brad garland

I just started Daniel Pink’s - Drive and he hit me with a motivation experiment that doesn’t hold water for me.  So I need your help figuring it all out.  The experiment goes like this:

Somebody gives me ten dollars and tells me to share it - some, all, or none - with you.  If you accept my offer, we both get to keep the money.  If you reject it, neither of us get anything.  If I offered you six dollars (keeping four for myself), would you take it? Almost certainly.  Same with 5 dollars most likely.  Now, what about two dollars (keeping eight for myself)? Probably not and the experiment shows that most people don’t take the deal if its for two dollars or below.

OK, so here’s my question.  What if we added four zeros to the equation?  $100,000 dollars to be given away, same rules apply.  If you gave me $20,000, I’d more than likely take that deal and run.  Now why?  To me, it’s because despite it not being a fair deal intrinsically the value of that money in our society is too great to pass up.  I can do a lot with $20K whereas $2, I could afford to lose.

Now, with that said, Daniel Pink does go on to make a valid point on how people often leave lucrative jobs for those with a greater purpose. To me, that only comes for a small subset of people that have attained a certain level of clarity in their lives.  Those that have achieved the monetary goals they’ve set only to realize that’s not what continue to motivate them. So it would seem to me that the motivation curve is something like this:

Intrinsic —-> Extrinsic —-> Intrinsic

What do you think? If offered $20K, would you take that deal?