Hypermotivation
Published 12/1/2008
Author: Scott Rick and George Loewenstein
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Executive Summary
Mazar, Amir, and Ariely propose that people balance two competing desires when deciding whether to behave dishonestly: the motivation for personal gain and the desire to maintain a positive self-concept. Although Mazar, Amir, and Ariely shed new and important light on how people rationalize dishonesty, the authors of this commentary propose that they pay too little attention to the role of motivation, arguably the more important side of the dishonesty equation. When many of the acts of dishonesty in the real world are examined, a striking pattern emerges: Many, if not most, appear to be motivated by the desire to avoid (or recoup) losses rather than the simple desire for gain. The authors propose that perceiving oneself as being “in a hole” leads to hypermotivation—a visceral state that leads a person to take actions that would normally be considered unacceptable. The authors suggest that academia is a paradigmatic example of a domain that is especially likely to stimulate hypermotivation because it is becoming increasingly competitive and the (professional) achievements of colleagues and competitors have never been easier to assess. The authors conclude by proposing ways in which the field could curb dishonesty and explaining why the (slightly) reduced productivity that would result from such measures would be beneficial to the field.
Biography
Scott Rick is a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his PhD in 2007 from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was funded by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation. His research focuses on the emotions people experience in response to the prospect of spending money and the influence of those emotions on decision making and on the extent to which people enjoy what they consume. He has published articles in leading marketing, psychology, neuroscience, and economics journals, including Journal of Consumer Research, Annual Review of Psychology, and Neuron.
George Loewenstein is the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his PhD from Yale University in 1985 and since then has held academic positions at the University of Chicago and Carnegie Mellon University, as well as fellowships at Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. Loewenstein is an early pioneer in the field of behavioral economics and a founder of the new field of neuroeconomics (applications of neuroscience to economics). He is past president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and has published more than 100 academic articles in top journals in economics, psychology, law, medicine, and business.
J Marketing Research, Volume 45, Number 6, December 2008
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