Why you should avoid motivating people just by Rewards?
As a User Experience designer, it’s my responsibility to create- simple yet amazing & engaging experiences for the clients. You need to be always up with the market trends, in this digital era. The boom in Gamification industry, the amount of gamified applications that are all over the place & the way everyone is talking about this term recently, excites me. In a desire to know more about it, I landed up taking a course on ‘Gamification: Motivation Psychology & The Art of Engagement’ by Rob Sutcliffe.
As it was my first ever online course, I had to choose a quick one first. I stumbled upon this 3 hrs course(4hrs including in between tea breaks :P) which included interesting content, stories & examples. Here are some of my key learnings and takeaways from this course.
Gamification is using game-based mechanics in a non gaming way.
The term ‘Gamification’ sounds cheap & has very limited intent. It is much beyond just games. It is an art of engaging your audience within your platform.
People tend to add game elements i.e. badges, points without a meaning around it, which are fascinating only for a short term engagement but eventually they get bored after a time, as the reason to take it up in the first place is lost now. Motivation is what makes us do something and engagement is how engaged we are while doing it.
Why we should avoid motivating people just by Rewards?
1. Cognitive Dissonance
People usually have inconsistent beliefs, thoughts, attitude, behaviours depending on the situation.
An experiment was conducted on students, where one set of students were asked to solve a simple but very boring block puzzle and to tell people that they enjoyed doing it. In return, they were given $1. The other set of students were asked to solve the same puzzle in return of $10. The students when were asked about their genuine feedback, the ones which did it for $1 said to actually enjoyed doing it compared to the other set of students.
This is because, in our brains we try to make sense of why we do things. The task was comparatively simple in return of $1, which made them think that they genuinely liked it. Smaller rewards convinces people more.
2. Introspection Illusion
A cognitive illusion in which people wrongly think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental states.
Ex.: If you show 2 pictures of 2 different people to someone (lets say its John) & ask him to choose one. After sometime if you slide a similar picture to him & ask “why did he choose this picture?”, he will actually start explaining the reason, unaware of the fact that it’s a completely different person’s picture.
This is because our memories are different from what we think about it now vs then. We don’t know what we want in future or why we did those things in the past. So, when John is asked for a reason, his brain tries to level it up & think that there must be some reason for his choice.
“Sometimes our actions are demonstrations of what we believe, but sometimes, our beliefs can be a justification of our actions.”
People seek for ‘Rewards’ but if you try to motivate them only by giving rewards i.e. toffees, badges or money, then you risk of reducing their longtime motivation, causing cognitive discomfort which is best as well as worst.
If not badges or toffees then what motivates us?
1. Dopamine Release
The first most and very important natural reward that motivates us is a Dopamine chemical that our body releases in our brain and tells us that we achieved our goal and helps us in moving on. This is absolutely essential to keep us alive, happy and make us feel good.
But when we get used to that one particular thing which makes us feel good, it turns into an addiction. One fact about addictions- Addictions are situational and not controlled by our brains. This is proven. The US Army who was addicted to Heroine drug when in Vietnam, when went back to US, no more wanted drugs. This shows the importance of Dopamine release for our living. Sometimes, we substitute goals with addiction for a regular Dopamine release.
2. Conditioned Reinforcement
It is a learned stimulus, a reinforcement that has been conditioned. We tend to learn and then unlearn the behaviour.
Conditioned Reinforcement is much stronger when its a random event.
Ex: A rat was kept in a box with a button inside it which when pushed each time, a food pellet would drop. Rat pushed the button continuously to grab food pellets. But this didn’t last long as rat gave up pushing the button. Then the button was programmed such that, food pellets would drop after every 4th push. Rat learnt that behaviour too and got exhausted soon. Then finally, the button was programmed with a random event. This time, food pallets would drop in a random order. In this case, rat continued pushing the button for much longer time.
3. Intrinsic & Extrinsic Motivation
- To climb this hierarchy, we need to accomplish things at the bottom levels first before moving to the next level.
- There is a concept called Hedonic Treadmill which is, once you have certain amount of money & you go beyond it, you get addicted to dopamine buzz & you will get less dopamine every time you get more money.
“People oriented towards autonomy & intrinsic motivation have higher self-esteem, better interpersonal relationships & greater general well-being than those who are extrinsically motivated.” by Daniel H.Pink, Drive
4. Motivating with Extrinsic Rewards
- Status- is the most powerful extrinsic reward. It makes us feel more important. Ex: Gold/ Premium cards for extra privileges on shopping, flying etc. Status can be a great motivator but not much of an engager. When status successfully engages people, it has an intrinsic motivator underneath. Hence, using it as a reward is not completely ethical.
- Social Proof- is the comfort of belonging to the community.
“It is easier to replicate what people like us do, when they are in a same situation like us.”
Ex. i)Booking.com: shows a small message in a box which flashes ‘ 23 people are currently looking at this property right now’ or ‘Recent booking for this property was today!’ So people think this must be a great buy hence, the percentage of people buying that property increases.
ii) Chef Recommended: In a restaurant’s menu, items having this tag has 13–20% more sales than other dishes.
Four Intrinsic Motivators that allows us to get into the flow
1. Mastery
(Progress of learning ex.: improving piano playing by practice)
- We need Instant Feedback on our task. Even a simple feedback would help, letting us know how good or bad we did.
- Setting Rules let us be more creative and explorative, helping us getting into the state of flow & get motivated.
- Increasing Difficulty Level at every stage increases the anxiety & hence motivates to perform more. Dopamine release at this point is immense.
- Completing Small Milestones gives sense of achievement. Ex.: LinkedIn progress bar.
- More the fun, more the engagement. We can only master at something if we Desire to do it and genuinely care about it.
2. Meaning
(Free sharing of knowledge without getting paid for it ex.: Wikipedia)
- Unless you inspire people with your intent, you cannot engage people and expect them to continue doing the task for a longer time.
- Creating meaning is creating a story. Stories hijack your brain and makes you feel like you are in it. Hence, more the flow-more the meaning-more the engagement.
“One death is a tragedy, while million is a statistics.”
While creating a task, we are not to give statistics, we need to put an individual as a hero in the task and build a story around him to let him connect more.
3. Autonomy
(Freedom of making choice)
- People want to Contribute to the community. They want to Listen to each other. They want to Fail and not handheld.
Ex. Ikea furniture- When people build a furniture by themselves, there is an excitement, a feeling of achievement & accomplishment. People love that feeling. - Status see-saw: With your friends, you always have ‘status see-saw’, you mock them, they mock you back. You respect them, you get respect back.
4. Community
(Hangout with friends)
- You will learn more about your colleague in a 1hr activity than an entire conversation in a year.
- Humans are social animals. We crave for connection. We feel more attached with someone who asks us for an advice. They will like us more if we help them.
Wrapping up
Though motivation & engagement goes hand in hand, but there are times when they are in direct conflict with each other. The thing which motivates us to read more, is the thing which engages us the least. Ex.: You are more curious and motivated to read a blog called ‘10 most mysterious theories’, as it sounds interesting, but at the same time, you know you don’t have to engage with that topic further.
It is easy to measure the number of people who read a blog but it is very difficult to measure how many were engaged while reading the post. Some applications are only focused on motivating people to do their tasks (mostly short tasks), thats why badges, points are so popular. To measure short term motivation, they do well, but in a long term, they fail. As an engagement is a really hard parameter to measure, you should focus your applications on how to keep your audience more engaged than only motivating them to take up the desired task.
