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JoeW comments on SotW: Be Specific - Less Wrong
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Hmm. I'd understood that there was some pretty convincing evidence that offering cash incentives like this is counterproductive - it decreases creativity and effectiveness of troubleshooting. I don't have scholarly cites handy (I know there was a CMU/LSE study) but this is popularised in Dan Pink's "Drive". (There's a TED talk and a great RSAnimate video on this.)
I was interpreting this not as "do this because we will pay you", but rather as a way of signalling how much CMR cares about this being done well and quickly.
In the RSAnimate talk, Pink cited research that found that once people were doing the task (presumably under time pressure), higher incentives produced worse results.
That's different from using an incentive to get people to come do the task at all.
I noticed a similar flaw in some studies Dan Areily was citing to prove that incentive pay didn't work, and e-mailed him about it. He didn't have any counterarguments when he responded to me, but he did keep citing the studies IIRC...
Not offering money wasn't working, and if there are a few creative money-positive people reading this who try to pick up the free $500 bills, hopefully that's enough.
Mm, the studies looked at where people were assigned specific tasks and then given incentives for speed/volume results. It may be that it works differently when used as open-ended bait to motivate people to self-assign tasks.