Dan Pink - The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

When we think about incentives, most of us probably assume that the idea that they incentivize is deeply circular (though trivially true), but it turns out the human mind is far more convoluted and interesting than that. If we think of the human mind as evolving over eons of time to solve various overlapping evolutionary problems, then any linear and simplistic theory of human psychology and motivation is bound to fail.

As the following animation of a lecture given by Dan Pink shows, a growing body of research in the social sciences and behavioral economics seems to be suggesting that the classic model of pay-for-performance (that condescending and fraudulent justification for exorbitant CEO compensation) gets it all backwards, but the devil, as always, is in the details, and the details are fascinating :)

Those socialist commies... :)
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