Be wary of "if-then" rewards on creative work

Contingent rewards can narrow focus and dull performance on complex tasks.

Why it works

Pink highlights that "if you do X, you get Y" rewards work well for narrow, algorithmic tasks but can impair performance on tasks needing creativity or open-ended thinking. The reward narrows attention toward the payoff and away from exploration, and can crowd out the intrinsic interest that complex work depends on.

How to do it

1. Reserve contingent rewards for genuinely rote, well-defined tasks.
2. For creative work, favor a baseline of fair pay plus autonomy over per-task bonuses.
3. Use rewards as recognition after the fact rather than as a dangled carrot.

Evidence

Experimental work — including studies on rewards impairing performance on tasks requiring even rudimentary cognitive skill, and the overjustification literature — supports the limits of if-then rewards for complex tasks. Ariely and colleagues’ "large stakes and big mistakes" experiments demonstrate that unusually high contingent rewards can actually degrade performance on tasks that require cognitive skill. (rct)

The reward-impairs-performance finding is real but bounded and has been debated; it does not mean pay doesn’t matter, and effects depend heavily on task type.

Sources

• Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627-668.
• Lepper, M. R., Greene, D., & Nisbett, R. E. (1973). Undermining children's intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward: A test of the "overjustification" hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28(1), 129-137.
• Ariely, D., Gneezy, U., Loewenstein, G., & Mazar, N. (2009). Large stakes and big mistakes. The Review of Economic Studies, 76(2), 451-469.

Common mistake

Using bonuses and prizes to motivate creative or complex work, which can backfire by narrowing focus and undermining the intrinsic interest the work needs.