TED Talk: "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us"

Summary

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In Dan Pink’s TED Talk, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, Pink explains that the previous thoughts about human motivation are actually wrong; as proven by experiments through history. Pink illustrates a study done at MIT to analyze the motivation humans embody. Subjects were given different sets of challenges such as memorizing digits, word puzzles, and physical tasks; additionally, three levels of rewards were set in front of them: a small reward, a medium reward, and a large cash prize. The study was then redone in Madurai, India, a rural part of the country, where it was discovered that higher incentives led to worse performance. In his speech, Pink speaks about how society today rewards the top performers, while the low performers are completely ignored. He then goes on to introduce ideas of different motivational tactics, though pointed out that there has to be a happy medium between extreme reward and a tiny red. Clearly, through his speech, Pink portrays that past ideas about human motivation have been proven wrong many times.

Response

Dan Pink’s “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” pushes his audience to ponder whether or not the ‘norms’ of today’s society are really true, by pointing out surprising truths about human motivation. A study conducted at MIT proved Pink’s point when subjects were given different sets of challenges, while they were enticed by three sets of rewards. The findings were interesting, “As long as the task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as expected. Once the task called for rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward led to poorer performance…once you get above rudimentary cognitive skill, it’s the other way around” ("RSA"). The exact same study was then performed in a rural part of Madurai, India, where money meant more. The three levels of rewards were then set to higher standards: two weeks of salary, one month of salary, and two months of salary. This time, the findings shocked scholars, with an outcome not previously hypothesized, “The people offered the medium reward did no better than the smaller reward, but the people offered the top reward did worst of all…higher incentives led to worse performance” ("RSA"). Pink continues to elaborate, “For simple, straight forward tasks, those kinds of incentives-if you do this, then you get that- they’re great. But when a task gets more complicated, when it requires some conceptual, creative thinking, those kind of motivators don’t work”("RSA"). Pink’s point is further proved in his novel, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, when he explains “The Puzzling Puzzles of Harry Harlow and Edward Deci”. 

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In the chapter, Pink talks about a professor of psychology, Harry F. Harlow, who studied primate behaviour. (picture) 


A simple experiment was conducted on the monkeys, seeing how fast they could solve a puzzle designed by Harlow himself. Pink writes, “Unbidden by any outside urging and unprompted by the experimenters, the monkeys began playing with the puzzles with focus, determination, and what looked like enjoyment...the primates had become quite adept. They solved the puzzles frequently and quickly; two-thirds of the time they cracked the code in less than sixty seconds” (Pink). Additionally mentioned, Edward Deci, a Carnegie Mellon University psychology graduate student conducted a study in the summer of 1969. 
Intrigued by motivation, Deci began to study motivation, becoming interested in the Soma puzzle cube. 

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Through his study with the cube, “Deci revealed that human motivation seemed to operate by laws that ran counter to what most scientists and citizens believed” (Pink). Through the speech, Pink describes the three factors that lead to better performance and personal satisfaction: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Autonomy is the desire to be self directed, while mastery is the urge to get better at ‘stuff’. Purpose is defined as the reason for which something is done. With the dry erase animations, the TED Talk entices visual learners, though it makes it a little harder for viewers to take notes because of the speed.  Through his speech, Dan Pink forces viewers to question what they really believe to be true, since the typical beliefs are not always what they seem to be.

Works Cited

"Links to Diverse Minds." Links to Diverse Minds. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. <http://www.learning-knowledge.com/links.html>.

Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2010. Print.

"RSA Animate - Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us." YouTube. YouTube, 01 Apr. 2010. Web. 21 Apr. 2014. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc>.

"Soma Cube." YouTube. YouTube, 17 June 2011. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1puc1JGKBac>.

"Soma Cube." YouTube. YouTube, 17 June 2011. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1puc1JGKBac>.

"Stock Photography and Stock Footage." Confused Clip Art Vector Graphics. 14,976 Confused EPS Clipart Vector and Stock Illustrations Available to Search from over 15 Royalty Free Illustration Companies. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. <http://www.fotosearch.com/clip-art/confused.html>.

"The Well of Despair." Glossi. Web. 22 Apr. 2014. <http://glossi.com/DioBrando/89132-the-well-of-despair>.