Do Performance-Contingent Incentives Help or Hinder Divergent Thinking?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kachelmeier, Steven J.; Webb, R. Alan; Williamson, Michael G.
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; University of Waterloo; University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• 刊物名称: ACCOUNTING REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0001-4826
• DOI: 10.2308/TAR-2020-0751
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 229-248
• 关键词: monetary incentives; pressure; motivation; creativity; choking; insight; rewards

摘要

Toward the goal of reconciling conflicting arguments on whether performance -based incentives facilitate or impede divergent thinking, we identify a feature common to prior demonstrations of negative incentive effects: they generally involve tasks with only one correct solution. Our first experiment replicates a negative incentive effect when insight problems require bottom -up divergent thinking from an unexpected resource to the problem it is uniquely equipped to solve, whereas our second experiment finds a positive incentive effect in the more general case of problems that enable top -down divergent thinking from a problem to multiple potential solutions. We also observe a positive incentive effect in a third experiment that measures the time needed to generate a solution to problems that have multiple potential solutions and in a fourth experiment in which participants design insight problems. Overall, our findings suggest that any harmful effects of performance -based incentives are likely restricted to highly constrained settings.