The Candle Problem

Feeling bored last night, I decided to watch some of the old TED videos and came across the one by Dan Pink. I had watched this before but decided to watch it again. It is titled  'The Puzzle of Motivation'. The main idea of this video is about a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. 

The Candle Problem 

There was an experiment done, titled 'The Candle Problem'. This experiment was done on two groups of people. One group was told to complete the task at their own pace. The other group was given incentives as a motivation factor. If you belong to the top 25 percentile of those who complete in the shortest time, you will be rewarded with $5. If you are the top, you will be rewarded $20. 

Each user was given a box of tacks, a candle, and some matches as per the image above. The instruction was to tack the candle to the wall and the wax must not get onto the table. The solution is shown below.

It was found that the incentivized group finished three and a half minutes slower than the un-incentivized group. 

Another experiment was conducted and this time, the layout in which the materials they were given changed to the image as shown below. You will notice the tacks are now outside the box. This experiment was done on two groups of people as per the first.

The result was the incentivized group figured out the problem much faster when the tacks were outside the box. This was because the task was straight forward and had a set of simple rules.

Conclusion
There is an obvious mismatch between what society imposes and what science knows. Now we know, incentives do not always bring the best out of people. Incentives work best if the task is straight forward and the rules are simple. In situations where creativity is required, this may not be the best technique to use. In future if we want to motivate someone to work more productively, we will know what to do if the task on hand requires one to think out of the box.