The Puzzle Of Motivation

The Candle Problem

Career analyist Dan Pink mainly mentions in his speech about what social scientists' know and what businesses do about motivations and introduces The Candle Problem in two similar approaches. In the first experiment, the aim is to attach the candle to the wall so the vax doesn't drip onto the table. The participants are divided into two groups, where the first group will be rewarded with a finite amount of money if they complete the task and the second group doesn't get any rewards, they are only told that their average time of solving the problem would be assessed.

Under the light of differentiation between the groups with different conditions, the one motivated with incentives performed poorer performance. Dan Pink states this unexpected result that extrinsic incentives dull thinking and block creativity.

The second experiment is slightly different than the first one. The aim is to touch the candle to the wall so the vax doesn't drip onto the table. Same deals are applied to the groups. Since the solution is quite easy, the group promised with incentives did great work this time.

Dan Pink states that these if-then rewards work really well for those sorts of tasks, where there is a simple set of rules and a clear destination to go to.

However, for the real candle problem, we may not want to look at narrow sight. The solution may not be the thing we first think of. We may have to look around, dig deeper.

He concludes that these extrinsic incentives work mostly well for automated, routine tasks, not for creative,conceptual ones.

Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic

He finally mentions about scientists' recently researches on motivations. They categorize into 2 different types as Dan Pink frequently refers in his speech, extrinsic model as we are familiar with and intrinsic model. Intrinsic motivation basically includes the desire to do things because they matter, we like it, they are part of the other important things. It is believed that intrinsic motivators will change our business world in a more productive manner.