[Linkpost] Competing Motivations: When More Incentives Lead To Less Effort

Kieran Gibson does some nifty experiments, to check if the subjects (MTurk users) made coherent decisions. They do not. Here is the key chart:

Bar graph with blue bars and error bars on y-axis labeled Tasks Completed ranging from 0 to 50. X-axis categories are Self Charity and Self+Charity. Self bar at approximately 20 Charity bar at approximately 45 Self+Charity bar split into two at approximately 45 each.

He also rules out ceiling effects and unexpected utilities by using probabilistic rewards. All the VNM criteria really.

My explanation is that this result it due to bounded rationality. Most people can't hold the joint reward function in their mind and will choose or alternate between the individual functions instead - which leads to averaging instead of adding.

Link to PDF Download

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

9

[Linkpost] Competing Motivations: When More Incentives Lead To Less Effort

9

9