The Irrational Bundle. Dan Ariely

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Of course this may not be true of everyone, but I think that for many people the workplace is not just a source of money but also a source of motivation and self-definition.

      Such feelings benefit both the workplace and the employee. Employers who can foster these feelings gain dedicated, motivated employees who think about solving job-related problems even after the workday is over. And employees who take pride in their work feel a sense of happiness and purpose. But in the same way that market norms may undermine social norms, it may be that market norms also erode the pride and meaning people get from the workplace (for example, when we pay schoolteachers according to their students’ performance on standardized tests).

      Imagine that you work for me, and that I want to give you a year-end bonus. I offer you a choice: $1,000 in cash or an all-expenses-paid weekend in the Bahamas, which would cost me $1,000. Which option would you choose? If you are like most people who have answered this question, you would take the cash. After all, you may have already been to the Bahamas and may not have enjoyed being there very much, or maybe you’d prefer to spend a weekend at a resort closer to home and use the remainder of the bonus money to buy a new iPod. In either case, you think that you can best decide for yourself how to spend the money.

      This arrangement seems to be financially efficient, but would it increase your happiness with your work, or your loyalty to the company? Would it make me a better boss? Would it improve the employer-employee relationship in any way? I suspect that both your and my best interests would be better served if I simply didn’t offer you a choice and just sent you on the Bahamas vacation. Consider how much more relaxed and refreshed you would feel, and how well you would perform, after a relaxing weekend of sun and sand, compared with how you would feel and behave after you got the $1,000 bonus. Which would help you feel more committed to your job, more enjoyment in your work, more dedication to your boss? Which gift would make you more likely to stay long hours one night to meet an important deadline? On all of these, the vacation beats the cash hands down.

      This principle doesn’t apply only to gifts. Many employers, in an effort to show their employees how well they are treating them, add different line items to their paycheck stubs, describing exactly how much money the employer is spending on health care, retirement plans, the gym at work, and the cafeteria. These items are all legitimate, and they reflect real costs to the employer, but overtly stating the prices of these items changes the workplace from a social environment in which the employer and employee have a deep commitment to each other to a transactional relationship. Explicitly stating the financial value of these benefits can also diminish enjoyment, motivation, and loyalty to the workplace—negatively affecting both the employer-employee relationship and our own pride and happiness at work.

      Gifts and employee benefits seem, at first glance, to be an odd and inefficient way of allocating resources. But with the understanding that they fulfill an important role in creating long-term relationships, reciprocity, and positive feelings, companies should try to keep benefits and gifts in the social realm.

      Reflections on Market Norms and Romance

      One of the great philosophers of our time, Jerry Seinfeld, unintentionally demonstrated that social and market norms—much like an acid and a base in chemistry—clash if we try to mix them. In one episode of Seinfeld, Jerry hires a maid. This is not all that unusual in itself, except that in this case, the maid happens to be very attractive and naturally (for New York City) she is waiting to be “discovered.” Elaine predicts the inevitable, that Jerry will eventually start dating the maid. Later, after celebrating being right about her prediction, she comments sarcastically on what a prudent undertaking it is to date one’s maid. Here Elaine sagely points out the inherent difficulties in uniting the market norm (maid) and social norm (girlfriend). Jerry, expecting as much, gives a haphazard defense, arguing that he would never trip lightly into such a fraught situation and claiming that their personal and work relationships are completely separate. When the next inevitable evolution of their “relationship” occurs—that is, the maid/girlfriend stops cleaning entirely (but takes the money anyway)—Kramer is horrified and calls Jerry a john, picking up on the fact that it’s not exactly normal to pay one’s significant other for services rendered. Both relationships (girlfriend and maid) end when Jerry claims that they’re through and, in the same breath, that she’s fired. What happened is that Jerry mixed two competing norms—social and market—before realizing that they cannot comfortably coexist.

      Romantic relationships, in both fiction and real life, can provide useful insights into a lot of areas in behavioral economics. But as we’ve already seen, they are particularly useful in helping us think about the strange combinations of social and market norms. One wonderfully sad example of a person who did not understand this complexity is a woman in New York who, in 2007, posted a personal ad on Craigslist. In her ad, she said that she was seeking a husband who earned more than $500,000 a year. She described herself as “spectacularly beautiful,” “articulate,” and “superficial.” She also said that while she had no problems dating businessmen who made $250,000, she was unable to break the $250,000 barrier and find someone above this income level. She hoped to date someone who could get her what she really wanted: a nice apartment on Central Park West.

      Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that this woman really was spectacularly beautiful, articulate, and wonderful in every way. What would happen if she walked into a bar filled with stockbrokers, found her guy, and explicitly stated her goal as she did in the ad, and he accepted her offer? The terms of the relationship would certainly be established, putting them firmly in the market norm, rather than the social norm, domain.

      Now, say that this “happy” couple eventually gets married. What would happen the first time she didn’t want to have sex with her stockbroker husband or refused to spend the holidays with his mother? My guess is that the give-and-take that is so common and acceptable in regular romantic relationships (and in every social exchange) would not be part of this relationship . . . and that the explicit exchange of beauty for money would ensure that the relationship would break down.

      I don’t actually know what became of this woman, but the responses to her ad make me suspect that this approach to finding a husband did not have a good ending. Because she bluntly introduced market norms into the relationship she was looking for, many respondents compared her offer to a business transaction. In fact, one anonymous respondent took her market norms framing to the next level. He assured the woman that he met her criteria but explained that the proposal was a “crappy business deal” because his assets (money) were likely to appreciate over time, while her assets (looks) would certainly depreciate as she aged. He also added, correctly, that in this situation, the economically rational thing to do would be to lease rather than buy.

      CHAPTER 5

       The Power of a Free Cookie

      How free Can Make Us Less Selfish

      Some time ago, I decided to go watch firsthand one of the most infamous acts of raw, unabashed, supply-and-demand capitalism in action. I am talking, of course, about Filene’s Basement’s “Running of the Brides”—an event that has been held annually since 1947 and is the department store’s answer to the famous “Running of the Bulls” in Pamplona, Spain. Instead of watching thousand-pound bulls trampling and goring foolhardy humans, I observed about a thousand blushing brides-to-be (and their minions) trampling one another in a mass grab for discount-priced designer wedding dresses. According to the store’s Web site,⁵ gowns originally priced at thousands of dollars are on this day offered for a pittance, from $249 to $699.

      Early on the morning of the sale, the brides, each with a small army of moms and friends, line up outside the store (some even camp out the night before). The minute the doors open, they turn into a frantic, screaming, pushing mob, running to the racks to tear off as many dresses as they can carry. (One piece of particularly useful advice for brides: put all your friends in brightly colored uniforms or silly headgear so you can identify them in the СКАЧАТЬ