Team Production with Gift Exchange
Each of the three NY Times articles that we read prior to starting this week's blog posts had something to do with an economic principle, such as equality, altruism, and gift exchange. The articles featured experiments or observations of people, often children, to determine how otherwise uninfluenced individuals react to certain situations. I found these articles to be interesting, and the examples to be helpful in better understanding the underlying concepts. I will briefly summarize each article before making a personal connection to some of the topics they covered.
The first article, entitled "How to Get Rich to Share the Marbles," discusses the idea that a feeling of collective effort by humans leads to natural sharing of wealth. The author used an example of children playing with a toy that dispenses marbles when a collective effort is used to pull ropes that are holding the marbles back. In this example, one child earns 3 marbles while the other earns only 1. However, even young children recognized the value of each others' effort, and the child with 3 marbles redistributed the wealth so that they each ended with 2 more often than not. On the other hand, when the marbles are distributed to individuals regardless of effort or work put into obtaining them, there is not as much of an inclination to share wealth. Without the feeling of collectivism, individuals are more likely to feel personally entitled to what they earned. The author also applies this to the economy of the past century and claims that financial equality was much more common in times of collectivism such as World War 2. He suggests that changes are made to the procedural fairness of wealth distribution. I think this is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how much practical sense it would make in today's world. In my opinion, people today are so entrenched in the mindset that what they earn is theirs and that no one should be able to take that away from them. Due to that mindset, it would be hard pressed to get people to share more of the wealth even with a major event that spurned a need for collectivism.
The second article deals with strategies for explaining unfairness to children using game theory. The author claims that humans have an developed an evolutionary construct of a demand for fairness. Even young children recognize what is fair/unfair and seek to be treated fairly, says the author. The author suggests strategies such as "I cut, you pick," "Tit for Tat," "Random Dictator," and "Auction," to appease children who are struggling with the unfair nature of the world around them. The article was interesting to me because I can remember being a kid and being subjected to some of these strategies. I distinctly remember my parents often using something that resembled the "Tit for Tat" method when doing chores such as collecting the trash from small trash cans around the house. I would do the upstairs rooms while my sister would handle the ones from the ground floor. I think this worked for the most part, albeit the fact that my parents used the phrase "Because I said so," much more frequently than any of these game theory strategies. Because of that, I learned that life is just inherently unfair sometimes.
The third article deals with the concept of altruism and the difference in results when morals are used as motivation versus economic or financial motivators. The author claims that people are naturally moral people and that without the presence of an economic incentive, will help one another and do the thing that is viewed as morally "good." He says that when an economic incentive is introduced, people lose their sense of reciprocity to do good and begin asking "What's in this for me?" While reading the article, I found myself disagreeing with the author. I was thinking that people don't naturally act as though they are looking through the "moral lens," as he described, but rather that everything people do is motivated by self-interest and potential financial gain/loss. This may be a cynical view of the world, but by the end of the article the author acknowledges that economic thinking has become the natural way we perform social analysis in today's world. That statement made me feel better about my cynical opinion of people in general.
This last article made me think about a situation I have been dealing with over the past few weeks within the student organization that I am a part of. As one of the Vice Presidents, one of my responsibilities in the organization is to monitor attendance at major events such as our full team meetings and ultimately try to ensure that individuals are committed to the organization. Since the start of the semester, I had been seeing a general decline in attendance for these bi-weekly meetings. Like most student organizations, the economic incentive of being a part of the organization and showing commitment is difficult to see, at least in the short term. The idea behind any student organization is that the purpose of the organization is something that interests you personally. As my organization is a "pre-professional" organization, the idea is that it also serves the purpose of preparing one for a future career and that it adds something to one's resume. But, each individual's propensity to be committed to the organization for those reasons is varied from individual to individual.
To deal with the declining attendance, I decided to take an approach that, after reading the article, fits into both a moral lens and an economic lens. I reached out to each member of the organization via email, providing them with their personal attendance record. I included number of meetings attended, number of excused absences, and number of unexcused absences. I also included a personal note about how their attendance up to that point was good or bad, and how it affected our organization. Finally, for those whose attendance was less than ideal, I reminded them that if unexcused absences continued to happen, they may be subject to small fines (which was something we outlined at the start of the semester as a potential consequence). There were only a few people that were close to the pre-determined threshold where fines would start to be implemented, but I thought it apt to remind them of the policy. Unsurprisingly, the next full team meeting was the highest attended meeting of the semester. I'd like to think that my personal reach out to each member played a role in that. It is difficult to say whether the moral lens or economic lens played a larger role in the stunt in attendance, but I'd like to think it was a combination of both. I think that personally telling each member how their commitment to the organization is important helped them want to come to the meetings due to the ideals of reciprocity and goodwill, but the reminded of the potential financial loss may have been the greater motivator. Either way, I think that this personal experience helps contextualize Brooks' idea of altruism and taught me a valuable lesson in team motivation and performance.
The first article, entitled "How to Get Rich to Share the Marbles," discusses the idea that a feeling of collective effort by humans leads to natural sharing of wealth. The author used an example of children playing with a toy that dispenses marbles when a collective effort is used to pull ropes that are holding the marbles back. In this example, one child earns 3 marbles while the other earns only 1. However, even young children recognized the value of each others' effort, and the child with 3 marbles redistributed the wealth so that they each ended with 2 more often than not. On the other hand, when the marbles are distributed to individuals regardless of effort or work put into obtaining them, there is not as much of an inclination to share wealth. Without the feeling of collectivism, individuals are more likely to feel personally entitled to what they earned. The author also applies this to the economy of the past century and claims that financial equality was much more common in times of collectivism such as World War 2. He suggests that changes are made to the procedural fairness of wealth distribution. I think this is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how much practical sense it would make in today's world. In my opinion, people today are so entrenched in the mindset that what they earn is theirs and that no one should be able to take that away from them. Due to that mindset, it would be hard pressed to get people to share more of the wealth even with a major event that spurned a need for collectivism.
The second article deals with strategies for explaining unfairness to children using game theory. The author claims that humans have an developed an evolutionary construct of a demand for fairness. Even young children recognize what is fair/unfair and seek to be treated fairly, says the author. The author suggests strategies such as "I cut, you pick," "Tit for Tat," "Random Dictator," and "Auction," to appease children who are struggling with the unfair nature of the world around them. The article was interesting to me because I can remember being a kid and being subjected to some of these strategies. I distinctly remember my parents often using something that resembled the "Tit for Tat" method when doing chores such as collecting the trash from small trash cans around the house. I would do the upstairs rooms while my sister would handle the ones from the ground floor. I think this worked for the most part, albeit the fact that my parents used the phrase "Because I said so," much more frequently than any of these game theory strategies. Because of that, I learned that life is just inherently unfair sometimes.
The third article deals with the concept of altruism and the difference in results when morals are used as motivation versus economic or financial motivators. The author claims that people are naturally moral people and that without the presence of an economic incentive, will help one another and do the thing that is viewed as morally "good." He says that when an economic incentive is introduced, people lose their sense of reciprocity to do good and begin asking "What's in this for me?" While reading the article, I found myself disagreeing with the author. I was thinking that people don't naturally act as though they are looking through the "moral lens," as he described, but rather that everything people do is motivated by self-interest and potential financial gain/loss. This may be a cynical view of the world, but by the end of the article the author acknowledges that economic thinking has become the natural way we perform social analysis in today's world. That statement made me feel better about my cynical opinion of people in general.
This last article made me think about a situation I have been dealing with over the past few weeks within the student organization that I am a part of. As one of the Vice Presidents, one of my responsibilities in the organization is to monitor attendance at major events such as our full team meetings and ultimately try to ensure that individuals are committed to the organization. Since the start of the semester, I had been seeing a general decline in attendance for these bi-weekly meetings. Like most student organizations, the economic incentive of being a part of the organization and showing commitment is difficult to see, at least in the short term. The idea behind any student organization is that the purpose of the organization is something that interests you personally. As my organization is a "pre-professional" organization, the idea is that it also serves the purpose of preparing one for a future career and that it adds something to one's resume. But, each individual's propensity to be committed to the organization for those reasons is varied from individual to individual.
To deal with the declining attendance, I decided to take an approach that, after reading the article, fits into both a moral lens and an economic lens. I reached out to each member of the organization via email, providing them with their personal attendance record. I included number of meetings attended, number of excused absences, and number of unexcused absences. I also included a personal note about how their attendance up to that point was good or bad, and how it affected our organization. Finally, for those whose attendance was less than ideal, I reminded them that if unexcused absences continued to happen, they may be subject to small fines (which was something we outlined at the start of the semester as a potential consequence). There were only a few people that were close to the pre-determined threshold where fines would start to be implemented, but I thought it apt to remind them of the policy. Unsurprisingly, the next full team meeting was the highest attended meeting of the semester. I'd like to think that my personal reach out to each member played a role in that. It is difficult to say whether the moral lens or economic lens played a larger role in the stunt in attendance, but I'd like to think it was a combination of both. I think that personally telling each member how their commitment to the organization is important helped them want to come to the meetings due to the ideals of reciprocity and goodwill, but the reminded of the potential financial loss may have been the greater motivator. Either way, I think that this personal experience helps contextualize Brooks' idea of altruism and taught me a valuable lesson in team motivation and performance.
Let me take on some of your word usage before getting to the meat of your post. In the first sentence you talked about these things as economic principles. I would say they are more sociology then economics and perhaps are ethical in nature. The point is to go beyond the narrow homo economicus approach and that useful to do, especially at a workplace where people want to be there.
ReplyDeleteThen you repeatedly used the the term collectivism, which is a euphemism for communism, so it means something other than how you are using it here. Different expressions you might use are - being civic minded, being socially responsible, or having a sense of community.
Now as to your post, your parents are human beings so sometimes taking the expeditious route - because I said so - trumps the more educative approach of developing your moral character and that of your siblings. I have to say in my own upbringing, i tended to differentiate household chores - watering the plants or taking in the garbage cans - from personal obligation - keeping my room that I shared with my brother reasonably neat. I learned to do the former but not the latter. It is tough to say based on these pieces why that is, but I do believe to this day that I can do what I want in my own space and that is different than what I do elsewhere.
A few times you talked about what is natural. I wonder if you might rethink that by at at least temporarily maintaining the hypothesis that the social environment is all that matters. In this hypothesis, if everyone else is selfish you will be too. If everyone else is generous and socially responsible, then you'll behave that way. If this hypothesis were right then where you conclude that things are natural, it may be only that you have experienced only one sort of social environment and not another.
There is a great coming of age movie called <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078902/>Breaking Away</a> that if you haven't seen I'd encourage you to watch. The main character goes through some evolution in his beliefs. First he is very idealistic. Then he experiences betrayal and become despondent. After that he rebounds some, and finds a better balance where there is still some idealism but less denying of reality. I mention this because it pains me to see students embrace such a cynical perspective at such a young age.
Might it be that if you do a random act of kindness with some members of your RSO that they will reciprocate in kind. That strategy you took with your members might be called the monitoring approach. It can work near term, but the next time around it might take double the effort to produce the same sort of result. One of the papers for the course project - the one by Akerlof And Kranton - says that tight monitoring by managers encourages employees to feel they are outsiders (so they are not trusted). Loose monitoring, in contrast, helps the employees become insiders and thus builds the trust. The Jonathan Haidt experiments with sharing the marbles are all one off situations. The implicit contracts stuff that your team wrote about is ongoing where immediate reciprocation is not necessary but down the road it is. You might reflect on what circumstances can produce an effective implicit contract, that would create an environment where sharing and altruism became the norm.
Your comment on your experience dealing with your shared room when growing up made me think about a common problem that many college students deal with - living with a roommate. I currently live in an apartment with one other guy and we have now lived together for over a year. My strategy for dealing with shared spaces is much like yours was when living in the same room as your brother. I do my best to keep the shared spaces such as the bathroom or kitchen as clean and neat as possible, or at least I clean up the messes I make. But in my own room, things are a bit less organized and tidy because I am the only one in that space. For the most part, I think my roommate shares the opinion I do on shared spaces, but sometimes doesn't clean up as frequently as I do. Once in a while I get frustrated and end up cleaning up his dishes or personal items and I think that there is a slight imbalance on the upkeep of the apartment. I usually justify this imbalance by the thought that when we are done living together he may realize how much more to keep the place clean and organized I did than he did when his future apartment isn't as tidy. Ultimately, it isn't a problem because we are good friends, a benefit of living with someone you know well.
ReplyDeleteI will try to check out the movie you recommended at some point. I'll admit that I probably have a more cynical view of the world than is healthy for my age, but I generally don't think it affects how I act or treat people. I think it comes out a bit more when I am thinking about and writing these blog posts.
I'll also keep in mind the idea of random acts of kindness with my RSO. I think it may be difficult to transition to loose monitoring, but it is also a good idea. The problem I mentioned in my post about attendance only involves maybe 25% of the organization. Individuals who have poor attendance are generally repeat offenders, while the other 75% is committed and has strong attendance. Maybe I should try talking to those 2 groups separately to see what motivates them to attend meetings vs. why they aren't as motivated for those who are consistently absent. However it also might be possible that those 25% just realized that they aren't actually as interested in the organization as they were at the beginning of the semester when they applied, interviewed, and were admitted. This is probably similar to the problem that occurs with attendance in our class. People get busy and prioritize their tasks and responsibilities different than others.
First, it could be true that people today have more the mindset of 'what I earn is mine', however I still believe that the majority would share a bit of their wealth. Maybe not by agreeing to tax the more wealthier people, but we see a lot of crowdfundings etc. the last couple of years. When something horrible happens such as the hurricanes last months, people are willing to give money and share their wealth with the people who need it. Besides, it's so easy to create a crowdfunding online and often people donate money.
ReplyDeleteThe second article about the game theory reminds me too about my childhood. The 'I said so' sentence hasn't been used by my parents but I can imagine that it can feel unfair in some cases. I can't really remember how my parents treated me if I needed to clean up my toys, but with 2 brothers it ended sometimes in a fight about who had to clean up the most.
In my post I also disagreed with the author about the strength of economic incentive as you do too in this post. And your example kind of confirms it. I believe that economic incentives isn't always the best solution to get things done, but in your example it seems like a good choice. However, the people who never come to the meetings and then come to the meeting because of the fines, do they add much to these meetings? From my experiences, it is sometimes even better to the motivated people in the group who are motivated because they truly are and not because they are scared to get fines. It is hard to determine how far a president should go in monitoring their members. In my student organization back home, it is assumed to be at all required meetings/drinks and if you are never coming you are not only affecting the organization but mostly yourself because other members are going to dislike you. So sometimes social pressure can help too, but I agree with you that economic consequences are needed in certain cases.