Enthusiasm for Occupational Health and Safety: When It’s a Benefit and When It’s Not

The Opening Session of the 2011 ASSE conference in Chicago featured a keynote talk by Daniel Pink, an attorney and author of a book on motivation. For an audience of over 3,000, Pink described an experiment that showed detrimental effects of using incentives to motivate the completion of a difficult task.

As Pink described it, the incentive condition for the complex task involved the experimenter standing next to the subject with a stopwatch and stating, “If you can beat the time record set by a prior participant, you will be the best at this task and receive $5.” Pink specified the $5 reward in 1962 – when this experiment was conducted – would be worth $35 today. Participants in this “incentive” condition actually took more time to complete the task than participants who did not receive the extra incentive. However, explaining these results on the basis of task complexity ignores other important contributing factors and is therefore misleading.

The cornerstone of Pink’s presentation was the assertion that incentives only can benefit performance in the case of relatively simple tasks. This is not scientifically valid and misses a key motivational lesson related to occupational health and safety.

It’s About Emotional Arousal

Imagine yourself in a situation similar to that described by Pink. The task is relatively complicated and you have not been in this situation before. Given that you want to show personal competence, you probably will be a bit nervous and excited. Now, consider the addition to the scenario that the researcher sets up a competitive situation whereby you can receive a financial reward if you are the fastest at completing the task. Would this extra incentive/reward condition cause more emotional excitement? Yes, if you could use an extra $35. (Note that all participants were college students and probably would view $35 as a valuable reward.) Would this increased excitement help or hinder your performance?

An answer to this second question is determined by more than task complexity. Extra arousal or excitement facilitates performance when the participant is well-practiced and prepared, regardless of task complexity. In other words, if you have a dominate response available for a particular job (i.e., you know what to do), your performance will be facilitated by the extra motivation from the emotion-arousing condition (e.g., an interpersonal competition for a financial reward). On the other hand, if you are confused and do not have a clear behavioral strategy readily available (i.e., you’re unsure what to do), as probably was the case for most subjects in the experiment described by Pink, your performance would be inhibited by the extra arousal induced by a win/lose competition. This revised conclusion would be reached by those who not only know the research on task complexity, but also know how to combine that information with other basic research in psychological science.

The Yerkes-Dodson Law

Students in my introductory psychology classes learn about the Yerkes-Dodson law of arousal and motivation, first explored scientifically in 1908 by R.M. Yerkes and J.D. Dodson. Simply put, human performance improves with increased arousal up to a point, but after this level of arousal is reached (which varies as a function of both personality and context), human performance decreases as arousal increases.

So, what person- and situation-based factors influence the level at which more emotional arousal is detrimental to human performance? As described above, task complexity is a critical contextual variable, but its impact depends on dimensions of the individual performer. Is the performer well prepared or unprepared for the difficult task? Does the performer possess a personality trait that is accompanied by inherent motivating arousal? For example, an individual could be a highly competitive Type A personality (Freidman & Rosenman, 1974), and therefore bring substantial arousal to the situation. Or, a person could be a more laid-back Type B personality, and not be as naturally aroused in competitive situations.

Real-World Applications

Sticking with the theme of task complexity and arousal, let’s consider a few real-world applications of the Yerkes-Dodson law, with direct connection to occupational health and safety. Two of the most popular domains of social psychology are relevant here, and frequently experiences by most readers.

Social Facilitation – Imagine a crowd of people watching you practice driving golf balls or rallying with a tennis instructor. Would a watching audience help or hinder your performance? Would you rather practice your golf swing or tennis strokes alone, or in the presence of scrutiny from others? From the above discussion and your personal experience, you know the answer to these questions. Golf and tennis are relatively complex tasks, and the emotional excitement triggered by the onlookers will help or hinder your performance depending largely on your perceived proficiency (or self-efficacy) at golf or tennis.