https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgKKPQiRRag
Punishment and reward are common actions taken to alter others’ behaviors. Your parents probably gave them to you as a child whether it was spanking you when you cursed at the dinner table or rewarding you with allowance after completing your chores. In cases like these, incentives and motivation work to change one’s behavior for the better. But does there come a point where the incentive can actually change the behavior negatively, such as worsening performance at certain tasks?
Daniel Karpantschof, a activist, screenwriter, business consigliere, and serial entrepreneur, observed an experiment in which people from both America and India were tested to see the effects of incentives. In the first test, people with the same mechanical skills were each given a different monetary incentive. This experiment’s results showed that the higher the monetary incentive, the better the performance. However when this test was applied to jobs that focus on cognitive skill, as the reward increased, the performance decreased.
The fact that incentive doesn’t improve cognitive performance is widely accepted, however the reasoning behind this behavior change is controversial. There are many different theories as to why incentives work for mechanical tasks and not for cognitive tasks. One of these theories states that those who have higher level jobs look for something more than just income in their work. In work, people value autonomy, mastery, and purpose. We aren’t motivated by profit alone, therefore, the incentive may not be as important to people who already have high paying jobs than those with low-paying jobs. Also,I believe that trying to increase productivity on cognitive work is harder than increasing that of mechanical work because the worker might get tunnel-vision. With a low-skill and menial job, the tasks are fairly straight forward and consistent. With a job such a journalism or marketing, the tasks require creative and thoughtful thinking, when this is rushed, most get tunnel-vision which can cause their work to be hindered.
http://www.indiana.edu/~p1013447/dictionary/incent.htm
https://explorable.com/incentive-theory-of-motivation
I have to disagree that incentives do no matter for acts of cognition. I have to say this is because everything we do is for an incentive. Nobody just does something just to do it. There is always a reason behind something. I learned about this in economics class. I do agree that the higher the incentive the more likely for someone to perform the requested duty. It has to do with the opportunity cost for someone to do something. What are they getting and what are they giving up. Nothing is free, because you are constantly losing time if you are not losing something else.