58 pages • 1 hour read
Daniel H. PinkDrive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Fiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 2-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “A New Operating System”
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Seven Reasons Carrots and Sticks (Often) Don’t Work”
Pink compares the “carrots and sticks” system of Motivation 2.0 to Newtonian Physics: very simple, good at explaining things to an extent, but down at the atomic level (i.e., the level of intrinsic motivation) it starts to break down.
Recalling a famous scene from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Pink describes how Tom Sawyer tricks the other boys into whitewashing his Aunt Polly’s fence by convincing them that it’s an interesting and rewarding task, rather than a dull chore. The reverse of this is true as well: When rewards are offered, Pink says, it can transform an otherwise interesting task into drudge work; he calls this the “Sawyer Effect.”
Pink gives an example of the Sawyer Effect in real life. In a study by Mark Lepper and David Greene, several preschool children who spent their free time drawing were divided into three groups. The first group was told they would receive a “Good Player” certificate for their drawing; the second group was also awarded a certificate but not told in advance that they would get one; and the third group was given no certificate. The latter two groups continued to draw just as much as they always had, but the first group lost interest in the activity. Pink summarizes the conclusion of this research by noting that the Sawyer Effect arises not from the reward itself, but from the expectation of the reward. Pink calls these “If-then” rewards—“if you do this, then you get that”—and notes that they tend to decrease intrinsic motivation. This rule generally applies to both children and adults, and it goes against how most people think schools and workplaces ought to be run.
Pink then describes another experiment conducted in India to test the effect of extrinsic rewards on performance. Three groups of workers were offered different size payments for completing the same level of work: 4 rupees, 40 rupees, or 400 rupees. Unexpectedly, the group that received the larger payment actually performed worse than the other groups. Other researchers have found similar results, that “financial incentives […] can result in a negative impact on overall performance” (39).
When it comes to creative tasks, extrinsic rewards can limit outside-of-the-box thinking; Pink demonstrates this using an experiment called the “candle problem.” In the candle problem, the subject is given a few objects: a candle, a box of thumbtacks, and a book of matches, and then told to attach the candle to a wooden wall. Most people first try to attach the candle using the thumbtacks, or by melting the wax, but none of that works. The actual answer is to tack the box to the wall and put the candle inside. This solution requires people to think more creatively about both the purpose of the box (i.e., it’s not just for holding tacks) and what it means to attach the candle to the wall (i.e., it doesn’t have to be directly attached). Subjects who are offered rewards generally take three and a half minutes longer to solve this problem on average, because the monetary reward narrows their view and inhibits their ability to think “outside-the-box.”
As another example, artists report feeling more constrained and less creative when working on commission. In contrast, artists who are driven more by passion and enjoyment not only create better work, but also are generally more financially successful. Monetary rewards suck the joy out of the activity, turning it from something you want to do into something you are obligated to do, which can be toxic for creative projects.
Another question Pink addresses is the effect of rewards on altruistic behavior. For example, should people be paid for donating blood? Many theorize that if you pay people to donate blood, you will get more blood donors. But in reality, the opposite turns out to be true because offering a monetary reward kills the intrinsic motivation to do it (altruism).
Extrinsic rewards can also have a detrimental effect on ethical behavior by encouraging short-term thinking and corner cutting. When goals such as sales quotas, quarterly returns, and standardized test scores are imposed on people, they result not only in diminished creativity, but also in unethical practices such as inflating prices, pushing unnecessary sales, putting out dangerous products, and cheating. However, when people are motivated intrinsically, then unethical behavior decreases because the end goal is not the reward but the task itself.
Punishments tend to have the same effect on behavior as rewards. Pink gives the example of an Israeli childcare facility where teachers had to stay late with the children if any parents showed up late to pick them up. Eventually, it was announced that late parents would be charged a fee; the goal was to reduce the number of parents who showed up late. However, the new policy had the opposite effect: more parents began showing up late. Before, they would try to get there on time for the sake of the teachers, but once the idea of a fine was introduced, it became a mere monetary transaction, and the original altruistic motivation was lost.
Another negative aspect of extrinsic rewards is that they can be addictive, like drugs. Once you start paying someone to do a task, they’ll never again do it for free because their brain has been taught that this task is “undesirable.” Not only that, but just as with addictive substances, most likely you will have to increase the payments over time to continue seeing the same results. Research has found that winning money activates the same reward centers in the brain as addictive drugs, and chasing after rewards can cause people to participate in more risk-taking behavior.
Extrinsic rewards also narrow people’s focus to the short term, preventing them from thinking in a bigger picture way. We see this in the way big companies fixate on their earnings for the next quarter while disregarding long-term risks. Pink mentions the 2008 economic crash as a perfect example of what can result from this sort of “extrinsically motivated myopia” (56). In contrast, intrinsic goals, such as seeking to master a skill or learn something new, are by necessity focused on the long term.
Part 1, Chapter 2A Summary: “…and the Special Circumstances When They Do”
In Chapter 2A, Pink discusses a few circumstances in which a system of rewards and punishment can work well, so long as the baseline reward (wages) is adequate and fair. When work is routine and doesn’t require creative thinking, workers often lack intrinsic motivation, and in these cases extrinsic rewards can be necessary. Pink advises that in such situations, a manager or team leader should emphasize the purpose of the task to give the workers some sense of meaning; they should also acknowledge that the task is boring, showing empathy for the workers who have to do it, and finally, they should give people autonomy over how they complete the task.
Pink also acknowledges that of course, even when it comes to creative tasks, people still want and need to be paid. This can create a problem because, as previously demonstrated, the expectation of a reward can kill the third drive. However, Pink argues that this problem can be solved if workers see the money as “enabling” them to do their creative work rather than as a reward for doing it. When people are not paid sufficiently and fairly, it can demotivate them to work; therefore, pay should be high enough that the need for money is no longer a factor in the workers’ minds. Pink also suggests that in certain circumstances, expected “if-then” rewards can be replaced with unexpected “now that” rewards: In other words, a reward is given as an unexpected bonus only after the task is complete (“now that you’ve done this, I’ll give you that”). But managers must use such rewards sparingly, because if used too often, “now that” rewards can morph into expected “if-then” rewards, which can be detrimental to productivity.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Type I and Type X”
Pink begins this chapter with the story of Edward Deci, a professor of psychology and social sciences at the University of Rochester and the author of the influential book Intrinsic Motivation, from which many of Pink’s ideas are derived. Together with a philosophy student named Richard Ryan, Deci developed “Self-Determination Theory,” which states that all human beings have three innate psychological needs: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Deci and Ryan argued that if any of these three needs are not being met, motivation tends to decline. Unfortunately, our current Motivation 2.0 operating system, based on extrinsic reward and punishment, often fails to meet these needs.
Pink points out that Deci and Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory is part of a larger movement of “positive psychology,” which aims to refocus the field of psychology away from just treating mental illness and onto helping people function to their fullest potential. One major pioneer in this field is the Hungarian American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who identified the concept of “flow,” a mental state in which someone is fully, effortlessly immersed in an activity, to the point where they even lose their sense of time.
Pink goes on to explain the origins of the terms “Type A” and “Type B” Personalities. As described by the cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman in the 1950s, Type A people tend to be highly competitive, aggressive, impatient, and focused on efficient time management; Friedman and Rosenman theorized that these individuals experienced a higher incidence of heart problems, though later research has called that finding into question. Type B personalities, on the other hand, tend to be less competitive, finding satisfaction in their work in itself rather than in outcompeting rivals or rising to the top of a corporate hierarchy. Pink then detours to the research of Douglas McGregor, a management professor at MIT who has called for a rethinking of management practices. McGregor argues that managers base their strategies on two competing theories of human behavior: Theory X holds that people are naturally lazy and directionless, and therefore they must constantly be monitored and forced into working. Theory Y, on the other hand, contends that people are naturally creative and interested in work, and that they’ll even volunteer to take on responsibilities in the right circumstances.
Based on these two examples, Pink coins his own alphabetical categories as an alternative to Friedman and Rosenman’s Type A and Type B: Type I Behavior and Type X Behavior. Type X Behavior is fueled by extrinsic desires, while Type I Behavior is motivated by intrinsic desires. Type I people tend to be more confident, happy, and mentally healthy overall; they are also often more productive and successful in the long term. Meanwhile, Type X Behaviors may be more productive in the short term, but they are hard to maintain, and they are often linked to unhealthy Type A personality traits. However, Pink points out that these are not fixed categories; it’s possible for a Type X person to become Type I if they have the right environment to foster that change. Importantly, both Type I and Type X people care about money and need to be paid fairly and adequately; if their baseline compensation is not meeting the worker’s needs, then their motivation will plummet regardless of what type of personality they have. Pink argues that if we want to fix our current problems in the workplace and education, we need to encourage Type I Behavior. He compares Type X Behavior to coal (outdated, unhealthy, and unsustainable), and Type I Behavior to green energy (clean, safe, and renewable). Type I Behavior, which has been scientifically shown as essential to human nature, depends on three important elements: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. To improve the modern world, we must adjust our system to encourage work based on these three elements.
Part 1, Chapters 2-3 Analysis
In the two parts of Chapter 2, Pink goes into more detail about the detrimental effects of extrinsic rewards and punishments, while also acknowledging that there are circumstances in which they can still be useful. The “Sawyer Effect” described at the beginning of Chapter 2 is similar to the experiments mentioned in the Introduction, where “rewards can perform a weird sort of behavioral alchemy: They can transform an interesting task into a drudge. They can turn play into work” (35). This is why the monkeys in Harlow’s experiment who were given rewards quickly lost interest in solving the puzzles for their own sake, and also why the students in Deci’s experiment lost their desire to play with the puzzle blocks once the possibility of a reward was taken away, even though they had been interested before the idea of a reward was introduced. Giving someone a reward for a task subconsciously signals that this task is something nobody would willingly do without essentially being bribed to do it. In addition to The Importance of Intrinsic Motivation, these experiments show another, related phenomenon: the fragility of intrinsic motivation. Powerful as it is as a force for productivity and happiness, intrinsic motivation is easily destroyed by external, social conditions.
But the Sawyer Effect can work the other way too, transforming work into play, if done correctly. This is what Tom Sawyer does to trick his friends into whitewashing the fence: He conveys to them that the job is actually very interesting and rewarding for its own sake, that it’s something enjoyable. In other words, he manufactured an intrinsic interest in the task. Later in Drive, Pink will go into greater depth on how people can foster intrinsic motivation at work, in school, and in their lives generally. The book’s aims are divided by section, with Parts 1 and 2 being informational and persuasive—aimed at explaining what intrinsic motivation is and persuading readers to accept its importance—and Part 3 being instructional—aimed at showing readers how to foster intrinsic motivation in their own lives and communities.
The issue of worker compensation is a complicated one in Drive. The experiments described in the Introduction and Chapter 1 have shown that extrinsic rewards can destroy intrinsic motivation. Thus, traditional performance-based bonuses and commissions would seem clearly detrimental to productivity. In the example of the candle problem, Pink shows how monetary rewards can “[narrow] peoples’ focus and [blinker] the wide view that might have allowed them to see new uses for old objects” (42). In a corporate setting, this same blinkered focus can lead employees to get stuck in old ways of doing things and fail to adapt to new challenges. At the same time, people need to get paid, and when compensation is insufficient, the threat of hunger or housing instability becomes its own kind of extrinsic motivator—a punishment that is at least as detrimental to intrinsic motivation as any reward. If the goal of compensation is that it should disappear as a motivator, Pink argues, the solution is to pay well enough that workers don’t need to worry about money. The specific advice Pink offers here—such as framing compensation as enabling work rather than rewarding it, and offering “now-that” rather than “if-then” rewards—is aimed at separating work from money, so that workers can pursue the work for its own sake.
In Chapter 3, Pink builds on everything established in the previous chapters to define his two categories for human behavior, Type X and Type I. Type X (extrinsically motivated) Behavior is the sort most associated with the outdated “Motivation 2.0” operating system, which Pink has already demonstrated leads to worse long-term productivity, decreased worker engagement, short-term thinking and even unethical behaviors. Here, he also links Type X behaviors to Type A personality traits, which have been thought to come with negative health effects such as anxiety and heart disease. This is just one more reason to move away from the Motivation 2.0 operating system and toward a system that will promote more Type I (intrinsically motivated) Behaviors. Not only will this transition lead to greater productivity and better-quality work, Pink suggests, but it will also reduce the number of unhealthy and unhappy people in our society.
Edward Deci, whose experiment with university students and puzzle blocks helped ground Pink’s argument in the introduction, gets more fully introduced here. Deci and his research partner Richard Ryan are two of the most important thinkers mentioned in Drive, as their Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is a major influence on Pink’s own theories about motivation. Through Deci and Ryan’s work, Pink introduces another of his core themes: The Human Desire for Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. The three innate psychological needs identified by Deci and Ryan map very closely onto the three elements of Type I Behavior that Pink will discuss in depth in Part 2. Both SDT and Pink’s Type I theory identify “Autonomy” as a key determinant of happiness and productivity. The second ingredient identified by Deci and Ryan, Competence, is closely related to what Pink calls “Mastery,” the innate desire to increase your skills and overcome challenging problems. And the third ingredient in SDT, Relatedness, is closely related to what Pink calls Purpose, a sense of working for the common good or being part of something bigger than yourself.
By comparing Type X Behavior to coal energy and Type I Behavior to green energy, Pink underscores the recurring thesis of Drive that the circumstances of the modern world demand a drastic change to our entire system. The analogy works on multiple levels. Like coal, Type X Behavior and the associated Motivation 2.0 system are relics from a former era. Once, they served society well, but now they are standing in the way of a necessary shift. Also like coal, Type X Behavior has several unpleasant byproducts—worker apathy, short-sighted companies, diminished productivity, and even unethical behavior—which are toxic for the world as a whole. Type X Behavior, he also adds, is a “non-renewable” resource; in other words, you can only get so much productivity out of Type X workers. At a certain point, the power of rewards and punishments will not be enough to overcome the barrier of disengagement. In contrast, Type I Behavior is renewable. Workers who are intrinsically motivated, he argues, will not require bigger and bigger rewards to motivate them because to them the work is its own reward. Type I Behavior is “clean,” like green energy, in that it does not result in any of the nasty byproducts we see from Type X Behavior. And like green energy, the world is changing in ways that will soon force companies to shift to a more Type I-based approach to management, whether they want to or not. However, many companies are still stuck in the outdated Type-X mindset and refuse to change their ways, much like how many people still cling to dirty energy even though there is a better alternative. This metaphor encapsulates all the reasons Pink believes the world will inevitably move more and more toward a Motivation 3.0 operating system in the future, and those who fail to adapt will be left behind.
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