{"title":"Do financial incentives help or harm performance in interesting tasks?","authors":"Ji Hyun Kim, B. Gerhart, Meiyu Fang","doi":"10.5465/AMBPP.2019.12281ABSTRACT","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"There continues to be disagreement about whether financial incentives help or harm performance, especially in interesting tasks. Although the Jenkins, Mitra, Gupta, and Shaw (1998) meta-analysis finds a positive effect of incentives, including in interesting tasks (reported ρ ^ = +.34; our computed δ = +.79), a more recent and widely cited meta-analysis by Weibel et al. (2010) reports, in contrast, a negative effect (δ = -.13) of incentives on performance in interesting tasks. Thus, the effect size for interesting tasks differs by .92 standard deviation (SD) between the two meta-analyses, a very large difference. We incorporate primary studies from these two meta-analyses and other sources in a new, more complete meta-analysis of incentives-performance in interesting and noninteresting tasks. We also examine additional key moderators (incentive intensity, how motivation-driven performance is, and autonomy). We find that the incentives-performance relationship is positive in both interesting (δ = +.58) and noninteresting tasks (δ = +.52). In addition, we find that the positive incentives-performance relationship is robust to not only task interest, but also to incentive intensity, how motivation-driven performance is, and autonomy. However, the incentives-performance relationship is less positive for performance measured as quality, especially in interesting tasks. We provide suggestions for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":169654,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of applied psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2019-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"The Journal of applied psychology","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2019.12281ABSTRACT","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
There continues to be disagreement about whether financial incentives help or harm performance, especially in interesting tasks. Although the Jenkins, Mitra, Gupta, and Shaw (1998) meta-analysis finds a positive effect of incentives, including in interesting tasks (reported ρ ^ = +.34; our computed δ = +.79), a more recent and widely cited meta-analysis by Weibel et al. (2010) reports, in contrast, a negative effect (δ = -.13) of incentives on performance in interesting tasks. Thus, the effect size for interesting tasks differs by .92 standard deviation (SD) between the two meta-analyses, a very large difference. We incorporate primary studies from these two meta-analyses and other sources in a new, more complete meta-analysis of incentives-performance in interesting and noninteresting tasks. We also examine additional key moderators (incentive intensity, how motivation-driven performance is, and autonomy). We find that the incentives-performance relationship is positive in both interesting (δ = +.58) and noninteresting tasks (δ = +.52). In addition, we find that the positive incentives-performance relationship is robust to not only task interest, but also to incentive intensity, how motivation-driven performance is, and autonomy. However, the incentives-performance relationship is less positive for performance measured as quality, especially in interesting tasks. We provide suggestions for future research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).