Incentives for creativity

Sanjiv Erat1, Uri Gneezy1

We investigate whether piece-rate and competitive incentives affect creativity, and if so, how the incentive effect depends on the form of the incentives. We find that while both piece-rate and competitive incentives lead to greater effort relative to a base-line with no incentives, neither type of incentives improve creativity relative to the base-line. More interestingly, we find that competitive incentives are in fact counter-productive in that they reduce creativity relative to baseline condition. In line with previous literature, we find that competitive conditions affect men and women differently: whereas women perform worse under competition than the base-line condition, men do not.

Exp Econ (2016) 19:269–280

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

1 Comment
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
paul walter
paul walter
8 years ago

So, people work better when they are relaxed, “included” and confident and interested in the cause, but are too tense in an authoritarian situation?

I wonder how some folk around here who have posted very recently on legal matters would feel about that?