occurring then what met the eye. To prevent them from having conflicts with each other, the positive/negative incentives worked as a distraction.
I'm not sure if this post will help you get others on your side, or prevent you from being manipulated in doing something you might not necessarily want to...
either way, things are as never as simple as they seem.
Interesting experiment! Do you think it was ethical? What do you think would be more effective?
ReplyDeleteI think this may have been not the best example for incentives working or not working because there are so many factors and the situation was extreme, but it is interesting that they were controlled that way in the mines. Although, it is interesting how economists shout the values of incentives while some incentives have been proven to not work. I would also like to echo kate's question and ask what do you think would have worked better? Thoughtful blog!
ReplyDelete@Kate -
ReplyDeleteI tend to err towards a combination of different types of incentives. I don't think the situation the miners were in in the first place was entirely ethical; I'm not sure how I feel about the experiment, but I think because of that, scientists took advantage. I would imagine there to be a lot more hoopla if this was tried on a group that had more options.
@Whimsy-
I think you bring up a great point. I don't believe in an 'absolute truth' and think there are many factors/facets of almost anything. I think this is why saying one incentive works say the end all, be all, is wrong.
I also wanted to mention that it's not just positive v. negative incentives; there's general manipulation to receive an end result. I think this opens way too many alternatives for me to make an educational decision on what would be 'best.'