The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home. Dan Ariely

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СКАЧАТЬ picked the Simon game at random. In this game, one of the four colored buttons lights up and plays a single musical tone. Nitin was supposed to press the lighted button. Then the device would light the same button followed by another one; Nitin would press those two buttons in succession; and so on through an increasing number of buttons. As long as Nitin remembered the sequence and didn’t make any mistakes, the game kept going and the length of the sequence increased. But once Nitin got a sequence wrong, the game would end and Nitin’s score would be equal to his largest correct sequence. In total, Nitin was allowed ten tries to reach the desired score.

      “Now let me tell you what good and very good mean in this game,” Ramesh continued. “If you manage to correctly repeat a sequence of six steps on at least one of the ten times you play, that’s a good level of performance and will earn you twenty rupees. If you correctly repeat a sequence of eight steps, that’s a very good level of performance and you will get forty rupees. After ten attempts, we will begin the next game. Is everything clear about the game and the rules for payment?”

      Nitin was quite excited about the prospect of earning so much money. “Let’s start,” he said, and so they did.

      The blue button was the first to light up, and Nitin pressed it. Next came the yellow button, and Nitin pressed the blue and yellow buttons in turn. Not so hard. He did fine when the green button lit up next but unfortunately failed on the fourth button. In the next game, he did not do much better. In the fifth game, however, he remembered a sequence of seven, and in the sixth game he managed to get a sequence of eight. Overall, the game was a success, and he was now 40 rupees richer.

      The next game was Packing Quarters, followed by Recall Last Three Numbers, Labyrinth, Dart Ball, and finally Roll-up. By the end of the hour, Nitin had reached a very good performance level on two of the games and a good performance level on two others. But he failed to reach the good level of performance for two of the games. In total, he made 120 rupees—a little more than a week’s pay—so he walked out of the community center a delighted man.

      The next participant was Apurve, an athletic and slightly balding man in his thirties and the proud father of twins. Apurve rolled the die and it landed on 1, a number that, according to our randomization process, placed Apurve in the low-level bonus condition. This meant that the total bonus he could make from all six games was 24 rupees, or about one day of pay.

      The first game Apurve played was Recall Last Three Numbers, followed by Roll-up, Packing Quarters, Labyrinth, and Simon, and ending with Dart Ball. Overall, he did rather well. He reached a good performance level in three of the games and a very good performance level in one. This put him on more or less the same performance level as Nitin, but, thanks to the unlucky roll of the die, he made only 10 rupees. Still, he was happy to receive that amount for an hour of playing games.

      When Ramesh rolled the die for the third participant, Anoopum, it landed on 5. According to our randomization process, this placed him in the highest-level bonus condition. Ramesh explained to Anoopum that for each game in which he reached the good level of performance he would be paid 200 rupees and that he would receive 400 rupees for each game in which he reached the very good score. Anoopum made a quick calculation: six games multiplied by 400 rupees equaled 2,400 rupees—a veritable fortune, roughly equivalent to five months’ pay. Anoopum couldn’t believe his good luck.

      The first randomly selected game for Anoopum was Labyrinth.^* Anoopum was instructed to place a small steel ball at the start position and then use the two knobs to advance the small ball through the maze while helping it avoid the trap holes. “We’ll play this game ten times,” Ramesh said. “If you manage to advance the ball past the seventh hole, we’ll call this a good level of performance, for which you will be paid two hundred rupees. If you manage to advance the ball past the ninth hole, we’ll call that a very good level of performance, and you will get four hundred rupees. When we’ve finished with this game, we’ll go on to the next. Everything clear?”

      Anoopum nodded eagerly. He grabbed the two knobs that controlled the tilt of the maze surface and stared at the steel ball in its “start” position as if it were prey. “This is very, very important,” he mumbled. “I must succeed.”

      He set the ball rolling; almost immediately, it fell into the first trap. “Nine more chances,” he said aloud to encourage himself. But he was under the gun, and his hands were now trembling. Unable to control the fine movements of his hands, he failed time after time. Having flubbed Labyrinth, he saw the wonderful images of what he would do with his small fortune slowly dissolve.

      The next game was Dart Ball. Standing twenty feet away, Anoopum tried to hit the Velcro center of the target. He hurled one ball after another, throwing one from below like a softball pitch, another from above as in cricket, and even from the side. Some of the balls came very close to the target, but none of his twenty throws stuck to the center.

      The Packing Quarters game was sheer frustration. In a minuscule two minutes, Anoopum had to fit the nine pieces into the puzzle in order to earn 400 rupees (if he took four minutes, he could earn 200 rupees). As the clock ticked, Ramesh read out the remaining time every thirty seconds: “Ninety seconds! Sixty seconds! Thirty seconds!” Poor Anoopum tried to work faster and faster, applying more and more force to fit all nine of the wedges into the square, but to no avail.

      At the end of the four minutes, the Packing Quarters game was abandoned. Ramesh and Anoopum moved on to the Simon game. Anoopum felt somewhat frustrated, but he braced himself and tried his utmost to focus on the task at hand.

      His first attempt with Simon resulted in a two-light sequence—not very promising. But, on the second try, he managed to recall a sequence of six. He beamed, because he knew that he had finally made at least 200 rupees, and he had eight more chances to make it to 400. Feeling as though he was finally able to do something well, he tried to increase his concentration, willing his memory to a higher plane of performance. In the next eight attempts, he was able to remember sequences of six and seven, but he never made it to eight.

      With two more games to go, Anoopum decided to take a short break. He went through calming breathing exercises, exhaling a long “Om” with each breath. After several minutes, he felt ready for the Roll-up game. Unfortunately, he failed both the Roll-up game and the Recall Last Three Numbers task. As he left the community center, he comforted himself with the thought of the 200 rupees he had earned—a nice sum for a few games—but his frustration at not having gotten the larger sum was evident on his furrowed brow.

      The Results: Drumroll, Please…

      After a few weeks, Ramesh and the other four graduate students finished the data collection in a number of villages and mailed me the performance records. I was very eager to take a first look at the results. Was our Indian experiment worth the time and effort? Would the different levels of bonuses tally with the levels of performance? Would those who could receive the highest bonuses perform better? Worse?

      For me, taking a first peek into a data set is one of the most exciting experiences in research. Though it’s not quite as thrilling as, say, catching a first glimpse of one’s child on an ultrasound, it’s easily more wonderful than opening a birthday present. In fact, for me there’s a ceremonial aspect to viewing a first set of statistical analysis. Early on in my research career, after having spent weeks or months of collecting data, I would enter all the numbers into a data set and format it for statistical analysis. Weeks and months of work would bring me to the point of discovery, and I wanted to be sure to celebrate the moment. I would take a break and pour myself a glass of wine or make a cup of tea. Only then would I sit down to celebrate the magical moment when the solution to the experimental puzzle I had been working on was finally revealed.

      That СКАЧАТЬ