interesting. i realise that there must be much more evidence and study than is contained in that article, but it struck me that for the particular experiment they gave the people with the harder task may have a stronger sense of being "owed" something, since they made more effort, and that maybe this stronger sense of entitlement leads them to take more rewards...?
Perhaps the conclusions drawn by the experiment (if they are correctly paraphrased in the post; I didn't read the full paper yet: http://www.d.umn.edu/~dglisczi/4501web/4501Readings/Shiv(199...) are valid but I think it would be pertinent to consider that perhaps rather than being 'cognitively taxed', those 7-number participants simply felt that they worked harder and therefore deserved a better prize. I often find myself making similar justifications if I've pushed myself hard in a workout or followed my diet faithfully.
It would be interesting to see an experiment that 'cognitively taxes' participants by having them perform a task that is not considered positive. Memorizing a number elicits a feeling of accomplishment that may contribute to the justification I described above.
I've heard this from other studies, but this one seems less convincing. Couldn't just be "damn those scientists, they won't even give me cookies. My motivation for trying their task just dropped off a cliff"? At the very least, they could have checked by giving other participants money or no money for doing the task?
Is it possible that the people employed by that particular company felt grateful for this experiment and just tried harder because of that? Experimenting with the human behavior is something really complex open to many factors.
There is a psychological study, where two group of people are asked to do some task for pay. Afterward they have to rate how engaging was the task they have to do. The group who are paid well reported that the work was boring. While the group who are paid little reported that the task was fun and challenging.
The task was the same for both groups, but the first one justifies it by having compensation. While the second one by making the task fun or more cynically by deluding themselves that it has some kind of value.
I was going to make much the same point (before skimming the responses to see if it would be a duplicate).
I will add that maybe some people felt not only 'owed' something but an urge for vengeance. The stricter test condition is not merely one requiring 'self control' but is rather draconian in the degree to which it requires self-control. There is a difference between expecting self-restraint and imposing hardship on people. "What goes around comes around". When you crap on people for purposes of your so-called experiments, don't be all shocked when they crap on you if given the opportunity.
> the subjects who held on to their first choice the longest received 10x the reward
If the experiment was designed right, there wasn't a second offer to the same subject and it was made clear that there won't be one. Instead separate test groups were offered different amounts. Or at the very least the game was repeated.
It is an interesting experiment but I don't think that it necessarily implies there is a huge difference in human psychology - if you did the experiment with a poor (i.e. homeless) American, I am pretty sure they would accept any amount of money. To add to this, I think there was probably some confusion when explaining the rules of the game to the subjects.
Selflessness and compassion (at least, for that which occurred from wrong behavior) are common among people who are ignorant of the importance of justice (which may be defined as revealing things as they really are) and the danger of compromising with injustice. Also, in order not to lose all of one's money, one needs to be careful not to be deceived (which requires keeping oneself and acting to serve oneself and the world, rather than selflessness). Are you sure the experiment was able to control for those two issues?
The thirteen people seem to have been periodically checked-up on; they surely felt a bit of accountability as the subjects of an experiment. Give out "free money" on a large scale, and the accountable disappears; with it, likely the positive outcome.
As you have observed already, this experiment is set up specifically to eliminate the effect of training/skill/physical endurance etc, and YET when it's performed in real life with a good facilitator, people who are unlucky start to feel like they're underperforming and need to step it up, while people who are lucky start to feel like they deserve the praise for doing well.
I've read about people who go for days after the experiment and feel bad about their subpar performance because they feel like they've let down or brought shame to their company and wonder if they couldn't have done something better.
And this is an experiment that's set up to remove any trace indivdual agency what so ever! People still beat themselves up over it.
When you experience this experiment for real, you start to forget that it's actually designed to eliminate any sort of skill.
In other words, the experiment shows how hard it is to recognise when we're judging the system and not the people in it. The experiment shows that even when you think you're seeing individual performance, it's very plausible you're not.
> If your "trick" does not actually work, you're wasting time and resources.
Many of the popularly-cited experiments both in behavioral economics and in psychology involve misleading or deceiving the experimental subjects, and many more simply conceal their objectives. The assumption that the suckers never caught on and the results should be interpreted accordingly is seldom questioned. In some cases, the assumption is verified by asking the subjects about their motivations post-mortem, ignoring the long-standing axiom of applied behavioral economics (business) that there are two reasons anyone does anything, the one they will tell you and the real one.
The null hypotheses in these experiments ought to be (1) the subjects know or can figure out what the experimenters are looking for, and (2) the subjects are there because they want to help the experimenters.
Consider the subject who is paid a small sum to participate and interacts with a either a researcher who must publish or perish or one who will put another batch of subjects through a similar rigmarole next year if they cannot get their dissertation accepted this year. What does motivational psychology say about the behavior of such a subject? Is such a search for truth better than a congressional committee?
Gah. Where do we even begin with this article's problems?
1. The studies were done with college students (a very unrepresentative, and relatively immature group), in a non-organization (basically they were linked only by a possible monetary reward at the end) and with some very trivial incentive in play. If this has "implications for business work groups, volunteer organizations, non-profit projects, military units, and environmental efforts", please let us know how those implications are arrived at!
2. The description of the experiment is unclear and self-contradictory: "...pools of points that they could keep or give up for an immediate reward of meal service vouchers. Participants were also told that giving up points would improve the group's chance of receiving a monetary reward." So if you "give up" points you _both_ get free meals _and_ you improve the group's welfare?! That doesn't make any sense.
3. What's the deal with the rules - what rules were the "do-gooders" breaking? They're only mentioned in passing but they seem essential for the meaning of the experiment.
>They simulated the reward structure of different forms of social security in an experiment. ‘We got people to do a task on a computer,’ says De Kwaadsteniet. ‘In multiple rounds, which represented the months they had to work, they did a boring task in which they had to put points on a bar. The more of these they did, the more money they earned.’
"short term experiments done in a lab" seems to be psychology's equivalent of "in vitro" (aka. in a test tube). I'm not really sure how you can draw any conclusions about someone's lifetime behavior, using a experiment that looks at the behavior of people sitting at a few hours at a computer.
I'm slightly concerned that more people here don't get this. The whole point of an experiment is to have a hypothesis, perform a test, observe the result, and make some conclusion related to your original hypothesis.
It seems like what most people wanted was a "challenge". I don't have any issue with that, but call a duck a duck. If this really was a social "experiment", you have to expect people to behave as they would in society, including leaches.
This experiment is a reminder of why we can't have nice things on an honor system. There will _always_ be actors who game the system - typically for personal gain, but sometimes for the lols.
yes, as I said in my other response to somebody else, I was not trying to explain the study, I was trying to test out the PP's suggestion about "somebody wanting something from somebody"
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