Man's search for meaning: The case of Legos

We investigate how perceived meaning influences labor supply. In a laboratory setting, we manipulate the perceived meaning of simple, repetitive tasks and find a strong influence on subjects’ labor supply. Despite the fact that the wage and the task are identical across the conditions in each experi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of economic behavior & organization Vol. 67; no. 3; pp. 671 - 677
Main Authors Ariely, Dan, Kamenica, Emir, Prelec, Dražen
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.09.2008
Elsevier
Elsevier Sequoia S.A
SeriesJournal of Economic Behavior & Organization
Subjects
Economic theory
Experiments
Intrinsic motivation
Labor supply
Laboratories
Labour supply
Meaning
Monitoring
Motivation
Perception
Productivity
Repetitive tasks
Studies
Wage levels
Wages
Wages & salaries
J28
Labor supply
Intrinsic motivation
J30
M50
Experiments
Meaning
Monitoring
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:We investigate how perceived meaning influences labor supply. In a laboratory setting, we manipulate the perceived meaning of simple, repetitive tasks and find a strong influence on subjects’ labor supply. Despite the fact that the wage and the task are identical across the conditions in each experiment, subjects in the less meaningful conditions exhibit reservation wages that are consistently much higher than the subjects in the more meaningful conditions. The result replicates across different types of tasks. Moreover, in the more meaningful conditions, subjects’ productivity influences labor supply more strongly.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ObjectType-Article-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:0167-2681
1879-1751
DOI:10.1016/j.jebo.2008.01.004