Meaning in Labour - Dan Ariely at TEDxAmsterdam
-
0:12 - 0:18So after the morning's talks I thought,
you know: what can I do to improve? -
0:18 - 0:20So, you know, Paul took off
his shirt, I can't do that -- -
0:20 - 0:25But, you know, I thought:
maybe I'll take off my -- No. -
0:25 - 0:29So I want to talk a little bit about
labor and motivation. -
0:29 - 0:34And, when we think about
people as workforce, -
0:34 - 0:37we often think about people
like rats in a maze. -
0:37 - 0:40We think that people hate working,
we think that all that people want to do -
0:40 - 0:44is to sit on the beach drinking mojitos
and the only reason that they work -
0:44 - 0:48is that we pay them so they can
seat on the beach drinking mojitos. -
0:48 - 0:49But is this the case?
-
0:49 - 0:52We have things like mountain climbing.
-
0:52 - 0:54Mountain climbing is a really challenging thing.
-
0:54 - 0:57When you read books
of people who climb mountains -
0:57 - 1:01you would think that those books would be filled
with moments of elation and joy -- -
1:01 - 1:07No! They're filled with moments
of misery and pain, frostbites -- -
1:07 - 1:11So you would think that once people get up
with these experiences and come down -
1:11 - 1:16they will say, "My goodness, this was
a terrible mistake, I'll never do it again!" -
1:16 - 1:21No! They go straight up! They get to heal,
they get to recover and they go straight up! -
1:21 - 1:24And this, I think, proposes a real challenge
for what do we think about joy, -
1:24 - 1:29and what do we think about motivation,
and what actually gets people to care. -
1:29 - 1:34I started thinking about
meaning and motivation in the workplace -
1:34 - 1:38when one of my ex-students
came back to see me. -
1:38 - 1:40His name was David - still is David -
he came to see me, -
1:40 - 1:43and he told me the following story:
-
1:43 - 1:45He said that he was working
at an investment bank, -
1:45 - 1:50preparing a PowerPoint presentation
for a merger and acquisition. -
1:50 - 1:53He was working on it for weeks.
He was working hard, -
1:53 - 1:55staying up late at night --
And the day before -
1:55 - 1:57the merger and acquisition
was going to take place -
1:57 - 2:00he mailed his PowerPoint presentation to his boss
-
2:00 - 2:08and his boss wrote him quickly back saying,
"Nice job! The deal is cancelled." -
2:08 - 2:10Now, throughout the process
he was incredibly excited! -
2:10 - 2:14He was working, he was thinking happy,
his boss appreciated it. -
2:14 - 2:18But the fact that nobody was going
to see it deflated him. -
2:18 - 2:20In fact, when he was looking
at his next projects, -
2:20 - 2:23he couldn't really find
that much motivation. -
2:23 - 2:27And if you think about it, it's interesting
because physically, everything was OK. -
2:27 - 2:31His boss appreciated it, he would probably get a raise, everything was OK --
-
2:31 - 2:34But something was missing
that is more, kind of a more -
2:34 - 2:36general meaning for what he was doing.
-
2:36 - 2:40So I thought, you know: how can we capture it
with some simple experiments? -
2:40 - 2:43So I decided to build Legos.
-
2:43 - 2:48So we paid people to build Lego Bionicles,
like the ones that you see. -
2:48 - 2:51And we paid people in diminishing rate.
-
2:51 - 2:53So here's what happened:
you came in and we say, -
2:53 - 2:55"Would you like to build one Bionicle?"
-
2:55 - 2:57"We'll pay you 3 dollars for it."
-
2:57 - 3:01And if you said "yes" you would build it
and when you finished, we took it back -
3:01 - 3:05and we say, "Would you like to build
another one? For 2.70?" -
3:05 - 3:08And if you finished that and wanted
another one? For 2.40 and so on -- -
3:08 - 3:12And the question was,
"At what point will people stop?" -
3:12 - 3:15And we told people that we take the Bionicles,
we'll put them under the desk, -
3:15 - 3:20and we'll break them into pieces
for the next participant. -
3:20 - 3:22(Laughter)
-
3:23 - 3:25This was the first condition.
-
3:25 - 3:29People build one after the other,
after the other, after the other. -
3:29 - 3:32The second condition
we called the 'Sisyphic Condition.' -
3:32 - 3:37If you remember the story of Sisyphus --
Sisyphus basically was sentenced by the gods -
3:37 - 3:41to push a rock up a big mountain
and the almost moment he got there -- -
3:41 - 3:43The rock would roll back
and he would have to do it again. -
3:44 - 3:46And you could think about
how demotivating this is, right? -
3:46 - 3:51And how better it would be if at least it were
different mountains he would push the rock over. -
3:51 - 3:55But being the same mountain
over and over and over is demotivating. -
3:55 - 3:57So that's what we tried to do
in the 'Sisyphic Condition.' -
3:57 - 3:59We gave people a Bionicle,
-
3:59 - 4:02when they finished it, we said,
"Would you like to build another one?" -
4:02 - 4:04If they said "yes",
we gave them the second one, -
4:04 - 4:08but as they were working on the second one
we took the first one to pieces. -
4:08 - 4:10In front of their eyes.
-
4:10 - 4:15And then, if they wanted to build a third one,
we gave the first one back to them. -
4:15 - 4:17(Laughter)
-
4:17 - 4:22So we had an endless cycle of breaking
and creating, creating and breaking. -
4:22 - 4:24What happened?
The first thing that happened, -
4:24 - 4:26was that people built many more Bionicles
-
4:26 - 4:30in the 'Meaningful Condition'
compared to the 'Sisyphic Condition.' -
4:30 - 4:33And what I should point out here is that
the meaning in the 'Meaningful Condition' -
4:33 - 4:37was not really high meaning.
This was a tiny meaning. Right? -
4:37 - 4:40So the fact that just destroying it
in front of their eyes a few minutes earlier -
4:40 - 4:43made a difference,
is quite important. -
4:43 - 4:46The second thing is that
we asked another group of people -
4:46 - 4:49to predict how big the effect will be.
-
4:49 - 4:51We said, "If you were in this experiment,
how many Bionicles do you think -
4:51 - 4:54people would build here
and how many will they build here?" -
4:54 - 4:58And people understood that
the 'Meaningful Condition' would create -
4:58 - 5:01higher motivation, but they didn't understand
the magnitude of that. -
5:01 - 5:06So people thought that the difference was
one Bionicle. In fact it was much larger. -
5:06 - 5:11And finally, we looked at the correlation
between how much people love Bionicles -
5:11 - 5:14and how many Bionicles they created.
-
5:14 - 5:16You would expect that, naturally,
people who love Bionicles more -
5:16 - 5:19would build more Bionicles,
even for less money. -
5:19 - 5:20And that's indeed what we saw.
-
5:20 - 5:23In the 'Meaningful Condition'
there was a nice correlation. -
5:23 - 5:26People who like Bionicles build more,
people who don't like Bionicles as much -
5:26 - 5:28don't build as much.
-
5:28 - 5:30What happened in the 'Sisyphic Condition'?
-
5:30 - 5:33In the 'Sisyphic Condition'
there was no correlation. -
5:33 - 5:37We were basically able, by destroying
people's labor in front of their eyes, -
5:37 - 5:40to crash the joy out of this process.
-
5:40 - 5:43(Laughter)
-
5:46 - 5:51After I finished this study, I went to talk
to a big software company in Seattle. -
5:51 - 5:54(Laughter)
-
5:54 - 5:57And this was a big room
full of 200 engineers -
5:57 - 6:00and these were engineers
that worked for 2 years -
6:00 - 6:03about the project that they thought
would be the next development -
6:03 - 6:05for this big software company.
-
6:05 - 6:09And a week before I came
the CEO cancelled the project. -
6:09 - 6:14And I never sat in front of a group
of more depressed people -- -
6:14 - 6:18And I asked them,"How many of you
show up later for work these days?" -
6:18 - 6:20They all raised their hands.
-
6:20 - 6:22I said, "How many of you leave earlier?"
-
6:22 - 6:24They all raised their hands.
-
6:24 - 6:28I said, "How many of you charge
extra things on your expense accounts?" -
6:28 - 6:31Nobody raised their hands,
but they took me for dinner that night. -
6:31 - 6:34(Laughter)
-
6:34 - 6:39They showed me what they could do,
with creativity -- -
6:39 - 6:42And they said they felt
just like in the Lego experiment. -
6:42 - 6:46They basically felt that somebody cancelled
something in front of their eyes, under their feet, -
6:46 - 6:50without letting them have
any meaning of what they were doing. -
6:50 - 6:53Now, here's the thing:
I think the CEO of that company -
6:53 - 6:55did not understand the meaning of labor.
-
6:55 - 6:58He just said, "OK, we directed you
in this direction up to now, -
6:58 - 7:01let me redirect you somewhere else,
and you will just go in the way I think." -
7:01 - 7:04This is not how people operate.
-
7:04 - 7:08And I asked these people, "What could the CEO
have done? Let's say he had to cancel the project. -
7:08 - 7:11What could he have done
to keep some of your motivation?" -
7:11 - 7:13And they came up
with all kinds of ideas. -
7:13 - 7:17They said, "What if he allowed them to do
a presentation in front of the whole company?" -
7:17 - 7:20"What if he asked them to build
a few more prototypes, to try and think about -
7:20 - 7:26what aspect of the technology that they
were developing could fit in other projects?" -
7:26 - 7:29Now, the thing is that, any one of those aspects,
any one of those approaches would demand -
7:29 - 7:33some effort, attention and time,
and if you don't think people -
7:33 - 7:36care about their meaning
you wouldn't spend their time. -
7:36 - 7:40But if you understand how important
meaning is, you might do that. -
7:40 - 7:43In the next experiment,
we took this a step further. -
7:43 - 7:46We asked people to find
some letters in a sheet of paper. -
7:46 - 7:50And again they got more money
for the first sheet, then less for the second -
7:50 - 7:52and less for the third, and so on.
-
7:52 - 7:55And for some people we had
what we called the 'Meaningful Condition.' -
7:55 - 7:59We asked people to write their name on each sheet
and when they gave it to the experimenter, -
7:59 - 8:04the experimenter looked at it from top to bottom,
said "aha" and put it on the side. -
8:04 - 8:07In the second condition,
the experimenter didn't look at it. -
8:07 - 8:13There was no name, the experimenter just took it
from the participant and put it on the desk. -
8:13 - 8:16In the third condition,
the experimenter simply took the sheet -
8:16 - 8:24and directly put it
through a shredder. (Laughter) -
8:24 - 8:27Now, I should point out
that in this third condition, -
8:27 - 8:30when the page goes directly
into a shredder, nobody looks. -
8:30 - 8:31You could cheat. Right?
-
8:31 - 8:36You could be dishonest and do more sheets
for less money and put less effort into it. -
8:36 - 8:38What were the results?
-
8:38 - 8:40In the 'Acknowledged Condition'
- when we looked at it - -
8:40 - 8:45people worked all the way down
to 15 cents. They worked quite a lot. -
8:45 - 8:48In the 'Shredded Condition,'
people stopped much faster. -
8:48 - 8:53So people cared more about -- They enjoyed more
the labor in the 'Acknowledged Condition.' -
8:53 - 8:57What about the 'Ignored Condition'?
Where does it sit in the middle? -
8:57 - 9:00Is it close to the 'Acknowledged,'
the 'Shredded' or somewhere in the middle? -
9:00 - 9:04Well, very very close
to the 'Shredded Condition.' -
9:04 - 9:09So, I guess the good news here is
that if you want to motivate people, -
9:09 - 9:13simply looking at what they've done
and say, "I've acknowledged, -
9:13 - 9:16I've seen that you've done something,"
seems to be sufficient. -
9:16 - 9:19Even without the nice word
- just acknowledge people. -
9:19 - 9:23On the other hand, it turns out that
if you really want to demotivate people, -
9:23 - 9:26it's incredibly easy!
-
9:26 - 9:30Shredding, of course, is the optimal way
to demotivate people! If you want to. -
9:30 - 9:35But just ignoring what they're doing
gets you almost all the way there. -
9:35 - 9:38So this was all about demotivating people.
-
9:38 - 9:42There are lot's of ways to demotivate people,
and we should try to avoid those. -
9:42 - 9:43What about motivating people?
-
9:43 - 9:46What about the second part of this equation?
-
9:46 - 9:52And, for me the insight for this part
of the story came from IKEA. -
9:52 - 9:55So, I don't know about you,
but I have some IKEA furniture -- -
9:55 - 9:59and when I reflect back
on the experience, it turns out -
9:59 - 10:05that it took me a long time to assemble
these instructions, to assemble this furniture. -
10:05 - 10:08The instructions were not clear,
I would put things in the wrong place, -
10:08 - 10:12I would have to disassemble it --
But what I've also noticed -
10:12 - 10:16is that I keep on looking fondly
at this IKEA furniture. -
10:16 - 10:22We share something in common that I think
is more than just buying something in the store. -
10:22 - 10:25And you can wonder, "What happens when
you invest some of your love and effort -
10:25 - 10:29and attention, even frustration,
into something?" -
10:29 - 10:31Do you start loving it more?
-
10:31 - 10:35And there's an old story - it's kind of a nice story -
it's a story about cake mixes. -
10:35 - 10:37When they introduced cake mixes in the US,
-
10:37 - 10:41it turns out housewives
at the time did not accept them. -
10:41 - 10:45They had mixes for all kinds of things:
for muffins, for bread -- -
10:45 - 10:48Cake mixes, not so much.
And they wondered why? -
10:48 - 10:50The taste was perfectly fine.
-
10:50 - 10:54They found out that what was missing
was a feeling of labor. -
10:54 - 10:58If you basically put some water in the cake mix,
mix it together, put it in the oven -
10:58 - 11:02and the cake comes out --
You can't take credit for that! -
11:02 - 11:03(Laughter)
-
11:03 - 11:08If somebody comes and says, "Nice cake,
thank you!" you've not done anything! -
11:08 - 11:09So what did they do?
-
11:09 - 11:12They took the eggs and the milk out of it.
-
11:12 - 11:15(Laughter)
-
11:15 - 11:18Now you put the cake mix, you break
some eggs, you put some milk -- -
11:18 - 11:21Now it's your cake!
(Laughter) -
11:21 - 11:26(Applause)
-
11:26 - 11:29So, how do we test this idea?
-
11:29 - 11:32We started by asking people to build origami.
-
11:32 - 11:35We gave people instructions
on how to fold origami. -
11:35 - 11:37And these were people
who don't really know how to do origami, -
11:37 - 11:41so they came up with kind of
ugly origami, but that's OK. -
11:41 - 11:44And then we told them that
we actually owned that origami -
11:44 - 11:47and we asked them, "How much
would you pay for you to keep it?" -
11:47 - 11:51And we tried to measure how valuable
they thought this origami was. -
11:51 - 11:54And people loved
the origamis that they created. -
11:54 - 11:59(Laughter)
-
11:59 - 12:03Then we asked other people
that did not build that origami -
12:03 - 12:05what they thought about this origami --
-
12:05 - 12:07(Laughter)
-
12:07 - 12:10And they didn't like it as much.
-
12:10 - 12:15So the builders thought this origami was fantastic,
the evaluators not so much. -
12:15 - 12:18Now, the question is:
are the builders, in their mind, -
12:18 - 12:21do they think that they are
the only ones who love this origami? -
12:21 - 12:25So, do I look at this origami and say,
"Oh, this is mine, I think it's wonderful! -
12:25 - 12:29I know that nobody would like it,
but for me it's wonderful!" -
12:29 - 12:32No. They think everybody
would love it as much as they do. -
12:32 - 12:34(Laughter)
-
12:34 - 12:36The next thing was the IKEA effect,
right? The IKEA -- -
12:36 - 12:41What about the instructions?
What if the instructions are difficult and complex? -
12:41 - 12:46So we gave the easy instructions to some people
and for other people we hid what's on the top, -
12:46 - 12:49which is the manual of
what does a fold mean and so on. -
12:49 - 12:52So the hard instructions
were really baffling. -
12:52 - 12:54What happened now?
-
12:54 - 12:58So, first of all, we got the basic result:
the builders loved their own origami -
12:58 - 13:03more than the evaluators -- What happens
when the instructions are more difficult? -
13:03 - 13:10Now the builders love it even more,
and the evaluators dislike it even more. -
13:10 - 13:13Why? Because objectively
it was worse off! -
13:13 - 13:15So the evaluators saw the objective quality
-
13:15 - 13:19of these crumbled pieces of paper
and didn't like it as much; -
13:19 - 13:22the builders thought
it was even more fantastic! -
13:22 - 13:27So, not only is labor leading to love,
more labor and more effort -
13:27 - 13:30and more investment
leads to higher love. -
13:30 - 13:34I think you could also
think about kids this way. -
13:34 - 13:36So imagine
that you have kids and I ask you, -
13:36 - 13:38"How much would you
sell me your kids for?" -
13:38 - 13:41(Laughter)
-
13:41 - 13:44Your memory and attention,
and experience about them -- -
13:44 - 13:47And most people in a good day say,
"A lot of money!" -
13:47 - 13:50(Laughter)
-
13:50 - 13:52But imagine you didn't have your kids.
-
13:52 - 13:56And you went to the park, and you met
some kids very much like yours, -
13:56 - 13:58and you played with them for a few hours,
and then you were about to say goodbye, -
13:58 - 14:02and before you left, their parents said,
"By the way, you know, they're for sale!" -
14:02 - 14:06(Laughter)
-
14:06 - 14:09"How much would you pay for them?"
-
14:09 - 14:11Most people realize,
"not that much!" -
14:11 - 14:13(Laughter)
-
14:13 - 14:18And I think it's because the kids are really
kind of the optimal example for the IKEA effect. -
14:18 - 14:22(Laughter)
-
14:22 - 14:28(Applause)
-
14:28 - 14:32They are complex, they are difficult,
the instruction manual is not that good -- -
14:32 - 14:34(Laughter)
-
14:34 - 14:37We invest a lot of effort in them
and our tremendous love [for] them -
14:37 - 14:42is largely a part of us investing in them
rather than who they are. -
14:42 - 14:45These are, by the way, my kids,
who are wonderful! -
14:45 - 14:48And, not only are our kids wonderful,
-
14:48 - 14:54we don't understand that other people
don't see our kids in the way that we do. -
14:54 - 14:57So what do we have to say
about all of this? -
14:57 - 15:02There's kind of two competing theories
about labor: Adam Smith and Karl Marx. -
15:02 - 15:07Adam Smith gave us this wonderful example
of efficiency in the labor market. -
15:07 - 15:09He showed how you can take a pin factory
-
15:09 - 15:14and if you take one laborer who makes all steps,
all 12 steps to create a pin, -
15:14 - 15:16that's really inefficient.
-
15:16 - 15:21And if you break the job into 12 pieces
and each person does their own piece of the work, -
15:21 - 15:27the efficiency of the whole is incredibly increasing.
Dramatically increasing. -
15:27 - 15:32And that's really what the Industrial Revolution
has given us in terms of increasing productivity. -
15:32 - 15:36Karl Marx, on the other hand, told us
that it's about alienation of labor, -
15:36 - 15:38and how much do you
feel connected to your labor. -
15:38 - 15:42And these ideas are really standing
in opposition to each other. -
15:42 - 15:47Which one is more important? The efficiency
or the feeling of connection to the labor? -
15:47 - 15:50So if you think about taking a big job
and breaking it into pieces, -
15:50 - 15:54it might become more efficient.
But as you break it into pieces, -
15:54 - 15:57the people who do each of the pieces
don't feel connected, to the same degree, -
15:57 - 16:01to what they're doing.
So, which one is more important? -
16:01 - 16:06So, I think that in the Industrial Economy time
Smith was more correct than Marx. -
16:06 - 16:08There were tremendous efficiency gains.
-
16:08 - 16:11But what's happening now,
in the Knowledge Economy? -
16:11 - 16:15What happens when people
have more control over what they're doing? -
16:15 - 16:19When we want people to think about their labor
in the shower and talk to friends, -
16:19 - 16:21and when we want people to be fully engaged,
-
16:21 - 16:24and really immersed in what they're doing --
-
16:24 - 16:26I think that now things have changed.
In the Knowledge Economy, -
16:26 - 16:30I think the notion of Marx
is actually more important. -
16:30 - 16:33And it might be useful to sometimes sacrifice
-
16:33 - 16:37some efficiency for more meaning at work.
-
16:37 - 16:40So, you know, we have this
very simple model of labor, -
16:40 - 16:43which says that people work for money.
-
16:43 - 16:46And often we pay people just with this notion.
-
16:46 - 16:50But I think there are two things to consider:
the first one is that we care about -
16:50 - 16:53[many] more things than money.
We care about meaning, -
16:53 - 16:58we care about creation, challenge,
ownership, identity, pride, and so on -- -
16:58 - 17:02And the really good news about it is
that if we're able to create workplaces -
17:02 - 17:07that give people all of those things,
everybody would be better off. -
17:07 - 17:10The workplace would be better off,
the individual would be better off -- -
17:10 - 17:13It's a tremendous wonderful thing about
human nature that we can be motivated -
17:13 - 17:15by a whole range of aspects.
-
17:15 - 17:19The question is, how do we use
the workplace and society in general -
17:19 - 17:22to tap into all of those motivations?
-
17:22 - 17:23Thank you very much.
-
17:23 - 17:25(Applause)
- Title:
- Meaning in Labour - Dan Ariely at TEDxAmsterdam
- Description:
-
Despite our intentions, why do we so often fail to act in our own best interest? Why do we undervalue things that we've worked so hard to generate? What are the forces that influence our behavior? Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, is devoted to seek answers to these questions, in order to help people live a more sensible -- if not rational -- life.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDxTalks
- Duration:
- 17:31
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Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for Meaning in Labour - Dan Ariely at TEDxAmsterdam | ||
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Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for Meaning in Labour - Dan Ariely at TEDxAmsterdam | ||
Ivana Korom edited English subtitles for Meaning in Labour - Dan Ariely at TEDxAmsterdam | ||
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