The No-Cost Motivator – Helping Them Become More of Who They Are

Dr. Rhoads once helped conduct an experiment where experimenters asked students to perform a handwriting exercise. When the researchers asked the students to perform the exercise, they attempted to motivate the students in two different ways. One was to promise a reward that would follow the students’ performance: “If you do this handwriting exercise, you will get to choose any one of these rewards after you’re done!” The second method was to merely attribute a positive motivation to the student and offer no reward: “You look like the kind of person who would like to have good handwriting, and would be willing to practice it in order to improve.”

This second method is an effective persuasive tactic called “altercasting,” where the influence agent tells the prospect that the prospect appears to have positive motivations, and that the prospect is a good person for acting on those motivations. Phrases such as, “You seem like the type of person who…” or “Our data shows that you are…“ or “The American people have a justifiable desire to see more…” are all phrases that lead into altercasting tactics. Used correctly, altercasting enables people to tap into positive internal motivations for performing -and understanding why they perform -a particular activity. After being exposed to a successful altercasting tactic, people appear to say to themselves, “Yes, I suppose I am a good person, and the kind of person who would get involved in this sort of thing.”

When given a choice to practice their handwriting in the experiment, all the students completed the exercise of their own free will, whether or not they were offered a reward. This indicated that the task was intrinsically motivating to some degree-most people would probably like to have better handwriting. After the students completed the handwriting exercises, the researchers did not return for several days.

When the researchers returned, they asked students to compete an activity which was unrelated to handwriting. This second activity was contrived in such a way that students had a few minutes of unsupervised time during the experiment. During that break, the researchers told students they could do a couple of interesting things while they were waiting -one of which was to do some more of the handwriting exercises that were “left over from before.” Many students chose to do the handwriting exercises of their own free will, as opposed to reading magazines or waiting quietly for the researcher to return. When the researchers analyzed the quality of handwriting samples between the different conditions in the experiment, they discovered that the students in the altercasting condition put significantly more effort into their work, which was visible in the quality of their handwriting. On the other hand, the students who had been rewarded for practicing their handwriting showed lower quality work.

The results of this study weren’t unique. In fact, the study replicated what a number of other psychological studies had shown: that rewards appear to diminish desirable behaviors when the people being rewarded would have performed those activities anyway.

Implications for Grassroots and PAC Professionals

Remember my 20%solution – since 20% of your grassroots and PAC participants will produce 80% of your results, we must find ways to keep the true believers engaged. Your top 20% are usually intrinsically motivated, so habitually recognize them via altercasting.

Research shows that attention is one of the strongest of all motivators. The lack of internal mentors and coaches inside an organization makes attention as a recognition form more potent than ever before. We can provide it through the altercasting technique.

This is a technique that I teach in my “Motivating Team Leader” workshop. If you tell your top grassroots and PAC participants that you know they want to make a difference, and that you expect to hear of their positive results, etc., they are more likely to perform in that manner. However, this is problematic when you do not consistently meet with your advocates, or even have regular conference calls with your program participants. Contact and communication are essential.

Intrinsic Motivation

It appears that people take a cue from their own behaviors as to why they do what they do. Give someone a large reward for doing something they would have done anyway, and they will tend to think to themselves, “I must have done this for the large reward.” Give them a small reward or no reward at all for doing something they believe in, and they are more likely to draw the conclusion,

“I obviously didn’t do this for the reward, I did it because I believe in it.” And that is exactly the way we want people to think when it comes to pledging allegiance towards our PAC or grassroots causes. We are not advocating that you can obtain greater compliance by giving smaller rather than larger rewards, because there are many activities that are not internally motivating, and many people who are not internally motivated. It’s appropriate to reward these types of people for these types of activities. But don’t overlook the internal motivations of your committed participants. Here, recognition may be much more important than reward. When you are working with a group of committed and intrinsically motivated people, remember that over-rewarding can weaken their allegiance to the cause!

Rats And Humans Aren’t All That Different

Social scientists often learn a lot about how to motivate humans by learning a lot about how to motivate rats. Human motivation is remarkably similar to rats —and monkeys and dogs and amoebas and all other living beings. Social scientists that study rewards (Behaviorists) have noticed that a rat will work diligently at pressing a lever to receive a food reward under some conditions, and will work as little as possible for the same amount of food under other conditions.

As it turns out, rat productivity depends on the incentive that is in place. One instance that leads to an indolent rat is where he receives food after a fixed number of lever presses — the rat learns to count. If he is still hungry, he will constantly return to pressing at a leisurely pace to get his food until he is full. Then the rat will relax, smug in his knowledge that a predictable number of lever presses will bring him his next meal.

Another reward system that leads to a lazy rat is where he is confident that he will receive the reward after a minimal amount of work has been accomplished. Here, the rat learns to count and watch the clock. The rat will start pressing the lever at around the time he learned the reward may occur, and will press enough times to meet the minimum requirement. At times in which the rat does not expect a reward, he hits the beach to relax some more.

Reality Check: Do you ever wonder why you lose PAC and grassroots momentum? Could it be that your members know exactly when they should become more active with your PAC and grassroots, therefore lessening their interest as your rewards and incentives dissipate?

The industrious rat is the one who is uncertain of either the time or the effort required until the next food pellet drops, even though this rat receives just the same amount of food for his efforts that his food counting and clock watching peers do.

When a variable number of presses and a random amount of time passes, the rat will assiduously stay late at the office, tapping his lever and acquiring a store of food pellets.

Casinos as Exemplars of Motivation

If you cannot see that humans are rat like in their response to reward systems, observe the lever pulling behavior on your next trip to Las Vegas. I wonder if it was the first casino owners, rather than the first Behaviorists, who discovered that a fixed number of lever pulls did not get gamblers to relinquish their money as efficiently as those that kept the lever pulling humans in a state of uncertainty. The science tells us that humans (and all living organisms) will work harder for rewards that occur at variable time and effort intervals.

Reality Check: Perhaps the PAC or grassroots leader who sometimes rewards positive behavior and sometimes doesn’t is actually quite skilled at increasing member productivity. Of course, the ones who do not distinguish between positive behavior and all kinds of behavior undermine desirable behavior by doing so. All other things being equal, the leader who acknowledges only desirable behavior at sporadic intervals may confidently expect to see an increase in those behaviors.

The bottom line is to be always looking for the behavior you want more of. Catch someone doing something right.