Play the Game of Life
Ryan Petersen's Blog

Today in Leadership class we learned about an interesting study about the expected versus actual effects of monetary incentives on blood donations. The research was carried out by Dale Miller, who compared the percentage of people agreeing to donate blood voluntarily with the percentage when offered $15. He then asked an independent group what they thought would be the results from the two offers. People asked to guess said they thought 30% would donate voluntarily versus 70% when offered $15. In fact, it was exactly even at 65% each.

This was used by Professor Frank Flynn to highlight the notion that many managers believe people are primarily motivated by money, when in fact there are other motivating factors such as contribution, feeling good about yourself, accomplishing something worthwhile, developing skills and learning new things.

Labels: Columbia Business School, psychology, Strange Questions