RSA offers up anoth­er ani­mat­ed video explain­ing what makes us tick. This time, they’re fea­tur­ing a lec­ture by Daniel Pink, the best­selling author of Dri­ve: The Sur­pris­ing Truth About What Moti­vates Us. Revis­it­ing research also found in Dan Ariely’s new book, The Upside of Irra­tional­i­ty, Pink dri­ves home the point that tra­di­tion­al moti­va­tion schemes – name­ly, bonus­es – rarely achieve their intend­ed results. In fact, the big­ger the bonus, the big­ger the decline in per­for­mance. Or so stud­ies show again and again. So what does moti­vate us? The desire to be self-direct­ed. The will to mas­ter some­thing. The hope to make a con­tri­bu­tion. It’s all what Pink calls “the pur­pose motive,” and it’s the stuff that keeps this site mov­ing along.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dan Ariely on the Irra­tional­i­ty of Bonus­es

Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich on The Per­ils of Pos­i­tive Psy­chol­o­gy

Philip Zim­bar­do on The Secret Pow­ers of Time

via Fora.TV

You’ve per­haps heard the buzz around Dan Ariely’s new book, The Upside of Irra­tional­i­ty: The Unex­pect­ed Ben­e­fits of Defy­ing Log­ic at Work and at Home. (If not, read this review in the NY Times.) Appear­ing at PopTech! last year, Ariely spent 20 min­utes flesh­ing out an argu­ment in his book. A pro­fes­sor of behav­ioral eco­nom­ics at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty, Ariely turns some basic assump­tions about work­place com­pen­sa­tion right on their head … and even explains why, in some strange way, it makes sense that high­ly com­pen­sat­ed Wall Street bankers could do so much dam­age to our finan­cial sys­tem.

Note: You can lis­ten to Ariely get­ting inter­viewed ear­li­er this week on my favorite San Fran­cis­co talk show. The con­ver­sa­tion revolves around The Upside of Irra­tional­i­ty.