Affective Brain Lab, Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2020 Sep 4;15(9):e0237914. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0237914. eCollection 2020.
Factors beyond a person's control, such as demographic characteristics at birth, often influence the availability of rewards an individual can expect for their efforts. We know surprisingly little how such differences in opportunities impact human motivation. To test this, we designed a study in which we arbitrarily varied the reward offered to each participant in a group for performing the same task. Participants then had to decide whether or not they were willing to exert effort to receive their reward. Across three experiments, we found that the unequal distribution of offers reduced participants' motivation to pursue rewards even when their relative position in the distribution was high, and despite the decision being of no benefit to others and reducing the reward for oneself. Participants' feelings partially mediated this relationship. In particular, a large disparity in rewards was associated with greater unhappiness, which was associated with lower willingness to work-even when controlling for absolute reward and its relative value, both of which also affected decisions to work. A model that incorporated a person's relative position and unfairness of rewards in the group fit better to the data than other popular models describing the effects of inequality. Our findings suggest opportunity-gaps can trigger psychological dynamics that hurt productivity and well-being of all involved.
超出个人控制的因素，如出生时的人口特征，往往会影响个人努力可获得的回报。我们对这些机会差异如何影响人类动机知之甚少。为了检验这一点，我们设计了一项研究，在这项研究中，我们随机改变了小组中每个参与者完成相同任务可获得的奖励。然后，参与者必须决定是否愿意付出努力来获得他们的奖励。在三项实验中，我们发现，即使在分配中处于较高的相对位置，不平等的分配也会降低参与者追求奖励的动机，尽管这一决定对他人没有好处，而且会减少自己的奖励。参与者的感受在一定程度上调解了这种关系。特别是，奖励的巨大差距与更大的不幸福感有关，而不幸福感又与较低的工作意愿有关，即使在控制了绝对奖励及其相对价值的情况下，这两者也会影响工作的决定。一个将一个人的相对位置和群体中奖励的不公正性纳入其中的模型比其他描述不平等影响的流行模型更能拟合数据。我们的研究结果表明，机会差距可能引发心理动态，从而损害所有相关人员的生产力和幸福感。
