The Laboratory for Comparative Social Research announces the next regular seminar, which will be held as a zoom session on March, 27 at 02:30 p.m. CET (04:30 p.m. Moscow time, GMT+3). Thomas Talhelm (University of Chicago Booth School of Business) will deliver a report "Some Evidence That The Power of Money to Motivate People is Stronger in Western Cultures".

To participate, please, register via the link.

Abstract

Psychology and the nudge movement have offered many ways to motivate people using framings like social norms and competition. Yet several head-to-head studies have found that simply paying people motivates them more than these psychological interventions. In this talk, I re-analyzed data from a mega study on incentives and found that the advantage of money over psychology was stronger among participants in the US than in India. My team then ran new studies to test how hard people in six countries worked in response to monetary incentives versus psychological motivators. The money advantage was larger in the US and UK than in China, India, Mexico, and South Africa (N = 8,133). Money was even more motivating when we randomly assigned 2,065 bilingual participants in India to take the study in English (52% more motivating) than in Hindi (27%). These findings contradict the standard economic intuition that people should work harder in societies that are less wealthy and where the same dollar will buy more goods. Instead, they suggest that the market mentality of exchanging time and effort for material benefits is most prominent in Western cultures.

The results of the study that will be discussed on the seminar can be found via the link.

Everyone interested is invited!

Working language is English.