Dopamine at work

Motivational speakers and workplace analysts will often speak of the “carrot or stick” approaches to business. It comes down to either you can motivate your staff with the promise of reward (the carrot) or with the threat of punitive action (the stick); either way you are crediting the people who work with you with the same levels of cognition as creatures who walk on four legs, poop where they stand, have some degree of infestation at any given moment, and can’t dress themselves. Granted, there are some people who meet those criteria but for the most part this is selling your fellow workers short. Furthermore, as a new study shows, this kind of thinking misses the point that each person, each worker, is different…even down to their brain chemistry.

You might think for instance that all people would respond positively to the promise of a monetary bonus but this new research shows that is not the case and it shows why.

The study involved people completing a computer task requiring lots of concentration. In the task an arrow appears on the screen pointing either left or right. The word “left” or “right” is written in the middle of the arrow. The subjects were asked to ignore the direction pointed to by the arrow and to report only the direction described by the word. Half of the time people were promised 15 cents per correct answer while the rest of the time they received only one cent per correct answer. If more money affected all people in the same way then when 15 cents was on offer you would expect everyone to do better on the task.

This was not the case.

Yes, some people did better when more money was available but there was a group of people who actually did worse. Positron Emission Tomography was used to measure levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain and the results and correlations were significant. Those with low dopamine levels prior to the experiment did better when offered a higher reward while those with higher ambient dopamine levels did worse when a bonus reward was on offer.

The biochemical theory says that promise of a reward provides a spurt of dopamine into a part of the brain called the striatum. However, when dopamine levels are already high the extra dopamine in the striatum has no effect on performance. This study only shows the effect exists for a task requiring focus and whether it applies to tasks that require creativity or flexibility remains to be shown.

What it does show however, is that there is no one-size-fits-all motivational tool that you can use. Sorry managers everywhere, you just have to get to know the people you work with, but maybe that’s not too onerous a task after all.