Most managers know that pay matters. Fewer act on what the research says about attention. In an October essay, behavioral economist Dan Ariely, a frequent TED speaker, argues that acknowledging people’s work is among the cheapest motivational tools available, and one of the most neglected.
The Evidence Behind the Idea
Ariely builds the case from several directions. In his own experiments with Emir Kamenica and Drazen Prelec, participants who watched their Lego figures being dismantled built roughly seven on average, compared with about 11 when their work was stored. In a letter-finding task, people whose sheets were acknowledged kept working until pay dropped to about 15 cents a sheet, while those whose sheets were ignored or shredded quit near 28 and 29 cents.
He also cites work by other researchers. A 2008 study by Grant found that university fundraisers who met a scholarship recipient raised more money afterward. A 2013 study by Chandler and Kapelner found that crowdworkers labeling medical images worked more, and more carefully, when told the images were for cancer research. Later studies by Cassar and Meier, and by Hu and Hirsh, found that people report accepting lower pay for meaningful work.
Ariely’s own record is long, and readers can trace it through his writing for PBS NewsHour and in his books.
Why Managers Miss It
The essay’s sharpest observation concerns prediction. When other people were asked to forecast the letter-task results, they expected meaning to matter much less than it did. If managers share that blind spot, it helps explain why organizations stack up reorganizations, output dashboards and compliance checks without asking what those routines signal. To the person on the receiving end, a review that checks form but ignores content can look a lot like a shredder.
Ariely’s account of his own team’s experience makes the same point on a small scale. A thorough report produced only a note about mismatched identification numbers, and the team was less willing to invest effort the next time. The published research behind his broader argument is indexed on Google Scholar for readers who want to check it.
What Dan Ariely Recommends
The suggested fixes are almost embarrassingly cheap. Stop discarding work when you do not have to. Acknowledge what you receive, even with a short message saying it was read. Explain decisions, respond thoughtfully to proposals, and show people how their work shaped an outcome.
The essay also points to a modern risk. Fast, disposable output, including drafts produced by AI tools, leaves little attention for any single piece of work. Coverage of Ariely’s argument has noted that this is an extension of his research rather than a settled finding, but it is a question managers will face whether or not the data are complete.
A related theme appears in civic life. The Pirate Party slate that Ariely joined as a Knesset candidate describes its platform as ongoing citizen participation between election days, which is a statement about the party’s platform rather than a claim about his research.
For managers, the lesson of the essay stays practical. Before adding a new incentive, check whether the old ones are being undermined by silence.
Leave a Reply